Up on the fells

I followed up the seven miles with diarrhoea the other day with eight miles without it a day later. Bliss. Then came a weekend I’d not felt very confident about, not least because both days would see me up on the fells and, well, the weather has been a bit wet and windy lately. I needn’t have worried – about the weather anyway. The rain stayed away and the wind eased off a little.

First was the 23-mile Malhamdale Meander, which took me five and three-quarter hours, a quarter-hour of which was spent walking around in a small circle looking for a checkpoint that wasn’t there – it had been moved from the grid reference supplied. Pie and mushy peas and mince sauce at the finish more than made up for no one telling me – although I was still a little disappointed that the intended climb up the waterfall at Goredale Scar had to be re-routed because of the heavy rainfall.

Then on Sunday, a 32-mile recce run along what is supposed to be the ‘easiest’ section of the Lakeland 100, from Buttermere to Dalemain. ‘Easiest’ is relative, of course, and my southern softie calves, out of the habit of proper hills, would beg to differ. That I did it in seven and a half hours, on the back of 38 miles in the previous three days, would have been enormously encouraging – except for the fact that even 70 miles in four days is still 30-odd short of what I’ve got to do inside 40 hours in less than 11 weeks time.

With that thought in mind, I’ve decided to count Sunday’s recce run as an ‘event’ since it was an official run put on by the race organisers. So I’m now up to 433 miles, more than a fifth of the way there with, er, almost two fifths of the year gone.