Ultimate Trails 50k 2013

Well that was tough ! One of the toughest races I have ever done. Melanie and I had wondered whether this might be hard and it certainly was.

The event was a bit like the Lakeland 50m/100m where the 50k starts halfway round the 100k route and we had a coach to take us to the start of the 50k in Patterdale. The start and finish of the 100k was at Brockhole, between Ambleside and Windermere. We were not impressed by Brockhole, it is advertised as a venue which has lots of free activities, but if you are travelling by car, the car parking charges are steep. The charges operate 24 hours a day. Those people who were camping there were building up some hefty charges.

We were told to arrive on Friday evening for registration and a compulsory briefing for all runners. We met up with Jane who was going to be doing her first Ultra and the plan was for the three of us to run it together. The briefing included nothing that wasn't in the race day instructions and that we weren't told on the coach to Patterdale. We should have arrived on the morning of the race and registered then as Anna did. We were also told that the coaches left at 9, but it seemed the organisers were working for a 9.30 departure. We arrived in Patterdale at about 10.15 for a 12.00 race start. There was a marquee most of which was a feed station for the 100k runners. There was a small part we could have gathered in if had been wet. Luckily, it was a lovely day, sunny, a gentle breeze and you could see for miles. The four of us opted to walk to Glenridding to find a coffee shop.

The race started exactly on time and we ran up Grisedale. This first section is the final quarter of the Lakeland Trails Helvellyn route, but in reverse. That was fine and then we started the climb up to Grisedale Tarn. I noticed that I was a bit tired and started to wonder whether the Hardmoors Princess 30 event two weeks ago and walking 10m last Tuesday had been wise. Still we got to the Tarn and had fantastic views. The descent to Dunmail Raise was something else, very technical and we were making slow progress, but well within the cutoffs.

After grabbing some water and food we ran round part of Thirlmere and started the second big ascent, up to Harrop Tarn and Watendlath Fell. This ascent felt a bit better, but still hard. Crossing Watendlath Fell, we were using the flags (this was a marked course) as there was no for discernible path. It got a bit boggy in places. At this point Melanie started to get a migraine, but she caught it early with some painkillers. A steep descent to Watendlath and the second checkpoint. Here I had soup and the other two had porridge, very nice. Then another short climb and, for once, a reasonable descent to Rosthwaite and we headed towards Stonethwaite. This bit was runnable, but it got a bit rougher underfoot as we turned into Langstrath. Then we could see Stake Pass in the distance. This was to be the final big climb and the aim was to get up and over before dark. Anna had been running with us for a bit of the way, but at this point she was pulling away and we didn't see her again until the finish.

The climb did not look bad in the distance, but it was much harder than it looked. A seemingly never ending series of hairpins. Very smooth underfoot and we were hoping the descent would be similar. No such luck, it was rocky and we walked most of it. Finally down into Langdale and we knew the worst was behind us. We ran slowly to the next checkpoint at Stickle Barn where we had chips ! Bliss !

Then via Elterwater and up to Loughrigg Tarn and up to Loughrigg Fell. By now we were using head torches, but the weather was still excellent with little wind and a clear sky. To the final checkpoint at Ambleside and then off to Skelghyll Woods. Up till this point the signs had been pretty good, but into the woods we came to a junction with no signs. I looked at my Garmin with the GPS route on it and it appeared to say go right. I was a bit doubtful as it seemed to be going down. I haven't quite figured out what went wrong, I have a feeling that the GPS route provided wasn't too accurate. At this point we were over 31m and we finally decided to cut our losses and run down to the Ambleside to Windermere road and run in from there. Many others in front and behind us did the same.

Made it back in 9hrs 30min. Anna had also struggled to find the route in Skelghyll Woods and finished about 5min ahead of us. It was a lovely well lit finish on the lawn next to the lake

Jane did great on her first Ultra ! Photos : https://photos.app.goo.gl/QHwWKXPX2ZG5tYXB7

Hardmoors Princess Challenge 30m 2013

The Hardmoors 30m is well established. It starts at Ravenscar, goes 4m down the lovely Cleveland Way to Hayburn Wake. There it descends to sea level and climbs back up again. At that point the race route leave the Cleveland Way and heads towards an old railway line, known as the Cinder Track. The route then heads back to Ravenscar through Robon Hood's Bay to Whitby. All on the cinder track apart from a small diversion to reach the checkpoint at Ravenscar. After going through the main tourist area of Whitby and climbing up to the abbey, the route rejoins the Cleveland Way and goes through Robin Hood's Bay back to Ravenscar.

