Events for this Year

As you may know if you follow this blog I'm not a massive race junky. I generally just like to run but it's good to enter the odd event as an excuse to run somewhere new or interesting. Last year for example I only did three events, the Ridgeway Run, the 3 Peaks Race and the OMM (Day 1 and day 2). However, this year I've already entered 2 (Grindleford Gallop (21 miles) and the 3 Peaks (24 miles, again)) and am eyeing up at least a couple more already, the Swiss Alpine K78 Ultramarathon (50 miles) in July and the Ridgeway Challenge (85 miles)in August.

I might get in a few others (Saunders LMM, OMM, etc) and maybe the Zermatt Marathon as well. That should keep me busy.

Bloody Pressure

If I was the "my cup's half empty" type instead of the "my cup's half full" type I could have a real good whinge about my lot. In addition to my dead kidney, urethral stricture (you don't want to know how I deal with that), bradycardia and high cholesterol it appears that I now suffer from hypertension (high blood pressure) which is, amongst other things, not good for kidneys. This is despite having an extremely healthy diet and doing lots of running. If I'd left it up the doctors I'd be on cholesterol and pressure lowering drugs, have a heart pacemaker fitted and would have opted to have my dead kidney removed.

I know that there are people out there who are far worse of than me. That's one reason I run (because I still can and for those that can't), but with this new condition I'm getting less and less tolerant of people who abuse their health. I lost both my father and brother (aged 47 and 42 respectively) to diseases that were not of their own making so I get really wound up (I know, not good for my blood pressure) when I see people abuse their bodies with cigarettes, crap food and a sedentary lifestyle. The morbidly obese guy I saw last week being given the kiss of life on platform 13 at Manchester Piccadilly station will no doubt agree with me.


So, I've got myself a blood pressure monitor (Omron M6 Comfort)and am monitoring it twice a day for a month before taking the results back to the doc. I've done it for over two weeks now and the results are looking very interesting. It appears that running has a significant and almost immediate effect. After a couple of runs my pressure comes down out of the danger zone (For example it dropped from 156/103 to 124/83) and stays there until I have a rest day during which it shoots up again. So, that means that I have to run every day for the rest of my life if I want to stay off the drugs. Ron Hill must have known this all along (as he's run every day since December 1964!).

I'm getting some weird results in terms of the correlation of heart rate to blood pressure. All the texts say that if heart rate rises than so does blood pressure, but not mine. My very low pulse (35 in the mornings) may have something to do with it but I can't find anything that throws any light on this. Instead of the heart rate and pressure graphs following each other, mine are a mirror image of each other. The higher the heart rate (resting) the lower my blood pressure. As my wife says, I'm not normal.

Anyway, I now have another reason (aka excuse) to run. Can't complain about that can I?

What did you do today?

Healing Heels

Not one for the squeamish. The day after getting back from Wales (see previous posts) I had to go over to Liverpool to view a flat my daughter Vicky was looking at for her new job. This meant me wandering around for a few hours after work. On the train back to Manchester my heels were teeth gittingly painful. I had to wait ages for a train in Manchester and was dying to take off my shoes to releive the pain but daren't as I knew I'd not get them back on again. By the time I got back to my room in Whaley Bridge it was nearly midnight and my heels were swollen. I could hardly walk and was nearly in tears. Back in the B&B I performed minor surgery on my heels cutting away the loose and dead skin. This was the result:




Needless to say I couldn't get my shoes on the next day.

As for the black toenails, they came off a couple of days later.

OMM 2009 - Class B - Day 2

The pain in my knee didn't prevent me dropping straight back off to sleep. The 6 o'clock alarm woke us up just before the megaphone man wandered round the field announcing start times. The pain didn't make a reappearance so, not wanting to tempt fate, I didn't mention it. As it turned out I had no knee problems all day, unlike the day before.

The new sleeping bag was fine in the night but it probably didn't drop below 5 deg C. I'm not sure it would be comfortable at 0 deg which is what it's rated at but down filling apparently reacts to temperature drops and fluffs up. I'll have ot wait and see.

