Training and recce run - Coniston - Seathwaite - Boot - Seathwaite - Coniston

~28 miles, 6,400 feet of ascent

Yesterday John and I did the first two legs of the UTLD course - Coniston to Seathwaite, then Boot - and then back again.
This is probably the last long run (over ~15 miles) that I'll do before the event itself, and we had 2 objectives:

1. Nail the route, so that we know exactly what's coming, where to go, and what's coming up next
2. Crucially - what pace to take at the start. 

Later in the event, pacing is just whatever speed you're capable of, at the start it's important not to go too fast and burn yourself out. It's an ultra-marathon, not a marathon! So practicing race-speed on the terrain was really good.

The day was uneventful - see the Garmin trace for the route back below - but a couple of things stood out for me.
Firstly, the ground is really dry - and long may it continue. Especially where the route follows  Grassguards Gill beside Harter Fell, the last time we were here the whole route was absolutely bogging, I was even thinking of bringing a couple of carrier bags to put over my shoes....yesterday it was fine and a completely different animal as regards the progress we made.
Talking of progress, we made pretty good pace at 1:45 or so into Checkpoint 1 (CP1) at Seathwaite, and a bit quicker into CP2 at Boot. The fast boys & girls will be doing 1:15 and 1:05 or so....
Still that's a good pace, and it felt steady enough to keep going for the duration. Even the downhills felt fine, all that training running down Skiddaw has paid off!

Secondly I had a minor cock-up with the Garmin, which I'm glad happened yesterday and not on the event.. .
I'd set it to UltraTrac mode, which switches off the heart-rate monitor and drops the GPS position-sampling down to once a minute, although this is alterable. (This is to minimise power use, and is the only way to get the battery to last through the event. Garmin claim 50 hours run-time, which is plenty)
In the morning, having charged the watch up overnight (USB lead to the laptop), it was frozen at 01:25, so after googling around to find out how to hard-reset it (long press on the 'light' button), I got it working again.
Once we started off, it would run for 2 minutes (+/- one second, exactly) then freeze - although when I shifted screen to give time-of-day and then back to elapsed time, the elapsed time was still updating in the background. It was almost like doing an auto-lap every 2 minutes, and freezing having displayed the lap time.
This continued after a second hard-reset, and then when we got to Boot I re-started it in 'run' mode - ie no UltraTrac, and all worked fine - see trace below:

When I got home I found the problem...when I'd put it into UltraTrac, there's a screen that allows you to change the GPS sampling rate.....and I'd inadvertently set it to take a sample every 80:01:00 or 80 hrs + 1 minute.......I must have prodded the 'down button' twice,  and not noticed because a 0 and an 8 look very similar on a small screen...doh!
Whew, it's not going back to Cotswold Outdoor after all!

10 in 10 - event update

I did the 10 in 10 on saturday, on what became a blazing hot day in Borrowdale. What a great event!
It's 10 Cumbrian peaks in 10 hours, with the option of 5 peaks in 5 instead.

 
The 10 peaks are:

1. Castle Crag
2. High Spy
3. Dale Head
4. Grey Knotts
5. Brandreth
6. Green Gable
7. Seathwaite Fell
8. Allen Crags
9. Glaramara
10. Thornythwaite Fell

That's 16.2 miles and 6,841 feet of ascent (and descent, for that matter) according to the Garmin. I have to say the ascent felt harder - there are some steep 'ups' in there, including Honister pass up to Grey Knotts, and the un-pathed Seathwaite fell from Sty Head. Gruelling is the word....

Anyway, I headed off a bit after 6:30, and passed quite a few folks on the way up to Castle Crag, and then some more dithering about on the top. I headed straight on down to the Allerdale Ramble path, and found myself in front of a little group, with no-one else to follow. I and another lad headed up the gulley towards Rigghead Quarries, and I pulled out a lead, arriving on the High Spy- Dale Head ridge to see two ladies sitting by the path. They asked if I was doing the 10in10, and whe I said yes, they directed me towards High Spy - the 5in5ers were missing this peak out. I asked how many had come through, and the answer astonished me - "you're the first!".

