Training Log Archive: dstansfield

Hang

3x fast downhill miles. More of a tempo than anything. For this weekly challenge thing. Nicely linked three segments.

With Reay, struggling big time

Wasn't planning on helping out with the first leg but support was looking pretty weak with only Dashwood so decided to head up the first climb on request. Good job I did as both the people carrying Jamie and Oscars bags were dropped. First one was dropped straight away so ran back for maybe 2 mins and it took 10 to catch back up. The second guy who took one of their bags to the top arrived 9 minutes after they had made it up so chased them along the ridge for 30 minutes. Pretty cooked at this point, finished by walking a couple climbs with the dropped support. A lovely morning but got me slightly worried about the support this evening as I had had to work pretty hard to catch up with them on fresh legs.

Leg 3 from Fersit to the bottom of Ben Nevis. All went fine but getting the right lines in the dark where I didn't really know where we were proved pretty hard lol. Beautiful sunset and sunrise and absolutely perfect conditions all night through. I was struggling really, really hard on all the climbs after a couple of hours and it was an absolute life saver finding Dashwood bivvying just before the climb up Aonach Beag (just over 3 hours to go). He took on the role of motivation and took some of the load from me while I ground behind them as a mute apart from the speakers in my bag. Speakers were a bit of a bane as I had to stay within 20 odd m of Jamie or they would cut out and would have to restart them. Meant a lot of running ahead stopping to sort something then catching back up, exhausting. Got to the top of The Ben at 19 hours (5 in the morning) so we were fairly confident they were on for the sub-20- which they were.

Absolutely beautiful night and a cracking few days, I was lucky enough to get the sunset, the sunrise and the finish.

Smashed my knee after about 2 hours which bothered me a lot the whole way through. As a result have insane DOMs in my left (uninjured) leg and my right feels totally fine as I was protecting it the whole way.

Got me thinking I might have to bash out one of these long things at some point. Looking forward to seeing what those boys do in some hill races soon as they are both in serious shape. 7th and 8th people to do the Ramsay in sub 20 hours. Also Oscar is 20 so probably the youngest completion as well.

First half of leg 3 of the Ramsay reccy. Loved being out in the hills, legs felt class the whole way, taking it pretty easy and trying to get to know the route a little.