Breakfast consisted of Expedition Food's porridge and strawberries. It was a bit on the sweet side but very filling. The rain had stopped and the sky was clear but there was a bitter wind blowing. We were ejected from sheltering in the barn while killing time before the start. So we wandered up to the start ten minutes before our time.



The first control was straight up onto the top and along a shoulder heading south. As with the day before route choice was very limited. A mixture of grass, bogs and tussocks took us over an undulating route, west of Drygarn Fawr, to controls 2 and 3.



Things started to go awry at control 4. The woods we thought we were heading for were actually hidden out of sight behind a hill, so we overshot. The fence was a clue but we thought maybe they hadn't put it on the map. Note to self: "Trust the sodding map!!!". Ten minute later we're back on track. At this point I can feel my right heel starting to blister. It was bearable so I kept going. It was at this point that we came across the first of the many dead sheep that we found. There's often one or two sheep remains on a run but we must have come across a dozen by the end of the day. I later heard that one competitor fell into a decomposing sheep carcase.

From there on in the blister was joined by another on my left heel. We had to stop at control 7 to patch up my heels. The compeeds lasted about 5 minutes before coming off. It was a case of grin and bear it from then on. We picked off control 8 then headed across to 9 and on approaching it the tightly packed contours on the map manifested into the world dropping away under our feet. Control 9 was a little dot down at the bottom of one of those slopes you wouldn't attempt without some nice spikey soles. Dave dashed off down while I gingerly eased my way down. We climbed back up at a tangent rather than go straight back up.



Back up on the top we picked off control 10, found 11 in its 'stoney renetrant' and picked up the zig zag path down to 12. Then it was down into the Elan Valley and a flat run of about a mile to the finish line.

A short walk to Elan Village later we found ourselves in a queue for the bus back to the event centre. There was a soup tent serving delicious soup so we indulged in a couple of cupfuls while waiting. What we couldn't see was the queue winding itself down the road.





An hour later we reached the front of the queue. The weather was on our side but had it been cold and wet I reckon there'd have been a few cases of hypothermia. The warmth of the bus was very welcome.

Back at the event centre I had my first ever shower at an OMM. They were lovely and hot if a little grimy after several hundred other competitiors had used them. My feet were in a state. I'd ripped the skin off both heels and had two black toenails.

Our overnight 38th place had dropped to 63rd after our day 2 glitches. All things considered though not a bad weekend's work.

Post script: Dave went on to win the Bingley Harriers' 2009 club championship which shows that he was on a roll this year.

2009 OMM LIMP PICS

Official piccies from the end of Day 2.





Not sure why I'm smiling, I've got no skin on my heels and two of my toenails are about to drop off. Those endorphines work wonders.

OMM 2009 - Class B - Day 1

I'll say one thing for the OMM/KIMM. You get to see places you wouldn't normally visit. It's just that now and again there's a reason you wouldn't normally go there. Take the 2001 KIMM for example up in Clydes MuirSheil Regional Park, Scotland. A trackless wasteland of bogs and tussocks. Being so close to Glasgow et al you'd expect a few paths but no. Who'd want to trudge through that when there's the Highlands within reach. Expectations for this weekend were pretty much based on that experience and to a certain degree I was pleasantly surprised that some (around half) of the course was fairly pleasant runnable terrain with the odd non-OMM created track here and there. However, the other half of the course however made up for that in shedloads. Miles and miles of gloopy shoe sucking wobbly featureless plateau. The anticipated tussocks were no match for Muirsheil's ministry of silly walks monsters but they were just as lethal in their own ankle snapping way. Taking your eye off the path immediately ahead resulted in a twisted ankle or a dip in a particularly deep trough of black sticky goo.

One of those weird coincidences happened at the event centre. While waiting in the queue for the gents I saw Rick Ansell from Tring (where I live). He's unmistakable in the fell running circuit as he has a large ginger afro hairdo. I asked him how many Tring runners were taking part then he asked me which club I was in. I explained that I lived in Tring but had actually recently joined the Goyt Valley Striders as I'm working up there (160 miles from Tring). Blow me if he didn't then introduce his partner Mark Richards who's in the Goyt Valley Striders. How weird is that?

