Training Log Archive: fluceluce

Today was a rest day - but then it was just too beautiful a day to waste! So got out the road bike and went for a gentle ride with Zanthe. Home, ringinglow, fox house, back via fulwood - really nice ride :-) Legs were ok until the climb to fox house where I started feeling it a bit but well worth it!

Wuthering Hike - en route home from Lottie and Craigs wedding, stopped off in Leeds at Shelfs and headed to Haworth for the Wuthering hike race - my first ultra that didn't involve a team!

'32' miles taking in Haworth Moor, Wadsworth Moor, Black Moor and Worsthorne Moor before hitting the long causeway then descending via a traverse to Todmorden.
This section was pleasently misleading as it was exceedingly easy to keep the pace below 10min/miles - false hope for a time 30mins faster than my target as next came the climb up to Stoodley Pike (via stop for a donut at mankinholes half way up) then straight back down again to Hebdon Bridge, where I had failed to read the map (as in my head once I got to Stoodley Pike it would all be ok).....missed the small matter of the nasty climb to Heptonsall - you then lost all this height again to cross the valley before heading up Crimsworth Dean,a looong yet 'should be runnable' climb, then back over the other side of Wadsworth Moor, across Haworth Moor and home!

I set off and the pace of some of the women was ridiculous, so I let them fly off and soon had a few back in my sight. Karen Nash and a DPFR woman overtook on the first moor crossing, however I was back ahead after the first descent! Then Karen upped the pace to one I was not going to try and keep, she suddenly closed the 150/200m gap to Helen (who I did HPM with last week) and they remain the same distance ahead for the next few miles. After 10 miles it all got a bit twisty so I couldn't see them anymore. I assumed they were racing each other and were miles ahead after that.
It was going very well for the first 15miles, then for some reason there was suddenly a flow of people coming past and I couldn't keep with them....I'm not sure if this was a bad spot or if people suddenly sped up at the thought of the descent to Todmorden. Either way I lost a lot of ground to people between miles 17 and 23. By this point we were about to climb up Crimsworth Dean and I couldn't face the thought of how long it would take to walk up it, so that left only one option! I trotted up steadily, however this seemed to be faster than a lot of people and by the top of Wadsworth Moor I had caught absolutely everyone who had overtaken me from mile 15 onwards. At the top of the moor I looked back over my shoulder - Stoodley Pike looked a VERY long way away!

At this point I got to fold my map over for the final time, the distance looked so short to the finish! I found I could get back up to the pace I had been running at at the start (although slightly slower up the final climb) and left the final two women who had overtaken me at 15-17miles well behind. I kept pushing to the end and just as we were coming back into Haworth I caught sight of Helen! They hadn't left me for dead after all :-) Helen finished a few seconds ahead of me and Karen ~ 5mins.

I finished in 5hrs36, 6mins slower than my aim of 5hrs30 but was happy with how it went as I had enough left on the last couple of climbs to catch people. I think I finished 10th...in the first major group of female finishers - the first woman was well ahead in 4hrs 48, then a couple at 5hrs08, then the rest from about 5hrs25 onwards...

Here ends my 8 day ultra distance running career - well for now anyway :-)

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/72736354

Run from sportsman with DPFR to start, then just me and zanthe as we cut down riverdale road and back up tom lane.

Just about right for tonight. Legs still don't feel very bad, the occasional niggle but in general ok :-)

:-)