Short and sweet!

Good afternoon

I hope you are fit and well.
An attempt on the shortest blog ever!
My laptop is playing silly buggers and although I have had a week off, I have achieved very little, so a swift one it is.

Cooking on gas.

The Youngster has been busy with Guides and I had my tea cooked for me on Monday night, which was very nice 🙂

Duddon Short?

An 11th hour decision, like all my races this year!
Duddon was fun as I travelled with the club and had a vanful of P&Bers with me for company.
(Diesel prices have curtailed a lot of racing/training this year, more of that later on). Always good to car share and always good to catch up.
Duddon Short is a bit of a misnomer, as it is 10 miles long. Duddon Long conversely is not that long (for a long), as it is only 18 miles, but they are very different beasts, sharing only the last bit from Dow Crag onwards.
The “short” is more like a 1/2 orienteering race, half fell race, but clear (perfect in fact) conditions meant no navigational errors (more of that later), until the very, very last 1/2 mile, where I took the worst line in the history of worst lines and lost half a dozen places, but, got round, job done!

Diesel…

Without getting all political, whilst only being 1 of 1644 billion motorists, all of whom have been affected by fuel prices of late…

Or the flush!

My poor van must have been sucking up a lot of bottom of the tank crap as I have been constantly on reserve, putting a tenner in and the needle not really moving!

Apart from one “too close to payday for comfort” top-up when I was lost in my daydream world and came round to the pump clicking at £111.43
I glanced at the truck next to me who had put in £990 worth of DERV in, so I felt momentarily better.
It has just meant picking and choosing and justifying journeys more, which maybe isn’t a bad thing!

Ennerdaled

Again, I was umming and ahhing about this one until the very last minute.
Seeds of doubt sprouted a giant beansprout of doubts. I had only had 2 runs of this distance since last July and only a handful of shorter races under my belt. The forecast was sketchy. It would also mean a “there and back in a day” (4hr drive, 6hr race, 4hr drive), but the season was not going to stop for me not being ready/fit for it!

The Ennerdale Horseshoe isn’t really a horseshoe. It starts at the bulbous end of the lake, scrambles up Great Borne, up and over Red Pike, Green Gable, Kirk Fell, Pillar, Haycock, Iron Crag and Crag Fell.
23 miles and 7500ft-ish (36km/2290m) of up and down.

The Long Lakes “Classics” are a series of races including Duddon, Ennerdale, Buttermere, Wasdale, Borrowdale, Three Shires and Langdale.
Long Lakes races.
20 years ago they were dying on their ar$es, but the introduction of “The Lakes Classics trophy” and a running boom in general means they are way more popular nowadays.
These are races that generally require a “recce” or two and some quality training on them to do any good. As I had run Ennerdale 6 times I wasn’t too worried about getting lost (famous last words) but my glaring lack of fitness (from lack of training) would bite my arse, as would the weather.

All was going ok until about Blackbeck Tarn, then disappearing into the pea soup “clag” hill fog made things a bit trickier. These races are not marked, GPS is not allowed and they are not entirely on footpaths, so I was using a “fence” line on the map (and in my head, but not actually on the ground in real life) as a navigational “guide rail”, to stop me going too far to the east. Unbeknown to me at the time, that particular part of fence existed but only in the form of fenceposts, strung out 20m apart, so unless I struck it lucky and hit the actual fencepost, I would go too far east, as I did…

Brandreth summit wasn’t on the route, but I still visited it!

When I eventually found myself, and other human life in the murky gloom, I had lost 30mins, almost lost my head and lost a lot of places, but if you bale at Green Gable you still have a 10 mile walk of shame along the valley bottom, so I had some more carbs and soldiered on. Thankfully the fog lifted and I was running ok, but then I dropped my guard (despite having the bearing pre-set) taking a shocking line off Kirk Fell, then (despite having the map and compass out) took an even worse line off Pillar, so it was a comedy of errors.

I ran the rest of the route with Tania and Amy, the last 6 miles are a piece of cake, if your legs are still working, which mine weren’t!

Thank you to Stephen Wilson for the pic!

Got round, lessons learned!
Time for a rethink…

Raiders round-up

Currently lying third in the league, with good wins over Sheffield Eagles and Workington, the mighty Raiders are pleased to announce the signing of local lad Brad Singleton, coming home from Superleague back to Barrow.
With a lot of experience at Leeds, Wigan, Wakefield, Salford and Castleford, the Shipbuilders are hoping the experienced forward will have a similar effect to that which Jamie Rooney had!

COYR!!!

And finally…

Whilst chatting with 2 friends at Duddon, who know their music, about music, I became aware of a band that I have never heard of, living in the social media/news/world in general vacuum bubble that I live in.
Described by Dave Grohl as “Completely bonkers”, this French-Canadian/Canadian-French two-piece went viral over the video below.
Although the humble Brudenell Social Club in Leeds is not Wembley, it is a good judge of how popular a band is. There were 6000 people on the waiting list! They could have done an Elvis-in-Vegas 15 night stint!

Being a huge Vic & Bob fan, this duo could have been dreamt up by them, but there are some very subtle musical nuances, the double neck guitar has extra frets, making new notes, “microtonal” notes.
And, they dress up!