After a winter of virus’, fatigue and more recently, (re-)torn muscles, finally we had a weekend of decent exercise. I wasn’t entirely sure whether my body would cope with re-running the route of the Three Trigs race around Cannock Chase, but there’s only one way to find out. It’s only 15 miles and we have been keeping fit recently… but just not by running. In fact I have become quite partial to cycling up our local slag heap and swimming miles in the pool!
The weather on Saturday was fabulous and, for Cannock Chase, the scenery was pretty nice.
I was slightly apprehensive about the distance; I wasn’t sure if I would get absolutely knackered or whether my calf would start to complain, but thankfully, neither of these things happened. On the other hand we were pretty knackered on our return, but that’s to be expected!
On Sunday I was keen to get some more training in, but given that my legs were aching from Cannock, I decided that a bike ride was a better option. Richard perceives bike riding as a means to get somewhere and not a way to enjoy a Sunday, so I had to bribe him with a pub stop halfway for lunch. In the end we chose a route that took us into Tamworth on the canal and then down to Kingsbury (to the pub), through the water park and then back across the undulating villages of Hurley and Baxterly. We cycled about 21 miles in total and even Richard enjoyed it in the end!
Ah yes – the normal R&R extreme distance running, even for a warm up.
Glad to hear you’re feeling up for the running again. 🙂
We were hoping for at least a little more time to be able to improve our running before you were back.
If Richard enjoyed the bike ride then maybe we can tempt you to a mountain biking day out?
However, it’s always a good idea to have a pint stop half way round a bike trip, so we’d have to find a trip that passed a pub.
I’ve only been mountain biking once – in the Thetford Forest! The ‘mountain’ was referring to the bike rather than the topography! I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it though. We would probably go mountain biking if we had mountain bikes and a desent bike carrier for the car…. so we would certainly be up for a day, as long as we could get hold of some bikes!
It pretty easy (and reasonably cheap considering the fact you are borrowing bikes worth something like £1000 in many cases) to hire bikes from Wheelbase (£12 I think), or shops at the trail head of either of the main Lakeland purpose built trails; North Face (Grizedale) and Altura (Whinlatter).
… and wheelbase sometimes let you trial a bike for free – there’s a demo/trial day on 2nd/3rd April.
There is the added benefit then of tea and cakes at the end (and at the beginning) at Wilfs… or, possibly even better, beer and beer at the Hawkeshead brewery.