So, back to the event where a fun time was had by all (except those who had their tents knicked from the Friday night campsite). Thanks to last year's media bollocks, this year saw a few changes. The event centre was in the Welsh national showground with proper buildings and everything instead of in a barn. This resulted in us having to be bussed to the start. A half hour trip to the Elan Valley. Everyone assumed that we'd be taken to the Elan Village but instead we were unceremoniously dumped in a layby and had to walk half a mile or so up a hill to the start gates.



Dave and I had very late start time of 11:23 (or 11:33 as Dave thought). As luck would have it we checked our time at exactly the time we were due through the gates. We seem to make a habit of that.



One advantage of a late start was the clearing up of the low cloud that hindered the early starters. Visibility was good for the whole weekend. Dave did all the navigation this time apart from a couple of incidents when his spatial awareness wires got crossed. I didn't even get my compass out the whole weekend. To be honest being so late the routes were well trodden leaving navigation choices, with one or two exceptions, simply a matter of choosing which OMM-path to take when we came to a split.

Equipmentwise, I was back to my old KIMM SAC after snapping the waist belt on my Salomon rucksac during last year's OMM. I wore my GORE shorts and a HH top and, for the first and last bits, my green Salomon goretex jacket. On my feet I wore my Hilly mono socks on day 1 with my Inov-8 Mudclaw 3-something or others. For the overnight camp we had my good old North Face Westwind tent and I was carrying my new PHD Minim 300 sleeping bag and Minimus down jacket. As I've mentioned before in this blog the shoes have a grip to die for but they don't really suit my feet. By tying the lace really tight I can eliminate the heel lift but they don't give my heels the support they need. My over pronation caused the left side of the left shoe to dig into my foot just below the ankle bone. Fortunately I'd brought some long lengths of plaster that protected that. Our bags came in at 21 lbs this year. Far too heavy but it's difficult to know what to cut down on without making the long overnight camp a miserable experience.

So, the course went from the start up and along a ridge before dropping across a shallow valley and over the other side to control 1 conveniently placed on a bridle track.



Then it was along the track, over a road, more track then off the edge down to the side of one of the reservoirs to control 2. Another easy find.


The direct line to control three was straight across the reservoir but unlike a ladies team in a previous LAMM who swam across a lake rather than run round it we opted for the dry (well drier) route. North along the side of the reservoir, over a road bridge, up the road for half a mile then onto yet another track.


We followed this to the top then dropped off to the right into a re-entrant and control 3. Down the side of a valley heading north, past an out of bounds farm and up over the other side of the valley to control 4. As usual Dave was the stronger ascender and he left me on this climb and had found the control before I found him again. A slight bending of the 'must stick together' rule there. More track, getting a bit boggier (is that a word?), took us along a ridge to control 5. Apart from a few of the steeper uphill sections we had managed to run a large part of the course and felt we were making good time. Next was the monster leg, 9k of relentless undulating soggy plateau. Moving across this terrain is drudgery of the highest order. Relying almost entirely on my aerobic ability for my running this slow sapping strength work is not my cup of tea. Especially as my largely dormant bad knee was making its presence felt. I couldn't apply much pressure on it and ended up up developing a sort of peg leg running style where I'd simply pivot on my left leg rather than push with it.

Run a bit, walk through the swamps, run a bit, up the side of a valley head, run a bit, more swamp, more swamp, run a bit and so on. On this section we passed Adrian (see 3 Peaks) and his partner Martin doing the C class course. Looking at their results it seems that they packed at around that point as they missed all of the remaining controls.

Eventually it was round a knoll and control 6 was dibbed. I bonked at this point and had to have a gel, a fruit bar and some malt loaf to bring me round again. Finally it was over the last ridge then down into the valley for the last control of the day (before the finish one)and onto the campsite.

Our fears of finishing in the dark (for which I'd forked out a vast amount of dosh on a decent headtorch) were unfounded as we finished with an hour's daylight left, as were our fears of not finding a (relatively) decent spot for our tent. The campfield was enormous with loads of room. The ground was a bit waterlogged but by previous standards it was pretty good (apart from the fact that my trusty Westwind seems to have a weepy groundsheet). We were trying out some new freeze dried foods this year from Expedition Foods. These just need boiling water to be added and don't require boiling for ages. We ended up with loads of spare gas and the foods were pretty good. We'll be using them again I reckon.



