Montane Lakeland 50 2013 - getting to the start

Way back in September we entered the Lakeland 50; a 50 mile jog in the English Lake District from Dalemain near Ullswater to Coniston. It is open to runners and walkers, with the winner coming in somewhere around 8 hours and the last competitors completing the event just within the 24 hour cut-off. This generous cut-off time, and the fact that it is run in conjunction with the Lakeland 100 (almost a complete loop around the Lake District, 100 miles long) make it seem less daunting than it really is.

It is only 50 miles (only 50 when compared to the 100), and only 3100m of ascent, and back in September it seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to consider entering. And besides, it was filling up fast, so if we wanted to do it, we had to commit. So we entered, and then had 10 months to worry about it, and even do a wee bit of training.

Training didn't really go well. My partner in all things, A, had been injured since the Swaledale marathon in early June, and was just beginning to run again. After a horrible experience in the heat at the Windermere marathon, and then an enjoyable Swaledale marathon, I had pretty much abandoned running. Without A's encouragement, and the bike and wetsuit competing for my attention I had done as little running as the injured A.

Still, we had 10 months, so that was OK.

Then it was the new year and only 6 months to go, but the winter seemed to have almost run it's course in a fairly benign way for once, so we would start serious training in the spring. Then of course the snow came, later and heavier than I can remember it, and by the time of a slightly shortened (25 miles) and rerouted Allendale Challenge (on April 6th) we still hadn't really started any serious training. In June we ran the Swaledale Marathon (23 miles) reasonably comfortably on a warm day, and completed an official recce of the Lakeland 50 route from Pooley Bridge to Ambleside on a wet and windy day.

Then we had a heat wave, a couple of long hard walk / run days in the Lake District, a reasonable amount of cycling (including a 100Km sportive on the tandem), and an unofficial recce of the remaining part of the Lakeland 50 route from Ambleside to Coniston. This final recce was less successful than the earlier recce. With the combination of the logistics of bus travel to the start from Coniston and the car journey from home, we finally started this at midday on one of the hottest days of the year. While it was beautiful, it was also very, very hot, and we struggled. The result was that although we got to see the route, our confidence was seriously dinted.

We did do a bit more training than that, but I think we only managed one month between September and June with more than 100 miles in the month. Definitely lower volume than we had intended; and the longest run was barely 30 (very hilly) miles.

When the Lakeland 50 finally came around, we set off in the car to Coniston with a sense of trepidation bordering on dread. But at least the weather forecast looked OK...

Banana flapjack, golden plover & chicken pie

Banana flapjack

Snow was forecast to fall overnight again, but there was barely an inch this morning. Rain first thing, followed by sunshine meant that what little snow there had been was mostly gone by 10:30.
In the meantime I took the opportunity to chuck together some flapjacks to eat while out running later that morning. The basic recipe was deliberately less buttery than a typical flapjack to make it easier to eat when running. I turned out to be short of oats so had to eke out the posh big organic oats with some dusty looking oats from a mystery bag tucked away in a corner of the cupboard and of uncertain vintage. They smelled OK, so in they went. Still not quite enough oats, so a handful of rye flakes to make up the oats to 8oz.

I added half a banana to stop the flapjacks being too hard or too chewy, again to make them easier to eat when running, especially on a cold day. The banana makes the flapjack a bit cakey and probably not quite as flapjacky as I might like, and more banana flavoured than a flapjack should ideally be, but today I was more interested in eatability and digestibility, so the banana had to go in.

Recipe

8oz oats, crushed a little by hand if very coarse (to make a denser flapjack)
3oz butter
1.5oz sugar
3tbs golden syrup
1/2 a banana

Melt butter with sugar and syrup, but don't overcook. Mix in oats and mashed banana. Press into baking tray and bake for about 25 minutes at 180C, until golden.

Golden Plover

We ran up the riverside path to Allendale and then up towards the moor. There were large numbers of lapwing and curlew calling in the rough fields below the moorland edge. The weather was surprisingly good; the sun was shining, the sky was blue and the valley seemed to be sheltered from the wind making it fell almost warm.

Once on the moor proper there seemed to be golden plover calling from all directions, but no visible sign of them. Red grouse, by contrast, whirred about, noisily proclaiming their presence.

There was almost no snow on the ground here, and the rapid thaw had produced streams of water. The ground was wet, but strangely seemed to be too wet to be properly muddy. The tops across the valley were still covered in snow; probably simply down to the greater altitude.

We did about 6 miles across the moor, mostly on good tracks, plus a couple of miles at each end to get to and from home, making a fairly easy 10 miles or so. And one stop to sample the banana flapjack, which wasn't bad at all...

Chicken pie

Home to chicken pie for a late lunch, and chicken soup to make for supper from the bones of the chicken.

 

The weather - part 2

After the fog and wind on Friday, the weather forecasters were now promising snow and ice for Saturday. So we did the sensible thing and stayed in the house eating home made croissants.

The snow didn't come, so we ignored Sunday's forecast (more snow and ice) and planned a long(ish) run, mostly off the road.

 

When I got up on Sunday morning there was no snow. Then it started snowing, and an hour later there was about an inch . And then it stopped. So we ate breakfast (more croissants!), digested for a bit, then got ready to run.

 

We left the house, a covering of fresh snow on the ground, but the sun shining from a blue sky. By the time we got to the edge of the moor it was much greyer, and a strong, bitterly cold wind was blowing. The path was covered in two or three inches of frozen snow, topped with occasional deeper drifts of light dry snow, sculpted into delicate waves by the wind. Then it started to snow again, and the wind was blowing it horizontally. Who would have guessed that the snow would only start falling heavily once we were on the most exposed bit of ground on the entire route? Well, I for one would have put money on this happening...

