I ran 33 miles on Monday. I have never walked or ran further on a single day before. The run was three miles longer than my Winter Tanners in January, but – taking 5 hours and 20 minutes – lasted an hour longer. My transition to ultra-running hasn’t been seamless; it has required a whole…
Tag: Bob Graham round
Another Bob Graham recce: 11 hours, 13 summits, 35 miles
My body aches. It aches in a way that only two days of Bob Graham recce can induce. My quads ache. My thighs ache. Even my arms ache. But, to corrupt that hackneyed saying: 11 hours and 35 miles on the Lakeland fells will make me stronger. Apart from the inevitable ache, the consequences of…
Bob Graham: three months and counting…
I intend to give this Bob Graham round malarkey a crack in early-June. The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee weekend seems an appropriate juncture. That’s less than three months away. Time is ticking dangerously fast. I’m not ready. Of course, I’m not ready. I’ll never be truly ready. Just as ready as I can be. Having said…
Mallorca: the running bit
Squeezing two runs into a three-day ‘holiday’ when you’ve already cycled close to 125 miles isn’t an ideal situation. Needs must, though – a need that is a looming Bob Graham round. It was dark when I set off along the promenade from Chez Cockroach towards Alcudia. I ran for 15 minutes, the lights of…
Preparing to meet Bob
I am taking Askwithian advice when it comes to training for my Bob Graham round (pencilled in for spring 2012): ‘The only regimes that work are those that you can accommodate in your life.’ The question is, how much can I physically (and emotionally) accommodate? It is a gruelling undertaking training for a 70-mile run that involves thousands of…
Recovery…
Post-marathon recoveries are tricky things to get right. After London in April, I abandoned the sport for a fortnight, then ran 30 miles in the following three days. My body was all at sea. There was an illustration of how not to recover after a marathon. After the Lakeland Trails Marathon in July, I was running sections of the…
Bob Graham musings
After emerging unscathed (and just a little bit weary) from the Lakeland Trails Marathon, I had the rest of the week to focus my athletic endeavours on the Bob Graham round. Not doing it, of course, but running the rule over various sections of the 60-odd mile route – and ultimately deciding whether such an undertaking is…
Bob Graham round recce – day 2
My right ankle began hurting in the Borrowdale Hotel as we recovered (and rehydrated) from our six-hour effort in the fells. By the following morning, the pain had magnified. Something felt badly damaged. We were all in a similarly sorry state, comparing sore ankles, feet, knees and quads. Sensibly, we took the day off running,…
Bob Graham round recce – day 1
The Bob Graham round hadn’t seemed real in London – a dot-to-dot run of Wainwrights, starting and finishing at The Moot Hall in Keswick. As we drove west along the A66 towards Keswick in darkness, rain and wind, the prospect became glaringly apparent. We were passing through Threlkeld, the end of the first of five…
Heights of Madness 