Well, in under 24 hours, I’ll be on the bus to the start line for this:

DD, looks ace.

👍

DD – ditto, that looks really good – enjoy 🙂

I’ve had a pretty easy week but got out a few times for a few 5-10k flat runs when I’ve been away with work. Planning a Parkrun Saturday morning (will try warming up properly this week and see if I can get my heartrate up!), longer run in the hills around Lyme Park on Sunday then I’ve a free evening next Weds for a run in the Lakes hills.

Any recommendations with easy access from A66? I’ll be driving from Penrith to Cockermouth.

I’ve done Blencathra, Skiddaw and Great Dodd, most of the hills around Buttermere and most of the obvious ones. Thought about Helvelyn from Swirls car park, drop down Swirral, back up Striding and then return to Swirls? Never been up from that side before, usually do Glenridding.

After my 10k on Sunday I was out again last night to do my usual 4 mile circuit – took 1min 20secs off this year’s previous best time and getting within 2 minutes of my previous best times (which I got when training for a half marathon over 15 years ago). I am really very happy about that – will see how I get on at the ParkRun this weekend…

so far ive done zero running since sunday .

Ive done easy zwift sessions every day to get the blood flowing in my legs but my Glutes and my left knee are just not up to running.

I tried a z2 endurance group ride on zwift last night and can see I’m still fatigued – power really dropped off after about 1hour i was struggling to hold z2 power.

Going to give it another week before i try anything daft like running 😀

Favorite event of the year this week, the Birmingham Black country Half, 13 miles along the canals from Wolvo to Birmingham.
Feels pretty under prepared and tired at the moment so hoping my legs will come good on race day.

My holiday read is the David Goggins book, “Can’t hurt me”. Wow. This guy takes fitness and ultra running to a whole new level.

Last minute entered a 20k/1000m local race on Saturday, as usual started too fast, blew up on the second climb at 13k, managed to finish Not Last. Need to start targeting weaknesses, noticed I always go backwards on anything technical, and by technical I mean something as innocuous as a level, narrow trod with loose stones under the grass. Foot rolls a bit, get paranoid and back off, repeat until 20 runners have gone past. Descending is just a disaster.

A recovery run would be nice but spent all today on planes and it’s already in the 40s first thing in the morning so I’ll not bother.

So next bunch of races will be in the lakes.

I thought that I had sabotaged my race when on Saturday morning was out for a very gentle jog with the boy in the buggy. Upon a request to go super fast and breaking into an easy stride, shooting pains from my left hamstring 😮 Didn’t bode well for 25 laps of punishment around the track 6 hours later and I was dubious as to whether I’d start, let alone finish…

I was in the 2nd 10,000m race of the fantastic Highgate Night of the 10,000m PBs. They were using a new pacing system called wavelight with LED lights all around the inside rail of the track which would illuminate to a pre-determined pace. The green lights for my race were ticking over at 30:30 pace, the following red ones at 31:00. Given my 10k PB is 31:32, and I wasn’t feeling on fire, I started fairly conservatively, sticking with the red lights. With 40 starters it was a bit crowded and apparently some without huge experience ducking and weaving without indicating. One of my friends got clipped and lost a shoe partway round…

I finished 6th in 31:14 which I was pretty pleased with, especially given how much I hate racing on track 😀

Chuffed with my half on Saturday.
I’ve been running pretty badly recently, a combination of stress at work and lack of real mileage, so was really worried about how it would go and what kind of performance I’d put in. I’d said to myself that if I got under 2 hours I wouldn’t be unhappy.
Started a little quick, but then settled in, miles 3 – 9 were all paced with 5 seconds or each other. I know the last 4 miles of the event really well so as I felt fresh pushed on a little and finished a smidge under 1:45. Not a PB for the distance but I was really pleased with it, particularly with the pacing. It might just have got my running mojo back too.

Bugger – no running for me for a few days. 5 mins from home on a nice 10k loop in the hills and stepped in a rabbit hole. Total innocuous and just one of those minor stumbles but have tweaked my back and can hardly straighten up this morning. And that was minutes after I stood on a thick bramble and managed to trip myself up, shredding the inside on my left leg on the thorns! A great run all round…

lots of good stuff over the weekend guys.

I had an easy weekend. Went to a gig in Inverness and bouncing about on my forefoot has agrivated my arch- feels like I’m stood on a golfball at all times resulting in a hobble back to the car and being outpaced by my heavily pregnant wife. – i had made loose plans to do the parkrun as a recovery run but instead its time to get the spiky ball out and i bought a new foam roller.

I’ve been spinning out from the long run for the last week on Zwift on the turbo but i dared to ride to work this morning. Anything other than a light spin resulted in seriously sore knees again.

MY IT band is like a banjo string , my back and neck are only a little less tight.

Just set my phone up with the Yoga and stretching workout apps for lunch time to nip this in the bud.