I have done the event, which is on 1 January, twice. Each time it has been a bit of a nightmare after Whitby. There are many hills and steps, but these are to be expected on Hardmoors events. The real difficulty has been the mud. This year I wore the grippiest shoes I have, mudclaws, and it made little difference. 20m to Whitby took us 4 hours and the last ten miles took us 3 hours 15mins.

Princess Purple Bubbles has wanted to do the event but has been unable to be free on 1 January, so she decided to run the route in the summer. She then decided to run with a few friends. She then decided to to make it a race and raise money for the Scarborough and Ryedale Mountain Rescue. And the Hardmoors Princess Challenge was born

The prospect of doing the event with no mud was very enticing  Sadly Melanie had a training course to go to which involved puppets and sand trays, don't ask !

It was very cold at the start and I wore my waterproof top and even contemplated putting tights over my shorts. However, it soon warmed up and I left my tights behind when I reached the start/finish checkpoint at 8m after the south loop

Then it was the largely downhill section to Robin Hood's Bay. I tried to run this fairly hard as I knew there was a long climb after Robin Hood's Bay. I walked the long climb and then ran hard on the downhill to Whitby, Navigating round the tourists at Whitby was fun as usual, then the climb up to the Abbey. Running from there to Robin Hood's Bay was so much easier without any mud. 

The hills are still there and they keep on coming, especially after Robin Hood's Bay. There was also a new section of the Cleveland Way to go through before Ravenscar  Made it back to the Village Hall in 6hr 44mn 50sec, which is a 20min course pb 

I have found it very tough when running the route on January 1st, but today it was just lovely. A lovely cooling breeze helped as the day got warmer 

The event went very smoothly and raised at least £1K for the local Mountain Rescue, Well done to Princess Purple Bubbles, Flip and the other volunteers 

Photos : https://photos.app.goo.gl/M1fHptR5Yy3RVGP27

Pathfinder marathon 2013

We spent some time away seeing an old friend in Norwich, going on the Broads, visiting Cambridge, eating out. All very enjoyable 

On Saturday we did the Mulbarton parkrun and had a good chat with mxhornet. It was a bit wet and the course was all on grass, but everyone was very friendly and we met the Race Director from Sedgefield (about 5 miles from Durham) who just happened to be down that way as well.

On Monday we did the Pathfinder marathon event. It is 26m round the Cambridgeshire countryside. It was mainly flat though there was the odd undulation. It got very hot after about an hour and half and I struggled in the last four miles. Melanie wanted to get it finished so I persuaded her to go on. Both of us did our best times for quite a while for a trail marathon 

Again we found people that we knew at the event - Foxy, Nightjar and familiar faces from the 100 marathon club. There were probably only about forty runners and about ten of them I had met before. Four pounds to enter or seven pounds to get a mug, it was a bargain 

On the way back north we stopped off at Rutland Water which neither of us had visited before. We walked round some of it, we must go back there 

Hardmoors Saltburn marathon 2013

The Hardmoors Saltburn marathon route was a bit of a mystery. There had been a map published on the website, but we already knew that there would be changes to the route through Guisborough Woods. The route was to be fully marked, but it was going through some dodgy areas and I was doubtful the tape would remain there, so I printed off the map from the website, drew the route and downloaded it to our garmins, just in case. The route on the garmin helped a lot when we found some of the tape confusing or missing or apparently put somewhere to send us the wrong way, though we didn't see that.

Melanie and I met up with a few familiar faces in Saltburn Lesiure Centre. Phil Owen was there as he was going to be handling two busy road crossings. We started through some streets and made our way down to the Cleveland Way and up to Skelton, Skelton Green and started the long drag up in the direction of Slapewath. Steep descent there, cross the first busy road and up through the motorcycle woods (they probably have another name !). Then after getting to the top we were directed off the Cleveland Way through Guisborough Woods, a lovely downhill, but we knew that this would be followed by a climb. It certainly was, a steep climb up an overgrown path which came out about 150 metres from where we had left the Cleveland Way. More climbing (but gentler) and then leaving the Cleveland Way again for a descent down and up onto the moors above Commondale. The moors took a bit longer to cross than I anticipated, but we got to Commondale and then had a steep climb out of there, then it got more gentle.

