Lad's Leap...

And so the day came to pass: Saturday was Lad's Leap, my first English Championship fell race. As mentioned at length in previous posts, I didn't quite feel prepared, but thought I'd give it a bash anyway, to get some idea of how I'm running. 


Monday - 60 minutes of swimming. Don't remember this; think it must have been fine. 


Tuesday - parents' evening, so had to run at 5:30am to get a bit of a jog in. Just 45 minutes of steady jogging on Cockfield fell. For some reason Andy declined to join me. Nice morning, actually. It left me feeling overly hyperactive for the day ahead. And unable to form a sentence fully by about 3pm, which wasn't ideal on a parents' evening day. 


Wednesday - supposed to be swimming, but the sore throat/cold made something of a reappearance so I thought better of it given that I'd be racing at the weekend. 


Thursday - 50ish minutes of jogging in a rather mince-y manner round Hamsterley while everyone else did hill reps, taking it easy before the race. 


Friday - drove to Glossop to stay with Andy's parents. Ate lots of beef stew, mash, fruit and cake. I love a taper week and a pre-race meal.


Saturday - the race. 6.2 miles, 518m of ascent. 2 big climbs. 3rd at top of first hill, then a horrendous stretch through heather (really, I mean HORRENDOUS. It didn't suit me at all. Just deep heather and peat bogs, which is arduously energy sapping) and a vile descent, where I lost too much ground (in terms of the race: I didn't actually lose any ground). I need more terrain practice, and more descending practice. I have the speed on the ascent - although as always I think I can get faster - but I haven't done sufficient miles on rough terrain and in descent to be fully competitive overall. I simply haven't run enough: I need my running sessions to be more specifically focussed. Since January I feel like I've been fighting to keep 'basic' (in my sense of the word) fitness around work, dark nights and other weekend activities, running on average just 3 times a week, and not always of the right quality. Still, I was 9th overall and initially I'd said I'd be happy with top ten, so I can't be too disappointed. The thing that bothers me is having the fitness for the ascent and not enough of the rest at the moment. If I was 9th to the top of the first hill and 9th overall I don't think I'd be so bothered. 


Sunday - 60 minutes of easy running on a lovely spring morning from Glossop, up a hill, where there were some quite quirky sheep with, frankly, RIDICULOUS fringes and wool patterns (some white, which I believe is standard, some brown and white, and some black and white, like Friesian sheep), and then back again to cook lunch for Andy's mum. Beef florentine and Queen of Puddings. Mmmm. 


Monday - NO TRAINING due to parents' evening (giving a frightening number of days in 2012 where I've done no exercise, but I missed swimming and thought I might starve to death if I went straight after parents' evening at 8:30pm)


Tuesday - an hour on the North York Moors with some reps: 1 minute, 2 minute, 3 minute, 2 minute then 1 minute rep. Not particularly fast or long but I was at work until late-ish and my legs were still tired after Saturday, so it was better than nothing. 


Et voila. Now I know what I need to focus on I want to gear up better for Coledale in April, so I need to reconsider my training to optimise my race readiness in the next month. In the meantime Andy potentially has a BG to run at the end of March...