Felt fine during this week on the shorter faster runs. Total miles this week 35.5.
Saturday
Distance: 4 miles
Ascent: 284 ft
Rucksack weight: nil
Calories burnt: the calories gained from smelling a couple of Krispy Kreme doughnuts
Time: 42m
I'd planned my long run for today but awoke still feeling tired and my Achilles also felt tired and sore. A general malaise so, following the golden rule of listening to your body, I knew today wasn't the right day. Instead I took it easy around the local reservoir. Got my rucksack ready for tomorrow's effort.
Sunday
Distance: 22.5 miles
Ascent: 2931 ft
Rucksack weight: 5.1kg
Calories burnt: 3500
Time: 6h6m
This was tough work. An easy first couple of miles was followed by 2 or 3 miles straight up to the top of a local moor. The weather was bad: drizzling rain, strong winds, visibility of about 50 metres as a maximum, even worse on top of Bingley Moor. I'd worked out the route I wanted to take in advance and thankfully had brought the (waterproof!) map with me because I ended up having to read off that with the compass in several places. At one point I wasn't in fact on a route I could have sworn I was on and had completely missed the turn I wanted: must have been covered in the peat bog or poor visibility.
A number of times I wanted to jack it in and go home: I was quite cold despite wearing three layers, a wool hat, wool gloves and working hard. But I knew that once I finished all the creature comforts of home would feel all the better (a point well made in Robin Harvie's book "Why We Run", a good read).
I also knew that it was at times such as this where the mental training becomes just as important as the physical: it can be so easy to cave in to what the mind is saying but by changing the approach to the task at hand the body will push on through anything.
I was simply going through that next developmental phase of training for a multi-day event: getting the body used to getting up and doing a large distance day after day even if the mind doesn't at first want to.
Not long after these wobbles, and having got some more food and drink down, I felt a lot better. I saw a few runners up on Rombald's Moor by a plantation who passed me going the other way and I felt oddly much better for having seen humanity for the first time in about 3 hours. After a Maxim chocolate and caramel energy bar (delicious but unfortunately useless for the Sahara heat) I found myself now blasting along an uphill section of a path to a rocky outcrop on the moor, being careful not to send myself off the edge and down the other side.
Descending the other side of the moor I came across my only experience to date of the "glory", an optical phenomenon, as a quick burst of the sun behind me cast my image down on the clouds below me. This was a fascinating sight and I whiled away a couple of minutes waving my arms about in the air to amuse myself by seeing my effect in the "glory" (I'm sure you would too!).
I'd only just passed a couple above me by the rocky outcrop and in my excitement ran back up to them (where I got the energy from I don't know!), gasping: "Look! Quickly! [gasp] The [gasp] halo [gasp] effect!! Come down and have a look!"
I don't think they understood the rarity of this occasion. The wife started fiddling nervously with her belongings while the husband looked at me wide-eyed with his mouth gaping to show his half eaten sandwich, hand suspended mid-way to his mouth deciding whether to finish eating his sandwich or attack.
I left them to it and only realised later, after having fed and watered myself and relaxing in a hot bath to a clearer state of mind, that if I suddenly saw standing in front of me a large, drenched strapping chap with cropped hair who looked as though he hadn't washed, eaten or drunk for three weeks (being out in crap weather for 6 hours produces that effect) gibbering on about coming down to the edge of a precipice then I might become nervous too.
Apologies to that couple in the unlikely event you're reading this!