Checking the results board on Saturday night we found we were 38th in the B class (out of some 400 teams I think). Not a bad days work. Slept like a log for 10 hours apart from waking up to turn over and having a horrible pain in my left knee. It felt as if it had seized up and I had images of telling Dave that we had to retire in the morning.

Ridgeway No Way

Pictures borrowed from the excellent 'TheRacePhotographer'.

Just as I thought I was making a breakthrough I come down to earth with a bump. Expecting to knock a few minutes off my Ridgeway Run time on Sunday I went and added 3 minutes to it instead. I just had no strength on the hills and stopped on two of them (at the bottom of the first one to be honest), used both drink stations as an excuse to stop and even went behind bush for a pee as an excuse. I was so close to packing in trying and just jogging back. Felt a bit better in the second half and even pulled a dozen places back but it was too late by then. Ironically I had no problem with the knee or the calf muscles or anything else for that matter. I just felt crap.

Official image in the post.

The stats are 9.6 miles hilly off-roader, 1h 15m, 95th out of 473 finishers. (See course here) Still upper quartile but not an enjoyable run. Only just beginning to feel normal over two days later. Having a rest this week. I might go out on Thursday night.

Not sure what the explanation is other than I might have overdone it last week with four hard runs over four nights. I felt sluggish on Thursday night (having felt great up to then (see previous post)) but I thought it was because I was with the fast lads in the GV Striders. Also need to look at my diet as I'm living on Marks and Spencer's sandwiches and pasta dishes during the week living away from home as I am.



The weather was fine. Looked like it would stay cloudy with a cool breeze so I togged up in black only to have the sun come out as soon as I walked out of the door. Where's a nice green and white vest when you need one? One runner was togged up in long tights, long sleeved top, hat and scarf (he's at the back of the middle picture). I'd have died wearing that lot. I ran the mile or so to the start and felt ok. The late start (11:00) wouldn't have helped either.

Finisher's tea-shirts were OK this year. Black with and orange design on the front.

I guess I'll have to put that one down to experience. Got the OMM in a couple of weeks.

Changing Shape

Something weird is happening. Followers of this blog will know that I hold more store in losing a bit of weight rather than getting fitter as a better way of increasing speed and stamina (think bags of sugar). So I'm trying to keep under 2500 calories a day while also running most nights. The result seems to be that my waist is reducing as I've gone down two notches on my belt (no it isn't stretching) recently but haven't lost an ounce (so far).

I'm thinking that perhaps I'm putting on leg muscle with all this hill running. I've noticed a change in my running this week too. I seem to be able to handle the hills a lot better (although I still struggle with the faster boys in the GVS). I feel a lot lighter on my feet. I'll be interested to see what the weight is doing when I get home this weekend.



Doing the Ridgeway Run again this Sunday (See 2008). Suspect I'll be the only GVS runner in that one.

The Lure of the Green and White Vests

Having just had my contract extended another three months and regularly going on the GVS training runs I felt obliged to join. I wouldn't mind but I don't like green and white kit. The last time I was a member of a running club was back in the 90's when we still lived in York and I joined Wigginton AC. Their colours were green and white: dark green shoulders, light green chest band, white bottom half. The Goyt Valley Striders is the same except there's no dark green bit. I could have joined Bingley or Tring with their nice blue and white vests but I seem to end up in Green and White. C'est la vie. Regardless of their colours they're a good mixed bunch. I enjoy my evenings out with them.

(Picture borrowed from www.goytvalleystriders.org.uk)

Just as an aside, when we lived in York we were about three miles from both Wigginton and Long Marston (site of the battle of Marston Moor). We then moved 200 miles down to Tring and now live a couple of miles from Wigginton and Long Marston. How weird is that?

Hot and Sweaty (and that was just the barn dance!)