We had had a brief shower earlier, but we hadn't got the waterproofs out, but we could see some very black clouds approaching, so it was out with the waterproofs. A good choice because for the remainder of the path across the moors it threw it down, just torrential rain. Got to the second busy road crossing and Flip guided us safely across and the countryside became more rural. We came across one piece of ambiguous tape and as we got there about eight runners emerged having made the wrong choice of route. We probably would have made the wrong choice too, but all of us now chose the right route.

I had expected this part of the route, 14m onwards, to be fairly flat, fairly undulating would be a better description. The weather was getting warmer too, so we slowed a bit. We reached Skinningrove safely and so I knew we were approaching the coastal part of the Cleveland Way again. However, I knew we had to go up to the cliffs, so we started the ascent and reached a junction where we could go up a road, down a road (but towards the coast which was the right direction) or straight on up an overgrown path. Several runners were there scratching their heads. No tape in sight. We decided to go up the road as that was closest to the route on my watch and everybody else followed. It turned out to be the right way as tape eventually started again.

Nice run along the Cleveland Way with a breeze to cool us down 😀 though I was starting to struggle a little here. Got to the last checkpoint outside the Ship Inn in Saltburn and the marshall said to follow the Cleveland Way route past the Spa Hotel and it had been retaped. But before we got there we found more tape sending us down by the river. We took that path and then a taped path upwards. The tape then disappeared, but I know this area a bit so we kept on heading up to the road and found our way back on to the Cleveland Way. More tape took us slightly down again (this route was turning out much hillier than I expected), before the final climb back up to the road leading to the Leisure Centre. 5hr 43min which is probably our fastest Hardmoors marathon, they certainly are hilly !

Then to my surprise I learnt that I had won my age category and was presented with a very nice trophy. A lovely end to a lovely day 😀

Photos : https://photos.app.goo.gl/DrmCtjASPrtp5BFZA

Rock and Rowel 26m 2013

What a great new event this was ! The food at the checkpoints and at the finish was the best I have seen and I have done a few of these type of events. It is standard to get sandwiches and/or cake but at this event they also had vegetarian wraps and at the halfway checkpoint we had an ice cream with strawberry topping :-) The ice cream was also available to finish off the lovely meal at the end. All of this for £10 ! The ice cream was very welcome on a hot day with the sun out for the first 20m. One of the refreshment stations also had cut up watermelon which was just great :-) The organisers also provided an extra refreshment station because of the heat.

One thing that could be improved was the route description. It was a bit concise and relied at lot on grid references. Luckily, the organisers also provided a gpx file which we downloaded to our Garmins. This meant that we had few problems, but we kept coming across people who had gone off course and others who kept having to stop to consult maps. Small parts of the route were flagged, but the majority of it had no markings. I think we would have made some major mistakes without the gpx file. But the possibility of making a mistake is part of the fun with these events and it certainly keep you concentrating on where you are going rather than fretting about your pace.

If you have done any of the Ripon 10m, the Jolly Holly Jog, the Fountains 10k or the Round Ripon Ultra, parts of the route will be familiar. I underestimated how hilly it was and assured Melanie that it wouldn't be too bad. The heat made the many short climbs a bit tougher and there seemed to be more climbs in the second half.

The course follows the Ripon Rowel footpath for some of the route and it also goes throughBrimham Rocks, an interesting collection of rocks stacked on top of each other. There were hordes of people swarming all over the rocks (and an ambulance was there presumably helping someone who had fallen off one). It was a bit tricky finding the checkpoint there as there were so many people about.

At one point we had a bit of an encounter with some bullocks who came trotting over to look at us. I had to try some bullock scaring techniques which seemed to work (wait for them to stop, wave arms, make a noise and advance a little). There were a few other fields with cows and bullocks in but they just ignored us or got out of the way.

We kept up a reasonable pace in the first half, but the heat and sun was sapping at our energy levels and we struggled a bit in the second half. After the meal at the finish, we went round the corner to the pub and finished off with some lovely cooling refreshment.