 

We carried on past the chimneys, the drifted snow was deeper over the next part of the track, and finding areas of shallow or frozen snow to run on was difficult. Occasionally, our feet went through the snow and the ice below into deep muddy pools of icy water; sharp on your ankles as you go through the ice and surprising (to say the least) when your shoe fills up with cold water. Still, it gave us something else to think about.

 

We got to the road on the other side of the moor and headed down to the next track. Once we had removed the ice from the baler twine securing the gate, the track down, although covered in a few inches of frozen snow, made for good running. And so long as we kept moving we were warm enough.

 

Back on the road at the bottom of the track, a banana eaten, and then a run down the steep road and then up to Ninebanks. Still on the road, we were looking for a footpath we didn't really know, to take us back to the Carrshield to Allendale road. It was signposted through a farm yard, then the signs disappeared. We set out in what seemed like the right direction, but it quickly became clear we were off the path. We carried on regardless, climbing steeply through deep frozen snow and tussocky sedge. After scrambling over one gate we reached a second (padlocked) gate onto the road. Oh well, we got where we wanted to be (about 500m below the finger post for the path we had been looking for), and it is all access land, so no harm done.

 

The road was covered in ice, and the wind was blowing hard, cold in itself but carrying fine blown ice. Wrapping buffs around the bits of our faces that were the only remaining exposed skin we headed back up the road. Again the snow at the side of the road had been sculpted into waves and peaks; quite lovely but the wind that was creating these effects was a bit unpleasant.

 

Astonishingly we then saw a bicycle coming down the road. With skinny tyres and drop bars... and staying upright on the ice, despite the wind. I was quite impressed.

 

We got back to the track across the moor past the chimneys, and now the wind was blowing hard, creating a blizzard of blown snow (it wasn't snowing) about 6 feet high, making navigation difficult, and making forward progress difficult. We pushed on, past the chimneys, where the snow on the track was less deep, and then finally back to the road.

 

Going down the hill the conditions quickly became benign once more, making it hard to believe how severe they had been just a short time before.

 

Only a total of 14 miles, but definitely a small adventure.

 

Oh, and the Inov8 TrailRoc 255s mentioned here got their second outing, and were great in the snow. 

 

 

The weather - part 1

I know it is a terrible cliche, but I am English and the English do like to talk about the weather. Perhaps not quite as much as they once did, but the weather is still at least the second most popular subject for aimless small talk among strangers.

The reason that the weather is the subject of endless speculation in England is probably explained by its entirely unpredictable nature. Other countries are colder, have more snow, are warmer or have more rain, but it is usually predictable. In England it is sometimes a bit cold, or snows a little, or rains, or even (but very rarely) it is quite warm. Often it is all of these things in a single day (usually in August); but it is never predictable.

So, in case you haven't already guessed, this was my half-hearted attempt at an introduction to a distinctly weather-themed post. Sorry.

Last Friday I managed to sneak out at lunch time for a quick ride on the Bianchi. It didn't seem too  bad when I left the house; cold and a bit windy, but not bad. But I wasn't starting from the house, because I only had a couple of hours and I wanted to ride on a road I hadn't been on before. So I had engineered a lift to a suitable starting point that gave me a route of just under 30 miles back to the house.

We went up over the moor at Plenmeller and it was foggy. And I hadn't brought a light for the bike (I don't really own a light for the Bianchi, but that isn't really the point). Or a hi-vis vest thing (and I do own one of these). So I just assumed it would clear by the time we got to where I planned to start.

When we got to place where I planned to start cycling I decided that the fog was bound to clear once I had gone a mile or two. When I got out of the car I noticed how cold and windy it was; this surprised me as I assumed "foggy" meant "still", because shouldn't the wind just blow the fog away? But it was hard to deny that it was very windy, quite cold and foggy. So, obviously I set off anyway.

I went up the hill, and then down past Eals to the Alston to Brampton road, and at last the fog cleared a bit. This road seems quite flat in the car, but is actually "rolling", and it seemed impossible to find the right gear, or to get into a rhythm. I was quite glad to get to Alston, but the turn onto the cobbled and steep main street was hamperd by two cars attempting U turns (or something). I thought the first was parking, so went to go past it, and it pulled out to drive up the hill. I had to unclip as I thought I might need to stop, and what with the new pedals and cleats, couldn't clip back in. I came to a halt, tried to set off again, failed to get momentum and clip in, and had no choice but to walk up the polished cobbles in my ludicrously slippery new cleats.

I was then forced to buy a hot cross bun from the Moody Baker to make amends for this inglorious performance. I ate it while trying to look less of a prat than I was feeling, and it was good.

At the top of the hill I got back on the bike without incident and headed towards Nenthead. I have never cycled up this road, but the section beyond Nenthead is always populated with walking C2Cers in the summer. These people usually have nobbly shod MTBs, which on the one hand might mean they will have lots of low gears, and if they have to walk then I will definitely be wearing down the rest of my new cleats. On the other hand it might mean that they don't really know what they are doing.

Surprisingly I rolled through Nenthead and up the other side quite easily, then turned off towards Allendale via Carrshield, and into the fog. This time it wasn't clearing, and I was probably completely invisible. But I just had to keep going, despite the lack of visibility from the fog and my misted glasses, and the wind, now blowing hard.

I managed to get home in one piece, mostly this was luck; there weren't many cars about. Descending was genuinely scary, I couldn't really see, but I know the road was full of potholes, and it is steep, and bendy. So I went very slowly, and in the end it was fine. I might not choose that route again in the mist, though...