The Solent and Corsica

We have just returned from a month away, and what a fantastic time. Very little running, no biking but a few days sailing and heaps of climbing! We spent the first few days down at my aunt and uncle’s, being taught one end of a sailing yacht from another in Portsmouth Harbour. Mike (my uncle) and P hatched a plan at our wedding to do the Three Peaks Yacht Race this year, so we have a scratch ... errmmm (!) team of my uncle, Mike, my cousin, Steve, P, myself and a mate Rich. Rich and I are the runners, with P being the standby runner! It’s going to be interesting and fun. We had three days on the boat, and P and I spent a night on it on the mooring. It was great to catch up with my cousin too as it’s a long time since I’ve seen him!

P and I then headed south in the van, taking the overnight ferry from Portsmouth to Caen-Ouistreme, driving to the Ardeche in one effort. We then drove the rest of the way to Toulon and caught another overnight ferry to Ajaccio on Corscia. We met up with our mates Kevin and Alice in their van and then had a fantastic 20 days on the island, climbing nearly every day. Crags visited included Rocher de Gozzi, U Richiusu, Restonica Valley, Bavella Col, Capineru, and a few other smaller sites.

On the way back to Cumbria, we stopped off again in the south for another couple of days on the boat, and some more sailing practice. We probably amused a fair number of people by trialling our heath robinson oars out and a set of quite hilarious runs perfecting the use of the cruising shute!

Sunset in Portsmouth Harbour

Moonlight

Corsica

Nearly time for a HOLIDAY!

The last two weeks have disappeared with not a lot of exercise. P and I are just about to head off for a month, so there’s lots of things to get done before we go, work to finish and my back and foot have been niggly. Not wanting to jeopardise our holiday it’s been very important to try and rest these niggles and recover! So I’ve had a couple of climbing sessions on the woody and ridden to work and back on a couple of days and one short local run to see how the foot was. That to be fair has left me feeling pretty tired. I also had to face the fact that I wouldn’t get to the 4th or 5th WCOC race so wouldn’t be in with a shout of winning the series again this year. 

Too tired.... and injured!

On Saturday we’d decided to go for a reasonable fell run with our mate Tom, for his birthday treat. We picked the reverse of a route P and I had run a few weeks back, from High Moss, up Walna Scar, Dow Crag, Old Man, Great Carrs, Grey Friar and back down via Seathwaite Tarn. As soon as we set off, I realised that I was feeling very tired, and slowed the lads up a fair amount heading up Walna Scar. I am normally perfectly able to trot up this at a nice pace, but today it was all going horribly wrong. It took a lot of effort just to walk up it, but I was determined that it would all be OK! That was probably a mistake.

After reaching the top of Walna Scar, we trotted along the ridge to Dow Crag and round to the Old Man of Coniston. I usually love running along this ridge but today it felt hard. Also my foot started bothering me again, so I was running with a slight limp. By the time we were on the final descent off Grey Friar, Tom and P were being very patient with me and waiting as I lurched my way down the hillside. It can’t have been a pretty sight! When we got back to the hut, it was all I could do to not crash out, feeling exhausted.

On the Sunday, the weather was not great, and we were wondering how to occupy ourselves, and then my back started hurting. Thinking about it, I was running so oddly due to my foot and as I was so tired, it’s no surprise that I’ve tweaked something! So P headed to the coast with some mates bouldering at St Bees, and I relaxed at home with a heat pad on my back!

Wallabarrow

Having spotted the end of the good weather, P and I took Friday off and headed over to the Duddon, where we were spending the weekend for a friend’s birthday, for our traditional early year visit to Wallabarrow crag. Despite having climbed almost every route there, many of them many times, I do love this crag. It was a sunny, warm day and we had a great time ticking off our old favourites. This was followed up by food and beer in the Newfield, and a good evening catching up.

Crag Fell Crawl

The third of the six race series from WCOC went from the car park on the southern side of Ennerdale Lake, up though the woods, to Grike summit, along the tops to Crag Fell and then back down to the car park. It was a lovely evening and as usual I set off fast and then suffered on the final stages of the main climb. I was leading Charlotte Watson until about ¾ of the way up, she then came past me and pulled ahead. I managed to reel her in to only a few metres as we crossed between the summits, and thought I’d finally passed her on the descent off Crag Fell, as we took very different lines, and we crossed the stile literally one after the other. However, the final part of the descent her orienteering skills on rough ground meant she pulled away again over the rough ground and I came home a few seconds behind her. I was frustrated to not get the better of her, but I wasn’t concentrating hard enough on the descent.

Worryingly as I tried to warm down, my old left foot injury was bothering me. It was really sore so I had a quick stretch and no run out, changed and headed home. 

3 times in 10 days

With P recovered from his dislocated knee, he was back into running training and fancied a trot up Middle Fell after work in the lovely spring sunshine. It was the third time in 10 days for me, each ascent being different. The first was a give it everything and see how far I could get running, the second was a race, and last night was a more interval affair, with P making me work hard with efforts both up and down. My quads were exhausted by the end!

Middle Fell Race 2011

Saturday was the Middle Fell race from Nether Wasdale. I’d recced it the weekend before so there were no surprises but it was much drier underfoot than last weekend. It was also a 'nearly' warm spring day with lovely sunshine. It isn’t a big race, and although a similar number of people turned up this year to last it seemed as though there where a lot of usual suspects missing. When we toed the line, no one seemed to want to be at the front!!

Even more telling was the fact that I was 8^th person to the fell, and although I dropped 5 places on the climb, I managed to make up 3 of them on the run in back across the valley to come 10^th overall and 1^st Lady. Even better was the fact that I’d knocked over 3 minutes off my time from last year.