Gave my Walshes their first outing of the 2020/21 mud season today. Beacon Hill, via Buck Hill and Felicity's Wood. I had been over part of the route on a walk last Sunday, and we have had more rain since then, so I knew what to expect.
Printable View
Gave my Walshes their first outing of the 2020/21 mud season today. Beacon Hill, via Buck Hill and Felicity's Wood. I had been over part of the route on a walk last Sunday, and we have had more rain since then, so I knew what to expect.
Thank you Anthony for bumping this thread. I tried to find it at the weekend but failed.
This Sundays run wax the first of the season where we had proper full on mud. A miserable wet Saturday followed by torrential downpours early Sunday saw the bridalways around Hagley and Churchill returned to their winter norm. Sadly no Stourbridge Stagger this year - already postponed - but it is a great route for training and one I will do frequently over the coming weeks despite the mud.
I'm hoping to run the Coventry Way footpath next weekend... it's usually very muddy on certain sections when the challenge/race is held (April).... i expect certain parts of it will be positively foul next week...
More muddy mahem around the Stourbridge Stagger route this morning. Very cold and wet and hard going through ankle deep slop at times. Mrs S could take no more after 12 km so we bailed and went round the road missing out a big chunk of it. Looking like it is now set to last for a while.
Frozen solid last week. Ankle breaking stuff. Back to wet gloop again this morning as the snow thaw set in.
Not sure if wellies or flippers would have been the more appropriate footwear for today's trog up to Buck Hill and the Outwoods. Anyway, I wore Walshes, which at least meant that I wasn't sliding around.
Imagine if the Trigger race was going ahead after the recent rain, even in the sort of benign weather that I had today (temperature must have been at least 10C, it hasn't been as warm as that for quite a while).
Quote:
Originally Posted by anthonykay
The first year i did the Trigger it was more or less frozen over. The following year it was much milder (still bloody cold, but it's all relative!)
The second year, despite being a year fitter, i was nearly half an hour slower... every step sinking into either soft mud or rapidly thawing snow.
Incidentally the Trigger has been provisionally rearranged for mid-July which should make it marginally more pleasant... although means i'll probably have to give up my entry as i'll (hopefully) be racing elsewhere...
I once, years ago, did the Wadsworth half trog, which normally is a complete bog-fest. That year was frozen solid - we were running on sheets of muddy ice with heather sticking out of it. Although I was nowhere near the top ten, if I'd've got the same time the year before I would have been third!
In the 30+ years that I have been running along my local footpaths, I never remember them being in the state they are in now. Is this because there are more feet tramping along them due to the lockdown, or because of unusually wet weather this Autumn and Winter? Probably a combination of the two factors.
Before today, I had managed to avoid falling over in the mud this Winter. But today I hit my foot against a tree root less than 200 metres from home (on the way back), and came down. Fortunately not a face-plant, just a hands-and-knees-plant.
I went to the town park this morning to scope out some potential rep measurements for tomorrow... not only was there standing water everywhere, but the grass to either side of the paths was lethally muddy and slippery for road shoes.
So it'll be out on the roads for tomorrow's session instead.
I live on the edge of the peak gritstone area, just across the valley it is limestone. It is very noticeable at the moment how much less 'sticky' the mud on the gritstone paths is, much easier to run on.
You are lucky there is no XC in Warley Woods this year. Did a quick run out there after work today. Mud absolutely everywhere, the stream is running through the valley where a nice pond has formed at the one end and we have a bog at the other.Quote:
Originally Posted by Travs
It is much the same here. I think it is mostly down to the weather. It has been persistently wet for weeks and we have had a lot of snow and subsequent melt. Combine that with increased footfall due to lockdown and we now have mud the worst I can recall and it doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon. Some paths are now a struggle to stay upright and best avoided unless there is a handy fence to offer a handrail. Bridalways are pretty much a no go area.Quote:
Originally Posted by anthonykay
Mmmh. Anthony you seem to leap from questioning anecdote ("I never remember") to an assertion of fact ("the state they are in now"), then query the reason from (just) two suggestions and then reach a conclusion.Quote:
Originally Posted by anthonykay
Is this all mathematically robust?:)
That would be fun... Warley Woods is usually a pretty decent quality course underfoot, with only the woods section being occasionally tricky.Quote:
Originally Posted by PeteS
Not only are paths in my area muddier than I have known them in 25 years, ones that are normally 1 - 2 metres wide have expanded to 4- 5 metres as people try to avoid the mud.
Much the same here. New paths have formed across (private) land adjacent to paths as the main rights of way are becoming impassable. The one benefit of the recent cold snap was that the mud was frozen solid but as it is heavily rutted, it was hard to run on. More rain this week so will have to try and find some alternative routes though that proving difficult with lockdown restrictions.Quote:
Originally Posted by gej
Walsh PB trainers, nearly new: only worn once . . . :rolleyes: [No, I'm not trying to flog them!]