Having been tempted to run the High Peak 40 by my new friends in the Goyt Valley Striders I was reliably informed by my lovely wife Rosie that I had a prior commitment to attend the birthday barn dance of our friend Sue 150 miles away at home. So, as a compromise I decided to have a go at running the eastern half of the Ridgeway National Trail which starts a couple of miles from our house. I planned to run from Ivinghoe Beacon to South Stoke near Goring, a distance of around 42 miles.

The furthest I'd run before in one go was 28 miles while training for the Jungfrau (although I have cycled 240 miles in a day a few times but that's another story). Having jogged round the Bath half marathon with my daughter Lucy and not even breaking into a sweat I reckoned that at the right pace and with the right hydration and nutrition it should be possible to run a very long way without too much effort or damage. That was the theory. I was also conscious that I had to be careful to keep my one remaining functioning kidney safe from dehydrating.

My plan is below showing the stopping points where I would refuel (apologies for the format):

Time per leg - Place - Distance - Longitude - Latitude
n/a - Ivinghoe Beacon - 0 - N51.841717 - W0.6047630
1h 40m - Wendover (Hale Rd - Church Ln) - 10 miles - N51.756136 - W0.7350920
1h - Whiteleaf Cross (Car Park) - 16 miles - N51.724976 - W0.8093060
1h - Chinnor Hill - 22 miles - N51.695834 - W0.9012360
50m - Watlington, B480 - 28 miles - N51.633627 - W0.9992090
50m - 'The Crown', Gangsdown Hill (A4130) - 33 miles - N51.584183 - W1.0267440
35m - Mongewell A4074 (old road/layby) - 37 miles - N51.585102 - W1.1109520
45m - Perch and Pike Pub, South Stoke - 40.5 miles - N51.546950 - W1.1371820

My intention to start at 7:00 a.m. didn't go down to well with my support crew (Rosie and daughter Vicky) so I changed that to 7:30. This was still a tad ambitious as, working away from home during the week and not getting back until Friday evening, I had to prepare in the late evening (not helped by going to watch District 9 at the cinema that evening) and first thing in the morning. I eventually started at 9:40. Better late than never.

The weather was overcast but warm to start. I took our dog Pheobe on the first leg (10 miles to Wendover). I tried to keep the pace down but occassionally found myself running at normal pace. Conscious that dogs can overheat I took a couple of small detours to let Phoebe dunk herslef in cattle troughs. She loves to go running and spends the first hour dashing around sniffing at everything but then get a little bored and trots alongside. The run to Wendover was nice and steady. I was worried about a field full of cows that the Ridgeway runs through the middle of but they were all lying down in a corner. Rosie was there to meet me at the agreed place near Wendover church. I topped up my camelback with another litre of water and threw in a couple of Nuun isotonic tablets (cola flavoured), drank a bottle of Lucasade isotonic, ate a muller rice and had a sip of miso boullion (a tip picked up fromthe Jungfrau, to replace the salt lost in sweating). Rosie took Pheobe home and I took off on my own.

It was starting to get warm. The clouds thinned and temperature rose steadily to the mid-20's and there was absolutely no wind. This results in massive amounts of sweating as the body tries to keep cool. I was constantly sipping from the camelback to replace it.

From Wendover it was up over Coombe Hill, down past Chequers (first pit stop (in a bush not in Gordon's loo)), over the shoulder of Pulpit Hill then up to the top of Whiteleaf Cross hill (16 miles) where I met up with Vicky for my second stop. I changed my shirt (wringing out at least a pint of sweat), shorts, socks, shoes (road shoes after trail shoes) and hat. Another Muller Rice and a variety of drinks went down the hatch.

From Whiteleaf it was down and along the back of Princes Risborough then followed the Ridgeway in a big loop to the south. A brisk walk up Lodge Hill then down towards Chinnor. On the way down I was checking out some signs to make sure I didn't miss a turning when I went over on my right ankle. As has happened quite a few times I thought I'd really damaged it only to find that there's no problem (unlike on this year's 3 Peaks). I then started on what must be the longest straight stretch on any national trail. Nearly eight miles without a bend to speak of. I could see a prime example of iPod man jogging up ahead along this stretch so I couldn't resist burning him up (I know it's not funny or clever but I can't resist it. Sorry.). A couple of miles along this stretch I arrived at my third stop near the Chinnor quarries (22.5 miles) to find that Vicky wasn't there. Fortunately she turned up a few mintues later. Another top up of the camelbak. I was drinking about a litre for every 6 miles plus drinks (isotonic, recovery, coffee, boullion) at the stops. Then it was off again. The old legs were beginning to stiffen up after these stops including the knee making its presence felt but soon loosened up again. Half a mile into this strech a couple of policemen were searching the ground. Not sure what for but they looked pretty bored.

