Slowing down to speed up?

[Stolly]

At the risk of turning this thread in to the Diary of a Novice Fell Runner, the Beast (all 23.5 miles of it...) went pretty well. Took it easy (although probably could have eased off even more) for the first 12/13 miles or so and felt ok. Hit a real rough patch around about 17 miles (just before the last climb...) but kept plodding on.

Was also getting cramp in my calves when transitioning from ascent to flat/descent in the second half of the race which wasn't much fun (any advice here? eating? hydration?), but dragged myself round in 4:13.

The cramp is almost certainly because your legs haven't spent enough time climbing. Drinking plenty of fluids can help but its only by doing loads of (preferably steep) hill climbs/descents that will really stop you getting cramp

[Robin S]

Cheers Stolly. Congrats on the Fellsman btw. Would love to have a crack at that one day.

[molehill]

Well done in the Beast race, that was a tough grind over the hills, though no enormous climbs it was fairly relentless and energy sapping. I struggled something terrible for the first 2 hours and felt awfull, but just ground away and finished at a good pace. Lovely day out.

[Robin S]

Yes, nothing particularly steep but definintely a long slog. I was the opposite felt like I could go all day up till about 2.5/3 hours and then dropped right off.

Great day though - the support from marshals and villagers was amazing!

Definitely gave me a thirst to do more long events and I'll be putting in a load of extra miles over the summer.

[IainR]

Don't be too scared about blowing up..

Better to live one day as a wolf and all that..

Its just if it happens week in week out its an issue.. but look at the top runners in the big races, especially races like the Y3PS and you'll often see a few of them way down the results.. and you think 'oh they had a bad run'.. but in reality they had a brave run.. sometimes it goes well sometimes not.. but running OK in every race of a year seems a waste..

The worst thing you hear is 'Yeah I ran well I beat X'.. and you know X blew up.. its just a fake plus.. means nothing.