Trail_rat, were you at the Proclaimers at Bught Park in Inverness? We had the finish line of the Great Glen Ultra right alongside in the athletics stadium and had some fun musical moments that evening.

A completely cracking weekend; the race started in Ft Bill at 0100 Saturday, official times are not yet posted but the winner arrived in Inverness at about 1230hrs after 72 miles and maybe 9000 feet of climbing. At the other end of the race, huge respect must go to newcomer Naomi Andrews, whose visibly very painful finish after around 21 hours on her feet brought our day to a close.
After the runners’ briefing, I’d set off in front of the pack and biked the course overnight checking waymarking and chatting to the marshalling crews at the checkpoints. Highlights of a superb long trail ride were a close-up of a pine marten near Bridge of Oich about 0400 and shortly after, sunrise seen from the high trail between Fort Augustus and Invermoriston. There were a handful of minor medical challenges at the finish line but nothing we couldn’t handle readily. Happy days…..

no i was at Skipinnish on friday.

then went to the start of the pan celtic on sunday.

Wife wasnt keen on hanging about on saturday night as we were staying up in culbokie.

Folks, has anyone entered an organised race in France and had to do a “fitness to run” (or whatever you want to call it) certificate? I’ve seen a nice looking trail race about an hour from our campsite when we’re on holidays there in August. Internet folklore, being what it is, is giving me all sorts of answers as to what a UK resident would have to do…with a lot of forum posts on various sites saying they’d just faked one. I’d be interested in seeing what the score is/was from anyone here who’s done it.

DD: do it properly; go and speak to your gp and expect to have to pay a small fee for the privilege.
While it’s unlikely to be a problem, there are so many ways that his could go wrong for you if you are injured or become ill while at their event. Many thousands of Brits run in events across France every year and the vast majority will get their statement and do it by the book.

@highlandman, I should have said I didn’t like the idea of faking something like that and am happy to go by the book for this. Will give the GP surgery a ring tomorrow to check if they’ll do something along those lines. Bit of a PITA but I’d like to enter races whenever I’m over there on holidays. The race I want to enter says in its rules:

“Foreign athletes, even if…blah blah…IAAF…blah blah…must furnish a certificate in French or have a translation if written in a foreign language…blah blah.”

@deadlydarcy – it seems it’s standard practice in France. We had to supply a doctor’s certificate to take part in the French Divide. This turned out to be “I know of no medical reason why X cannot take part in this event.” on headed notepaper and signed.

DD How did the big race go? Enjoy it?.

DD How did the big race go? Enjoy it?.

I’ll probably stick something up tomorrow NoFeer, when I’m feeling less negative about it. Save to say, it just wasn’t really a “race.” 😐

Oooh, building the tension! I likes 🙂 Awaits tomorrows update with eager anticipation…

Did a few mountains on Sunday, thought I’d tick off a few munros, started at Baddoch near Glenshee, did the 2 munros near the ski bit then west to Carn a Gheoidh then north via An Socach and a high ridge back to Braemar. 35k/1600m. Not a route I’d do again all told, large sections of rubble, jaggy boulder / heather / bog bashing, not much path. Surprisingly chilly for July (MWIS had ‘feels like’ at -2 at 1100m). Pint was badly needed afterwards so popped in to the Fife arms despite looking a bit sporty for the surroundings, first time I’ve been in since it’s became ‘artified’ (a picasso on the wall in a pub!?)

Well, my GP has told me he won’t certify me without a full medical – for which he will kindly rinse me of £110 – and then charge for the certificate/letter. Lovely. Time to try back-street/online dodgies. :o)

Ooft.

DrP to the running thread!.

So what happened in the SW coastal race DD?

Ah I dunno – I don’t want to whinge too much. It was a bloody expensive event to enter – and with parking & camping at their event village (again at extra cost), overall it cost us a fortune. The organisation was great – transfer buses etc all worked well and the campsite toilets, bar, showers etc were all clean and worked well. The overall atmosphere was great – friendly staff, marshalls & competitors – apart from the usual complement of merchant bankers one encounters at all “events.”

However, what I wasn’t prepared for was that this wasn’t really a race. There are sections in it which could be best described as “coasteering” – so maybe, jump in the sea, swim a bit then a long scramble across rocks back to the coastal path. All good fun. Except…you didn’t have to do them!! And inevitably, because it was single file, there were queues so you couldn’t do it at your own pace. You were just doing it at the pace of the crowd, which was inevitably slow.

We’d pass a group of runners – a difficult negotiation in itself at times – I think we all know how reluctant slow runners are to let faster followers through on single track at times – do our swim, scramble get back on the run and then pass the same group 30 mins later as they’d just not bothered doing the water section. There was no timing system to decide who’d done what. I even skipped the last water section myself and waited for my running partner to do it as I’d just had enough of the sea at that stage. If it had been a “race”, I’d have done it though.