Somehow I managed to hold the lead almost all the way to Honister, where the feed station (biscuits & tea...) hadn't even been set up yet.

I pressed on up the very steep climb to Grey Knotts, and between this summit and Brandreth a fellow in singlet and shorts breezed past me as though I was walking. He later turned out to be Stuart Booth, veteran fellrunner and champion of the Borrowdale fell race something like 10 years in a row.....

There was a right party going on on top of Green Gable, typical of the brilliantly-marshalled event. We (Alfie the Puggle and me) headed on to Seathwaite Fell, then towards Allen Crags, where my companion up the Rigghead gulley caught me up. We stayed together over the 4 false summits of Glaramara, then the drop down into Rosthwaite was a relative anti-climax. Lyn (Keswick AC) caught us on the descent, taking a far better line and with an elegance and pace that I just couldn't match.
So I breezed (ok, shuffled at pace) into Rosthwaite at 6hrs 11, in 5th place of a non-competitive event, if you don't count the dogs!

The best bit came the day after, when Liz swam in the Derwentwater open water swim; a friend saw someone else wearing a 10in10 t-shirt (very nice BTW, thanks Berghaus!) and asked about it. The guy was gobsmacked by my 6hrs finish, having taken 13hrs himself. It's the little things that make it all worthwhile...!!!!
(I have to say that 13 hours in that heat must have been heroic; far harder than what I did!)

Just to put my ultra-running efforts into context.....

Have a look at Steve Birkinshaw's attempt to beat the 27-year old record to cover all 214 Wainwrights here.

Given the distance, the terrain, the ascent/ descent - and that the record is held by none other than the great Joss Naylor, this is an astonishing attempt and one that puts my paltry efforts to shame!

Do have a look at Steve's site, and support him!

Placeholder - 10 in 10 event

I've got an entry for the 10in10 - 10 Cumbrian peaks in 10 hours, raising money for MS. It's nominally a walking event with around 300 entrants, but it's also about the same distance as my usual weekly long run, albeit with a lot more ascent & descent - so I'm regarding it as a training event for the UTLD100.

It will also be a longer duration test of my new Garmin Fenix2, which I'll use to record the event in due course.

So event writeup and Garmin stats to follow!

A new toy.....Garmin Fenix2

I just got a great new toy - Garmin's updated Fenix GPS watch, the Fenix2.

Calling it a GPS watch is a bit of an understatement, it has so much capability it's hard to know what to call it.
You could equally well call it a compass, a barometer, a training tracker, or even a smart-watch, since it can show notifications from an iOS phone - texts, who's calling on your phone, calendar notifications etc.
Needless to say I haven't scratched the surface of its capabilities, nor do I expect to. I don't care about tides, and I'm not likely to be taking up military free-fall parachuting any time soon. Both are catered for by the Fenix.

For the full details, and an object-lesson in how to a) do a product review and b) focus a blog, I can't match DCRainmaker's writeup.

However, the Fenix2 does do a couple of key things very well, and adds some coolness on top.

Key things first:

1. The battery lasts for around 50 hours when GPS is set to sample at once a minute, which is plenty sampling. This is key for an event where I'm expecting to be going for 36-40 hours.
2. Heart-rate monitoring included in the data capture, so you can analyse your training with the full range of GPS data - location, elevation, speed - and heart-rate overlaid. 
3. Very simple setup, with auto-lap available. I use this set to 1 mile, then get a beep at each mile point with a per-mile pace for that mile shown. This shows me when I'm speeding up or slowing down. 

Unexpected coolness:

1. Easy upload to PC/ iOS device, via cable or bluetooth, with all data available on Garmin Connect...
2. ....which I can then share with anyone/ everyone/ no-one using....
3. ...Twitter...
4. ....RSS feed....
5. ...and with either of the above embedded in my blog/ fundraising site

So on synching my watch to my laptop, I can publish each new training activity (or event for that matter), and anyone following my via blog or twitter can see what I'm up to.

I have no idea if anyone else will find this useful......do let me know!