This stretch is gently rolling for ages, occassionally in the open and occassionally through trees. I recognised certain points from when we had to navigate the mud (now dried up) while cycling the Ridgeway with friends a few years ago. I passed through the marathon distance just before running under the M40 as it emerged from the cutting (as seen on Vicar of Dibley opening shots) on its way to Oxford. It was here that I noticed my ankle was very sore from having clipped it with my other foot. The skin on the ankle bone was rubbed raw so I rolled my sock over it intending to stick a Compeed plaster on it at the next stop. The weather by now had settled into one of those rare sultry days ideal for sitting out by a riverside pub but not what you want for running in all day. I was getting a bit bored with sipping the isotonic stuff by now but I forced it down anyway. So it was on to the next stop south of Watlington where I arrived at around 4:00.

When I arrived Vicky said that she had a confession to make. She was going out at 6:30! So, not wanting to spoil her evening (and the fact that I was supposed to be at that barn dance at 7:30) I decided to cut my run short. I would do the next leg then we would go home. I had proven to myself that my theory about hydration and nutrition works even on such a hot and sweaty day. I was a bit weary but had cracked the run. The last 7 miles that I would miss were downhill to the River Thames then flat along the river. There was no way I wouldn't have been able to finish the run. Point proven.

So, into the last leg. Finish off the straight bit then left up into an undulating five miles past Swyncombe church and house. This section was a relief after the relative monotony of the straight section. A nice mixture of hills, fields, buildings and woods. The last section to the Crown on the Gangsdown Hill road near Nuffield was across a couple of large freshly ploughed fields then through a wood onto the noisy A4130. Vicky was waiting across the road in the pub car park. A quick change then we were off taking a short detour to visit Turville which is the setting for the vicarage and church in the Vicar of Dibley. Driving back made me realise how far it was that I'd run. I suppose that's the beauty of a point to point run. You can see how far it is. I'd run across the width of two OS Explorer maps (sheets 171 and 172).

Back home I was amazed at how good I felt. I did ache a little and was a bit weary but I could easily get up out chairs, run up the stairs and not the slighest hint of cramp. I had a nice bath, a bowl of Rosie's home made veggie soup and a bowl of pasta then got ready for the barn dance. Unlike my expectations of sitting in a corner feeling sorry for myself I took part in several dances without any signs of having just spent over seven hours running. Marvellous.

The next day I drove back up to the B&B in Whaley Bridge and this morning I had to sprint uphill to catch the train and jumped onto the train just as the door shut. No problem, no aches and pains, no heavy breathing. Not bad for an old git. After all that I still don't know how far I can run but it's a good start. Next time I'll maybe do some pre-planning and preparation.

Up(hill)date

Just a quick word to fill in the last few weeks. I'm now working in Manchester on a 3 month contract and am staying in a B&B in Whaley Bridge during the week. This is in the Peak District and has plenty of hills to play on. So, four weeks ago, with my knee more or less behaving itself I took myself for a run over Taxal Moor. I nearly stopped at one point with the pain but continued and found that the pain receeded. Since then I've been out at least four times a week and have started going out with the Goyt Valley Striders on their mid-week training runs. A fine bunch of runners (which is a relief after encountering some right miserable gits while out on my own). I even had a crack at their Eccles Pike fell race on Wednesday. This is a quick sprint straight up and down the pike (3 miles, 817 feet), much too short for me but the knee held out. I find that I've altered my running style since the knee injury. I can't storm downhill any more which was my one defence against being crap at running uphill. It still feels like there's a fluid sac under the knee cap and it is a little sore after a strenuous run but it's more than manageable. It's just such a relief to be running again.

I'm now being tempted by the High Peak 40 in September. Sounds like kill or cure.