So we have finishing times, but they’re fairly meaningless as an “unfit” person that didn’t bother with the water sections could easily have finished an hour or more before people who were “fast” but had done their bits.

So all in all, a great weekend was had by all. Whatever about it being a race or not, it was bloody tough. 1000m of climbing over 40km and 3500 calories burned. The post race beers were some of the nicest I’ve ever drunk. Good bonding with my training partners and we’ll do something similar next year, just not a RatRace event. I realise I’m shite really and not going to be competitive in my field, but I’d rather it was a race to compete in rather than an event to post on Facebook/Instagram with a chunky medal.

Nuff said. Off to put the same in an email to RatRace. 😀

Fair enough, that would piss me off anaw mate, well done though. 💪🏻

Sounds a very measured response and not whingy at all. If you’re not doing the water sections the alternative should be slower (or there’s a time penalty).

Cheers dashed and NoFeer. Anyway, moving on…who’s got what on this weekend? Anybody entered anything for later in the season?

ParkRun tomorrow morning – gonna try for a PB again (set 3 weeks ago, missed bettering it by 11 seconds last weekend). Currently training for the GNR in September.

ParkRun tomorrow morning – gonna try for a PB again

Er, ditto! Solo this week so no buggy to push so I’m going to have a crack at a proper warm up and see what I can manage. It’s about 2k to the nearest park run so I’m going to have a gentle run over there to get things moving rather than jumping straight out of a car an expecting to run quickly 😉

Nowt this weekend Darcy, I’ll be spending most of it going cross channel back to Blighty, sadly.

Next Saturday Mrs NoFeer and I have run the blades ultra, 50k around a wind farm. It’ll be a pootle, more of an exercise to see how the legs are at long distances, as I have 38 mile and 40 mile ultras on my tod later in summer.

Then Dunoon half the week after.

Well parkrun PB achieved (25 seconds off my previous PB) but definitely my lungs / breathing that is holding me back. Legs feel fine but struggling to breath properly. I guess the only way to improve that is to work on some speed training or track work??
Oh, and optical HR monitor definitely not accurate – virtually all of the run in z3 again despite going at my limit. Suspect it’s a sweaty wrist that interferes with its accuracy??

Na, they’re just shit for anything active. If sweat was the culprit, chest straps wouldn’t work.

I reckon it’s a combo of vibration and the wrist not being a great place to get hr from.

Is there anybody running at Thunder Run next weekend? I ran it last year in a team of 5 and somehow got roped into going again this year!
It’s a great weekend. I’m definitely not watching the weather forecast already :-0

DD, re the medical cert – if you’ve to pay that much for a doc’s note which is pretty much useless, why not do a ramp test so at least you’ve got some useful data? I used to have to do them for my Spanish competition licence (cycling tho), didn’t begrudge the fee as it gave VO2 max etc. IIRC the GP just does an ECG at rest which I doubt is that indicative of your capacity to climb for 20mins at threshold without dying! We got them done at the Uni, which was a fair bit cheaper than a private lab.

DD, re the medical cert – if you’ve to pay that much for a doc’s note which is pretty much useless, why not do a ramp test so at least you’ve got some useful data?

+1 – I’ve had to get a load of useless doctor’s certs for various races, and all they do is measure your blood pressure and do a quick listen to your heart. You’re-fine-and-that’s-30€-thank-you-very-much.

If you have to spend the money get a proper test done.

Jaysus, it’s a fitness to race certificate for an 18km trail race with about 200 entrants and I should now go to University of Bristol or somesuch and get a full VO2 Max ramp test (or whatever it is) done? These certificates are an exercise in shifting liability from organisers to competitors and their doctors. From internet research (yeah, I know) it ranges from “my doc signed one for free” to “only after a full medical etc…cost me £200…” [For ref, I’d be somewhere in the middle leaning towards the £200 option.] I’d happily sign a waiver on the day.

The more I read about how seriously these certificates are taken, the more tempted I am to just fake one – but I know I bloody won’t at the end of the day. It’s just all bollocks though.

EDIT: Apparently, a quick visit to a French GP and you can get yourself one for around €30 but I have to enter online and upload a pdf. Bloody shite.

Not a regular poster on here but did the Wyre Forest Half Marathon today – a mixture of fire roads and trails. Have started to do a little bit of running recently but my longest run to date was a flat 9 miles on tarmac. Managed today’s half marathon in just under 1 hour 58 minutes and only stopped in total for a few minutes at the water stops. Happy with that for my first attempt at a trail half.

A quick check on the route shows it as having 200m-ish of climbing stuc. Bloody well done on coming in well under the 2 hr mark on that one. Great stuff. 👍

Ta.

Strava/Garmins saying just under 1200ft but not sure how accurate that is. Looking forward to trying to keep this running up.