Condors soaring over Milton Keynes

Saturday was a glorious day for the start of my Milton Keynes based alpine training regime in preparation for the UTMB in August. The sun was out and its warmth could be felt penetrating through trees and clothing. The condors were soaring high above the lofty, snow clad peaks and jutting aretes of the Brickhill Alps whilst marmots and lemmings scurried about in the pine clad slopes and upper alpine meadows. Glorious.

I picked the off road slope with the single greatest uninterrupted vertical ascent and started my run at 3pm. 115' of climbing and 115' of descending saw my first hill rep complete. Yes, the Brickhill Alps are a behemoth of a mountain, ahem er, molehill range.

Last year I peaked at 15 reps in my mid-week hill rep sessions so I was pleasantly surprised when I got to 13 and thought, hang on, this isn't too bad, I can manage a few more. I got to 15 and thought the same thing again. It wasn't till rep 17 that I could feel my calves begin to complain and in rep 18 I thought I'd probably have to walk rep 19 so I called it a day. 18 consecutive reps of up and down, covering 2100' of ascent and descent over 7.83 miles in 1:26.

I then managed to dodge the condors on my descent to make it home in time for my voracious daughter's dinner. A great afternoon. I'll work on upping the number of reps to somewhere around 30-40 as I get closer to the UTMB (oh joy, the idea of it sounds very enticing).

Here's a picture of my at the top of the hill I selected to run up. Milton Keynes is wonderfully scenic isn't it? A real hidden gem. ;-)

Training update (oh what an exciting post title) and racing plan

Right then folks, I'm back to the keyboard whilst sitting in bed last thing at night. Eilidh is teething like billy-oh just now so it's 6am ups or earlier every day. The time is past 11pm so I'm playing fast, loose and dangerous with sleep quotas. I'll have to be quick.

My training is back on track performance wise after a rather stuttered start to the year. I'm not managing all my planned sessions yet as various bits and bobs are popping up but I am performing as I want to be at this stage in the year and season. Progress wise I am doing as below:

Endurance - no problems, my base level doesn't appear to have diminished and I've run an 18.5 miler on the last 2 weekends. The 2nd one had about 1500' of ascent in it and I recovered within a day.
Speed - again no problems, I am up to running 6 consecutive sub 7 minute miles in my tempo sessions with the first 3 at sub 6:50 pace. I am holding 6:15 and below pace easily in my 3 minute effort interval sessions
Strength - my gym sessions haven't been as regular as I'd like so I need to up these
Yoga - I can now do up and down dog positions in Ashtanga Yoga and am enjoying it
Hills - not really started this yet but tomorrow is the day I run 15-20 reps of a 130' ascent hill near my house as the start of my 'simulate alpine running in rural buckinghamshire' training plan

I have my race and training even plan sorted until the back end of September and it kicks off next month:

March - MK half marathon (aiming sub-1:29), Wuthering Hike 31 miler (aiming sub-5:15)
April - Exe to Axe 21 miler (4500' ascent, aiming sub 3:20), Highland Fling 53 miler (aiming sub 9:56)
May - Marlborough Downs Challenge 33 miler (aiming sub 4:55)
June - 2 day Bob Graham Round
July - in Australia so I''ll grab whatever I can plsu something big when I return as a final UTMB training session
August - UTMB 103 miler
September - High Peak 40 miler

If anyone has any June or late July ultra race or training ideas I'd be very grateful for them.

Looking forward to the season, and hoping to see some familiar faces at the ultra events, particularly the Wuthering Hike, Highland Fling and HP40.

In the meantime here are some photos that were taken by my mate Phil Dickson at PSD Photography over the festive period. We wanted to get some professional photos taken to send to Kirstin's family in Australia, for my family and our own albums, but didn't want anythin too cheesey. I think he did a good job. The last photo was taken in People's Palace in Glasgow when he accidentally dropped something and managed accidentally to take a photo of us (my family - gran, mum, dad, brother, wife, daughter and me) grimacing at the noise. Funny expressions!

Grunt puff puff ...

... are the noises I made on my supposedly long hilly trail run at the weekend before I decided to cut it short and go home! Talk about perseverance, not.

Last week was my first full week of training so my mileage lept up and by Saturday my body was groaning under the strain. Probably too much red wine on Friday night too - well you've got to haven't you, after a week of hard work and not much sleep due to our crazy daughter's prolonged teething? That and I still get overly excited by Friday nights even though my hazy youthful days are but a hazy memory. Actually they were hazy the next day but that's besides the point.

Anyway, my breathing felt a bit laboured / asthmatic (I've had asthma since I was wee) and my legs sluggish after 1 mile of running so I called it quits at 11 miles. Pain in the bum really and disappointing performance wise but hey ho, back in the saddle this week. I'm planning to do a 20 miler this weekend and I'll remember to stay off the vino.

More importantly I've got to pass my condolences on John Kynaston for the loss of his father - sad news. And at the other end of life, my congratulations to Debbie and Marco for the birth of their son, Cairn, the first newborn to have already finished the West Highland Way Race - great stuff.

To leave this post I'd like to finish with a great a track by the Doves - There Goes the Fear. I first heard it, and the band on Richie Cunningham's UTMB slideshow and rather liked it. It has a dramatic fee that sort of suits the enormity of running a long ultra I think. And lots of other life events too.

