Some Good Miles

This has been a better week of training with some good hilly road and a few valuable fell miles too.
Monday night saw me doing three laps of the New Streets Race route in a vain attempt to try and get some climbing in, but I don't think any amount of hilly road could prepare you for some of the climbs we face on the fells, but still a good  work out, covering 16 miles.
Wednesday was club night with Eden Runners, where they seems to be more and more fell runners attending, which is fantastic news for the club. The session tonight was mile reps, done on a slightly hilly course. I hate these, in fact anything that involves running flat out I hate. The competitiveness that is in the club at the moment saw the first one done like a race, but by the time we did the fifth one things had steadied up , thankfully for me. They tell me that these help endurance, well I have never been in fell race yet that involved running 5.40 mile.I am lucky if I break the 10 minute mile.! 9 miles covered.
Thursday was a recovery run around the streets of Penrith, a nice gentle pace which suited me fine. 6 miles covered.
Saturday was a top day. Recce of leg 4 of the BG. This is the only leg that I hadn't done before now, apart from the section from Gt Gable to Honister which is part of Borrowdale fell race. Five of us set of from Seathwaite farm and ran over to Wasdale for the first big climb of Yewbarrow.  Mark Nicholson was showing us the best lines and I feel a whole lot better about this leg now,  and I am looking forward to recceing this leg more now that I have got the basic idea of it.

Conditions were fantastic until we reached Red Pike and the cloud came in on us. They was only snow in the gully's and we had to kick holes in  to get over them and some of the rocks had ice on them so we had to be careful. This was made even more obvious when Craig took a bad fall coming down to Wind Gap and after trying to run through it, it was decided  we would  miss out Kirk Fell and Gable and bear left at Black Sail Pass and make our way to Windy Gap and then down to Styhead Tarn and back to the cars at the farm. 16.5 miles covered.

Gable from Yewbarrow

Approaching Red Pike

Pillar

Sunday I got up early to do leg 1. Parked the car at Threlked and ran to Keswick, up to Latrigg car park, where sleet was beginning to fall. At this point I decided to do a low level fell run instead and ran up to Skiddaw House and back to Threlkeld, and then back home to egg and bacon sarnies. 13.5 miles