A great event, we shall be back

Photos : https://photos.app.goo.gl/jrvM5ktv1UnpYLFo7

Lakeland Trails marathon 2013

Two years ago I ran the Lakeland Trails marathon and it was a hot day. I missed last year's event, so it was back again to Coniston with the prospect of another hot run. Melanie did the half marathon last year and was keen to do the marathon this year - it would be her fourteenth marathon in just over a year, amazing !

In the Lakeland Trails there are usually two events, the Challenge and the Race. They follow the same course, but the Challenge goes off a bit sooner. It allows people to finish earlier in the day if they want to and also helps the organisers because the slower runners tend to enter the Challenge (but by no means are all the runners in the Challenge slow !).

I have been entering the Challenge for a while, it is good to see the faster runners finish. The difficulty with the Challenge at this event is that you must register the day before and the Challenge starts at 7am. It was this last point that Melanie was not too happy with. We had the alarm on for 4.30 even though we were staying not too far away in Kendal.

Saturday was hot all day and the forecast for Sunday was getting hotter every time we looked at it. So Melanie gradually came round to being relieved that we were starting early when the forecast was for it to be cooler (but still pretty hot).

Luckily the forecast wasn't quite accurate, as it was cloudy until about 11.30 on Sunday, though it was very humid. Still that was better than being cooked by the sun. So after getting to Tarn Hows and up most of the hills and down to the south end of the Lake, the sun finally came out and it became very hot. We then climbed up to Beacon Tarn and the climb was longer than I remembered. But we made it back to the finish and about twenty five minutes faster than my time two years ago.

I have to say that the race organiser, Graham, excelled himself at the end. The finish at any Lakeland Trail event tends to go round a field or park before you go under the finish gantry. This time we were approaching the field containing the finish via the next door field which was a campsite. I was hoping that there would be a gate we would run through that would lead us directly into the finish. There wasn't, so we ran past the finish gantry (and slightly uphill !) and then finally turned into the finish field. Do we go directly to the finish gantry ? No, we run right round the finish field (and it's a big field !) until we get to the lakeside and then head towards the finish gantry. Do we turn in when we reach it ? No, of course not, we continue round the edge of the lake before finally turning into the finish. An amusing finish to a lovely scenic event, the terrain is tough to run on at times, but I would strongly recommend this race.

To cool down at the end, lots of runners including us, ended up in the Lake, that felt good.

Anita and Kathryn ran the half marathon and they started at 10, so they had a hot race !

Photos : https://photos.app.goo.gl/7Tt42Ap3GGpRZw8D8

Durham Dales Challenge 30m 2013

I did this race two years ago and found it hard. Five big hills and few smaller ones. It took me 8hrs 14min. However, the scenery was good, the food at the checkpoints was amazing and the meal at the end wasn't bad either. I do love the LDWA  Part of the reason I took that long was that I was running with a clubmate who was struggling and she retired after 10m. This time I was running with Melanie and she is the faster runner, so I knew I wouldn't be dawdling.

We both slept badly last night, the weather forecast was poor, varying between light and heavy rain with a little bit of sun. The wind was going to be strong and in our faces in the first half but behind us on the way back. We had also done the Hardmoors Rosedale marathon six days ago, so all in all the omens weren't good ...

Last year we did the 16m version and though the weather was poor in the first half, we enjoyed it. We decided early in the year that we would do the 30m route this year. I also told my clubmates how good it was and it was good to see quite a few there, most of them opting for the 16m route. It was good to have a chat with them and other faces we recognised.

Both of us were uncertain what to wear, but we both had to put waterproofs over long sleeved tops and Melanie wore gloves later.

We started slowly and climbed out of Wolsingham onto the moors and started towards Hamsterley Forest. No midges there this time (they were horrendous last time). All of this section was into a strong wind with some heavy rain squalls. We finally got off the moors and down to the lovely River Tees and headed towards Middleton-in-Teesdale. A change in the route led us to a new checkpoint which had an amazing display of food.

Then we started to climb the fourth big hill. To my surprise the route seemed not to be as hard as I remembered and we were making good progress especially on the tops when the terrain was runnable. The wind behind us was certainly helping.

At the last manned checkpoint they had quiche like last time  Then it was down into the valley and following the River Wear past caravan sites and farms and passing glorious meadows which looked amazing.

We came to the end and we were surprised to see our time 7hr 11min, a big improvement on two years ago Good meal at the end too  These events are amazing value for money