FRA Relays

This weekend was the FRA Relays being hosted by my club CFR this year. I had been well out of the organisation as I'd been penciled in to run in the Ladies A team way back when. Last Saturday after the Wasdale BOFRA race, I'd been asked to move from the nav leg to leg 2 (the longest leg) and despite warning my fitness wasn't up to much, my result at Kirkfell didn't help my position.

Last Monday I dashed out after work to recce leg 2, on a lovely evening, and really enjoyed the leg. It was tough and has some interesting route choices on it, and was obviously going to be interesting if the clag was down.

I was on the bike to work and back on Tuesday and on Wednesday evening went up to Brackenclose in Wasdale to go up the Pike. Set off with the clag down at ~200m, and pushed reasonably hard to the summit. I wanted to get under an hour to the top from the road, via Hollowstones and Lingmell Col, and made it in 56 minutes. I even sped up at the top, when I realised that the summit, and those of Scafell, Broad Crag, Ill Crag and Great End were all poking out of the cloud!

The light wasn't great but I took some photos anyway. I then took it steady on the downhill, weary of slipping over, with the relays in a few days time.

Thursday evening had a session at Cockermouth Wall, I'd forgotten how much that stone wall hurts my forearms - good training though!!

Saturday P and I headed over to Carrock Fell in the gorgeous sunshine to go bouldering. We had a great day, and I had very little skin left on my fingers afterwards. I worked quite hard on Canada Dry a hard V3 on the Canada Boulder and made quite a bit of progress. When we first got there I couldn't get on at all, but by the end was getting to the higher crimps. That's where all my skin is!

Sunday was the FRA relays at Kirkland and all hopes of the good weather continuing went out the window when I opened the curtains in the morning. It was a great day out, I think the clag made every leg much more interesting and I hope everyone enjoyed themselves. Our leg didn't go without incident, as we went too high towards the first checkpoint, but from then on we were spot on and over hauled at least 10 teams out on the course and made over 50 places on the leg. I did have the legs run off me by my parnter, but I enjoyed every minute!

Our team finished in 7th position in the ladies category which I think we were all really happy with.

My legs weren't given the rest they wanted as I then manned the finishing funnel for a few hours. It was great to see the runners finish, not a sight you get to see very often when you race yourself!