Training Log Archive: Mark3

Didn't get much sleep; but then never do on MMs so not that bothered/surprised. The climb up to Cold Pike was pretty tough but I was feeling ok; Tim was really struggling though and I was worried it was only the start of a pretty hard day. So far my knee had been fine and I was cautiously optimistic and surprised. Nice bit of corner cutting and contouring around Crinkle Crags, then we decided it was too rocky to contour Bowfell or Esk Pike so we took the hit on both of those.

Bit of an error going up to Great End, it was windy to the max and cutting the corner was climbing over boulders for about 500m, with each one a risk of getting blown off the ridge. Anyone with local knowledge here would've stayed on the path and gained at least 5mins here.

Great End to Scafell Pike was very rocky and unpleasant, the path was pretty hard to spot and even when you were on it, it was no less rocky than anything else. Again, the wind made it very hard to keep your footing so this was really slow going. Tim was much better at this than me having a mountaineering background. We then had an enforced route up to Foxes Tarn and then Scafell, rather than Broad Stand or Lord's Rake. To be honest I don't think I'd have considered them anyway, especially in the wind. The Foxes Tarn route involves losing a lot of height though, and I did manage to take quite a bad fall in the rocks and land on my wrist. It felt like it was broken for about 10 minutes...and then I forgot about it and it was fine. Phew! It was very slow up to the tarn and required hands for climbing a bit. But there was no drop to either side, so it was fine. But very steep, and very steep again from the tarn to the top. We lost 10 minutes on this leg in total (Great End - Scafell), probably a combination of wind and falling over and being generally tired.

Good route choice leg from Scafell to Harter Fell, probably the best of the three days. I had planned to cut across the minimum non-path land possible in case it was really brackeny/heathery, but actually it was really easy running so we took the straightest line to the river that I could. It was on this descent that my knee started to hurt again, dammit! But it was fine when walking, so I resolved to just keep running to the foot of Harter and then it would be okay.

Harter is a bitch. It has about 10 false summit, and just keeps on going. After 27k including some of the highest peaks in the country, this was not what we needed. It was really tough, I found this the hardest point of the weekend. Managed not to stop but the pace was glacial. Once we finally got there though, didn't seriously consider cutting the corner to the finish and was content to stay on the path and go a bit further. This looked like a good decision as the forest looked pretty thick when we got to it and would've been tough off-path.

Bit gutted to learn we only managed 2nd today (high expectations after the first day) - we basically lost 10 mins up to Scafell, then pulled back 3 of them up to Harter and another 5 on the descent to the finish - leaving us 2 mins down. So we knew we had an 8 min (and 2s) lead going into the final day...

http://live.sportident.co.uk/home/multistage/stage...

First mountain marathon of the year. I was extremely excited for this and was just hoping that my knee would hold up.
Got even more excited when we got the map at registration and could see the course for all 3 days (it's pretty informal) and saw we were going up Scafell Pike - I've never done it before and wanted to for ages. But that would be day 2.

Most of the controls were summits (Wainwrights; it was the Wainwright course after all) and so were straightforward to find, especially with great vis. I think non-navigators still struggled a bit though, because often the paths on the map didn't really exist on the ground. But first two controls were pretty straightforward.

2-3 had a bit of route choice (Grey Friar to Lingmoor Fell) but we chose the way with the straightest line and the best AP, even though it had a mile or so of road running down the Wrynose Pass which was a bit grim in trail shoes and we were overtaken by a woman here (who we had caught up, and we later re-passed, so that was ok :) ). Then #4 to Silver How I took us on the "orienteers' route" ie - straight line down a very steep slope through a thick forest - since the path route was a pretty long way around. Implemented really well although it was a bit sketchy at times.

Then Silver How to Sergeant Man was up an ascending ridge with basically no path; we did awesomely on this leg. Again, made much easier with good vis. Then some nice contouring round to Pike of Stickle before Loft Crag. Looked at the vertiginous drop down the finish and decided to take the safe round down - looking at splits I don't think anyone beat us on this leg so it was a reasonable call - although it's closer than a lot of others so we might've lost some time. But we had pretty tired legs at this point and didn't want to take unnecessary risks.

It was great to get back 1st (of 1!) and then spend a fairly anxious hour waiting for any teams who'd started after us to finish. But we finished the day 10 mins up and were very happy. Especially Tim in his first MM and having never run that far before.

An awesome day, marred only by Extreme Food being definitely sub-par to Adventure Food.

Results: http://live.sportident.co.uk/home/multistage/stage...

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