inaugral session on my box today:
5 mins, managed 80 steps with 20kg barbell on my back, so 120ft.
Feels like if I wasn’t doing it in my work trousers, and once I get my "beginner gains" under my belt, I’ll be doing 100/150ft per 5 mins…
Need to push that to 111 steps if I want to bag 1000ft in half an hour.
Not sure about doing them with/without the barbell. Think I’m going to keep it simple: If after a couple of weeks, I can get 'enough' elevation in a week, then I’ll keep the bar. However, if I’m lagging, I’ll switch to chucking a 2.5kg plate in a bumbag, to ensure I can at least climb a sufficient number of feet per week.
PS — congrats, travs, on catching them all!
It was a good run out despite the weather. The first pull up onto Longlands and then onto Little Sca Fell being the only really notable climbs. Hard going off the paths in tussocky grass but decent paths abound (as does bog between Great Sca Fell and Knott!) Very quiet with lovely views of virtually all the Northern Fells throughout - I'm planning a return towards the end of October to do Great Cockup and Meal Fell and then may be a return via Great Calva, Knott and Sca Fells. Definitely recommend it.
Yes the northern fells are great.
Ran the club session alone today, feeling much fresher than earlier in the week.
6 x 1km. Then followed that up with a hard 7 minute effort up 15% gradient. 7.5 miles total.
Have another 3000m track race on sunday. After running a big pb in the same event a fortnight ago, i'm treating this one as a "free hit" and will just go off quickly and see what i can do. Best case i get another decent pb, worst case i blow up.
Hill reps in the Outwoods. Interpolating from the OS 1:25000 map, the hill is about 28m of ascent in about 150m horizontal (and that includes the flattish section towards the end). I only managed 6 reps.
The hill is in an area of mature conifer plantation. There are no proper paths on the steep side, but several trods. Some of the trees are beyond mature: they are horizontal. So I choose my trod according to which has least trees across it at the time. Only one across today's trod, and I only tripped over it once.
In his lifetime he suffered from unreality, as do so many Englishmen.
Jorge Luis Borges
Raced a track 3000m this morning in the Midland Counties Open, a disappointing 10:52 (in comparison to a pleasing 10:32 a fortnight ago).
However it wasn't the time that was a disappointment... i had fully intended to go out at a hard pace, and was well prepared to blow up... it was more the manner of it... I did indeed run hard from the start, first lap in 77secs and first km in 3:26... and yes it did fall apart from there (my 2nd and 3rd km were 3:41 and 3:45).... but there wasn't a sudden hitting of the wall... i just seemed to slow down almost imperceptibly without much of a fight. Had i gone at it for 5 laps, then spectacularly fell off the pace and crawled over the line, i'd have probably been happier, even if slower!
Just felt that i didn't give it hard enough a go... easy to say now though, sitting at home!
Depending on whether i do a recovery run tonight, total for the week will be somewhere between 47-50 miles and about 7500ft.
Big weekend in Snowdonia next week...
That's slightly more than I can get in Charnwood Forest: my biggest continuous climb is 125m from the Wood Brook at the bottom of Felicity's Wood to the top of Beacon Hill. I did that route today; felt OK, but seemed to run out of steam on the last mile on the way back home.
It's 21st September and the temperature was 21C. I'm actually quite pleased that the Met Office have announced that the policy of matching temperature to date will end on Wednesday of this week.
In his lifetime he suffered from unreality, as do so many Englishmen.
Jorge Luis Borges
My weekly 'training' is typically trogging out in the hills most days with the dogs but, ever since lockdown started, on one day of each week I look to blast out on one of my local routes and try and run it full bollocks as a solo race. I must have done 20 or so of these 'time attacks' since the beginning of April and it's been superb training. And with me getting route PBs most of the time too. Obviously I'm sure most keen runners here run routes fast all the time (I follow amongst others Mark McGoldrick, a local super-star fell runner, on strava and he sure the hell does) but for me its been a revelation.
My problem now is that I've started to exhaust all of my local fell running route options (I live in Horton-in-Ribblesdale so I'm not exactly short of them) and am now facing the prospect of having to solo race my previous solo race results. My lungs already hurt at the thought of it.....
When I used to progress athletically that's what I used to do, back in 2005/6/7 ish.
I had a route in Witton that was 2.7km and I got my time dowwn to 9:21 so I decided to do 2 back to back with the 300m slow walk in between as recovery and I got where I could manage 2 in around 9:30 and then 3 in sub 10.
I was nowhere near that pace at 3km on track, only managing low 11 minutes.
I think I'd learnt the rythym of the route I'd run it so many times.
Perhaps you can try something like that Brian?
Today's training for me was only my 3rd run in a month. I did 2 shorties a couple of weeks ago and could still feel the achilles, so just been walking a little cycling since.
3.2 miles, 29:20 shorty around Witton.
All seems OK.
I'm going to try and slower slightly longer one tomorrow hopefully and then might have a venture on to the moors this weekend.
Last edited by Witton Park; 22-09-2020 at 05:02 PM.
Richard Taylor
"William Tell could take an apple off your head. Taylor could take out a processed pea."
Sid Waddell
Reverse the route Stolly is my advice. Aren’t we all guilty of having favourite routes or at least parts of routes?
Poacher turned game-keeper