Attachment 8877
By the way, how do you insert an image so that it comes up as an image rather than as a link to the image?
Pleasant surprise on today's run: usually when it rains after a long dry period, the footpaths around here have a slippery, wet surface layer over a hard substrate, but the rain has actually soaked in enough to soften the ground a bit, without being slippery on top.
It's back....
With the dry weather this Spring, there has been a blissfully long interval between the end of the mud season and the start of the nettle/bramble season. But a week ago I came back from a run with bramble scratches, and today's rain has knocked over some of the nettles so that they are leaning across the paths. Time to go for some walks equipped with secateurs and gardening gloves.
Mud (for the first time on a long time) and nettles were plentiful on the morning's run around the Worcestershire footpaths with Mrs S. My legs are still smarting from the stings now.
Maybe we need a separate thread for nettles (and one for brambles too, now I think of it). There's a lovely path between two properties near me that is normally very easily navigated. On today's run the nettles were leaning in dangerously and it became a series of leaps, shimmies and expletives. A sickle might come in handy - not that I own one...
ah but we already have one on nettles:Quote:
Originally Posted by noel
https://forum.fellrunner.org.uk/show...hlight=nettles
I find a sickle is a very useful bit of kit this time of year though you can probably be arrested for brandishing one on a public footpath these days (mores the pity!)
Lol. I should have checked. What a mine of information this forum is.Quote:
Originally Posted by PeteS
Mrs noel wants a scythe!! That would definitely be a menace on narrow footpaths.
Ankle deep again in places but now has a frozen crust unfortunately not thick enough to support my weight.
Interesting this, I find them excellent in any mud/ice/bog, but pretty poor in dry conditions and on tarmac. Hoping they'll get me through Rombalds this weekend though they're now on the verge of falling apart after about 300 miles, which isn't ideal.Quote:
Originally Posted by PeteS
Worcestershire mud is pretty special!
I don't recall a year where it has been so late but it has certainly made up for it the last couple of weeks.
3 weeks ago it was slippy but firm.Last week it was wet.and starting to breakdown, this morning was full on biblical stuff,. Ankle deep in places
The cross-country Euro Champs in Brussels yesterday was remarkably "English" looking in terms of mud.
A really tough course.
What's worse than the deep, sloshy mud that we were running through a few weeks ago?
Mud that has frozen, and then a thin layer on top has thawed. This must be one of the most slippery surfaces there is; particularly nasty on a path with a camber, where you can slide off sideways.
We had similar on a XC race before xmas.
Rutted mud/field which had frozen over solid, and was either like uneven sheet ice, or a layer of slosh over sheet ice.
I took a couple of runners on a recce of the Tigger Tor race route this morning. Although very mild, around 12 degrees, the ground on the moors was still frozen under a thin layer of damp peat which made it very treacherous in places.
The two main boggy areas on the route were also partly frozen but with the weather forecast as wet and mild for next week they will be back to their shoe sucking best for next Sundays race.
The new TT route is far better than the old as it has no tarmac whatsover!
On today's run I had the dubious privilege of being the first pedestrian to cross a newly ploughed field - actually, an 80% newly ploughed field, as ploughing was still in progress. It was one of the fields that the public footpath on the way back from Woodhouse Eaves goes across diagonally. I was reduced to a walk for much of the way.
The ploughed fields have now been harrowed, making a much better surface to run on. However . . .Quote:
Originally Posted by anthonykay
There are anecdotes about engineers who bore tunnels from both ends, and don't quite meet in the middle (and if you have travelled on the railway between Edinburgh and Dundee, you will know that this has actually happened). So when a field has been ploughed and harrowed, and people start using the public footpath across the middle of the field, they aim for the point where the footpath exits the field at the far side, creating a trod. In both the fields where this has happened on today's run route, the trods from either end don't meet in the middle, but gradually fade as people have noticed that there was a better trod from the other end, a few feet to the side.
Approximately 11k of my 12k this morning were nothing but mud of the worst kind. Deep, wet, slippy and utterly unavoidable. It hadn't been that bad until late even with all the severe weather we have had but the heavy rain this week has tipped it over the edge and no doubt it will now be here to stay until we get a long dry spell.
If I went out today on one of my usual routes, I would probably come back with clean shoes; there's more surface water than mud. But I have been wearing Walshes on all my runs for the last three weeks (and probably the next few weeks), to get a proper grip on the mud - apart from yesterday's parkrun, where one of the attractions is that the gravel paths of the Beacon Hill course are well drained and only get a thin coating of mud in a few places, even in current conditions.Quote:
Originally Posted by PeteS
National XC should be fun next weekend. They've already had to shift all the parking due to water-logging.
One reason that the Beacon Hill parkrun was a bit crowded yesterday was that Dishley parkrun, on the other side of Loughborough, was cancelled. The Dishley RD reckons you ought to be able to tell the difference between the towpath and the river/canal, and he doesn't like it when the playing fields are serving their alternative purpose as a swimming pool.Quote:
Originally Posted by Travs