The week has been wet, very wet, and Saturday morning dawned damp looking. Climbing was clearly off the agenda. So with the Rab Mountain Marathon getting scarily close and our lack of running fitness becoming a real worry we thought we’d try a fell-run with a bit more ground to cover, and a lot more elevation to tackle … Helvellyn. Personally, I find running on its own quite dull, so we thought we’d also spice the run up a little by finding a few more letterboxes on route. Doubly good value of course as it makes the run a little bit more in the style of a mountain marathon. In fact we like to think it’s harder as the controls are hidden, whereas they have handy white and red orienteering markers in a MM (that’s right isn’t it Rachel/Richard?).
The first section from Glenridding is so steep we couldn’t run – we simply walked as fast as we could until the gradient relented. Even so we burned all the walkers off with ease – so the sweat pouring from my brow was well earned. However, as we reached the section of fell before the ridge gathers itself together to form the brilliant Striding Edge we got slammed with the wind, drizzle, and low cloud. Suddenly this was turning in to a great adventure! π
Here’s today’s haul of Lakeland Letterboxes:
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And one final item of interest – I’ve got this amazing Nike+GPS App on my phone that tracks route (with GPS), time, pace, calories burnt, etc. I’m finding it to be an awesome training aid, giving me a continuous feeling of progression (or lack of). It was only Β£1.49 and it retains all the data to look back at old runs etc. Plus, if you want you can have it automatically Tweet or post to Facebook. π Cool. Here’s today’s route.
Series - Lakeland Letterboxes
- Lakeland Letterboxes
- Letterboxing and Flammkuchen
- Navigation Practice
- Three More Sunny Days
- Grizedale Letterboxing
- Wansfell Letterbox
- More Grizedale Letterboxes
- Helvellyn Letterboxes
- Martindale Letterboxes
- Coniston Coppermines Letterboxes
- Walna Scar Road
- Summer Evenings
- Letterboxes, Birthdays, Climbing Wall & eBay star
- Charmer’s Grave
- Lingmoor Tarn
- Holme Fell Scramble and Letterboxing
- Barrow Door Letterboxing
So what is your record from Glenridding car park to the summit? We walked it in 1:20 once but haven’t tried runing it (yet).
[Tish: isn’t Pete sexy in his Max Wall lookalike tights??!!? :yum: π π ]
but the legs of the tights look joined to each other from the top down to the knee…
Well, thanks to that fancy Nike+ app I can accurately report that we reached the summit in 1:13:44. Which I’m quite pleased with ‘cos that includes a wee stop for Tish at the Glenridding camp site, rain, wind, cloud, about 10 minutes finding and recording the Striding Edge letterbox, and slipping and sliding but surviving the traverse of the edge itself.
As for the comments about my legs! π³ :angry: I upgraded my Ron Hill leggings for these just a few weeks ago, they were cheap and are much more comfortable for running – but you’ll never see me wearing them at the crag… Hmm, perhaps the joined-to-the-knee feature is why I’m so slow? π
Rachel is right, it looks like you are wearing a pencil skirt. Do you point your arms out at right angles to your body when you run β
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