Training Log Archive: Craney

Wet and muddy and a much smaller area than I'd guessed from the OS map. Some nice bits of wood, some not so, hard to run hard due to slipperyness, but also because I was very tired and slow. Made some mistakes but kept on trucking. Hadn't realised Nixy would show up - good job for me that he made a few booboos.

10up with Gracie, and 10down jogging round the last bit of the course. I got really cold on the warm down - I'd have been better off not doing it.

warmup

Mini AIRE event on Danefield. Nice afternoon in the end, and a good course keeping us off paths but in runnable bits of forest and with plenty of climb. Back to basics with pin punching and, get this, normal paper maps and a map bag. Confirmed my belief about how crap and pointless waterproof maps are - this was really good quality printing. Nice.

Ran back home from Danefield on the Ebor way through Bramhope, over Bowshaws trig, round Eccup reservoir and back through Alwoodley. Felt fine.

By contrast to yesterday, this was a filthy, horrible, cold, wet, dark, early morning, horrible run that I'd rather forget about.

Night run on country roads out to Long Ashton then up a big hill to Dundry. Cracking views over the twinkling lights of Bristol - stopped for a while to admire. Made the run back through the badlands of South Bristol worthwhile. Felt quite good on the run, and then ate a big pie in Bedminster with my sis.

Petzl run up through Ashton Court, down past Abbots Pond, wiggled through Leigh Woods, across the suspension bridge and back. Felt quite good but suffering a bit with motivation to run fast or for very long.

Ran to Perce's in Shirehampton via Ashton Court, Leigh Woods, Pill and the big windy motorway bridge. Got a bit lost at the end so gave him a buzz to find out where I needed to go - good job I had a mobile phone. Legs felt very heavy but carrying my bag probably didn't help.

From Mark and Alice's house in Risca, South Wales, running with Mark, Mark and Keith. Along the Craig y Wenallt bridlepath, along a little path popping out at the road above Pantyreos, then up the road to Cwrt Henllys and straight on up to the Mynydd Henllys ridge, down the other side a bit and along the single-track in the trees to Pegwn-y-bwlch (that bit was fun). Then steeply up to the trig on Twmbarlwm before dropping onto Mountain Road and running back along that to Mark and Alice's. I wouldn't say I exactly knew all of that detail while we were running. Was quite windy and cold but good fun getting out on the fells and put some effort in at times. Nice dinner afterwards too :o)

C • Welsh 2