Dreaming of la gilet rouge

Yes, I have returned to the land of the blog after a slightly stuttered start to the year in training terms. And I'm back to training in full tilt now thank goodness. We experienced the awful hell of both parents and baby ill with winter vomiting virus on the same day with no parental help within 300 miles. Oh how the minutes crawled by ...

But that's now history, our daughter is back to full health and I have started focussing on the main goal for this year - completing the 103 mile, 33,000' of ascent Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc in late August. This is the race that got me into ultra running in the first place. My wife and I competed in the 2005 Edinburgh Rat Race, a slightly tongue in cheek 2 day city centre adventure race involving the usual orienteering, mountain biking, kayaking but also abseiling off buildings, bouncing around a car park on space hoppers and impersonating Sean Connery. Anyway the North Face sponsor it as well as the UTMB and they were handing out gear catalogues with pictures of Tim Tweitmeyer (did't know of him at the time) running next to glaciers and big, impressive mountains. It also had his UTMB race report. I was instantly inspired and hooked. And this year I have got an entry.


I did a wee 6 mile trail run yesterday whilst I was off work and I thought about the race all the way round, picturing what it might be like and what winning a red gilet will feel like. I can't wait!

Since I last blogged I have also been for a project meeting inside the Arctic Circle in the north of Sweden. A tiny 250 inhabitant place called Abisko on the main line from Kiruna to Narvik on te Norwegian coast. The Ice Hotel is about 10km from Kiruna if you've heard of that. I lived in Kiruna for 13 months in 2001-2002 and thoroughly enjoyed myself.


I took the plane to Stockholm then caught the 17 hour overnight train up and back. Much more civilised and relaxing and only aboout £100 for a sleeper cabin to myself each way so not too expensive, particularly compared to flights in that part of the world. Although the flights have their unique charm when you first notice that have are landing on ice and packed snow in a jet plane. Hee hee!


Abisko is stunningly beautiful. We were there only 10 days ago so the aurora was out and the ground was covered in snow. The temperature was between -5 and -25 C, averaging around -10 to - 15. I went out running twice, the first time for an out and back 7.5 mile run on snowmobile tracks through the forest and the second I only managed 4.5 miles as it was below -15, which is not so good for long lung exposure. I saw a wild female moose and a juvenile whilst on the first run. The photos below are of the Lapporten or Lappish Gate, which looms over Abisko, and of some aurora taken from just outside Abisko. The Lappish Gate is a main waymark on the traditional reindeer herding routes of the indigenous nomadics, the Saami.



Lapporten, Abisko, Sweden



Aurora Borealis from near Abisko, Sweden

To top it all off I even got to drink beer in the sauna. A great Swedish tradition. Hic.

If you are interested I'm training 6 days a week like this:
Monday - speed or hill intervals
Tuesday - easy run
Wednesday - tempo run
Thursday - yoga (a new innovation for my training this year)
Friday - gym
Saturday - long run (for 2 weeks, then a long hill session for the 3rd week and 4th week off)
Sunday - rest

I'll be in blog contact once per week, or maybe more frequently and look forward to catching up on all the news I've missed from the WHWR family. Hope everyone else is dong well and training hard. :-)

I'm almost back

Christmas and New Year are just about a distant memory and I have returned to training in earnest. I've not had a chance to write anything proper yet after the festive break but will get round to it over the next week.

Fear not, the balding glaswegian will return (is that a groan I hear from the back?)!

Normal running resumes and a holiday booked

Whoopeedeedoo, yeehah and other such cowboy like exclamations of joy. Normal running has resumed! Although my ankle is still a little puffy I'll have my last dedicated treatment session on it this Thursday and should be clear by the end of the week. I'll still have some proprioception exercises to do but this will be on-going for some time to ensure I don't tear the ligament again.

Last week I did my first 6 mile road run with Shenley Striders (the club I run with) and then headed out into the woods of Aspley Heath for a wet n muddy trail run on Saturday. 10 miles and 800' of ascent and descent later I write, uninjured and raring to go for the 22 mile training run organised for the 22nd December along the bank of Loch Lomond with Tim, Stan B (not met Stan yet) and a few others I believe. My ankle was fine throughout the trail run despite the often awkard heavy clay mud underfoot and I only felt 1 twinge when I landed a little off balance. Great stuff.

Other news is that we have booked our holiday to Queensland for 2009 to see our family over there. I have a conference in Cairns so it is an opportunity to tie both things together. We got a good deal with Singapore which means we'll be flying the new huuuuge A380-800 between London and Singapore. I am a bit of a nervous flyer anyway so was curious to know how such a beast would cope with landing in cross wind conditions. Quick google search and what do you know, you tube comes up trumps. Check out this video of test landing in Iceland (I think) for how to pilot a plane in extreme cross winds. Then check out the size of the plane next to a standard euro hop Boeing. (!)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdi-hnFrmag
(sorry - the embedding is disabled so I can only provide a link)

Hopefully landing in Singapore won't be as windy.

Music for post race relaxation

It is very easy to get carried away with excitingly fast and heavy music and Billy (the shoe?) has pointed out that I may have gone too far with Napalm Death. I have to agree at least partly. However motivatory they may be for runnng, they ain't pleasant listening.

So as a counterpoint here is an example of the kind of music that would suit the drained, elated, knackered, slightly out of body state likely to be induced by running a long ultra ... The Butthole Surfers and Hurdy Gurdy Man ... now relax ...



I'll blog about running next time. Honest.