It’s been a funny old period since Salomon 4 Trails – I kind
of have an “end of season” feeling.
I think its to do with the end of the heatwave and that a big event has
been done and recovered from that I find myself looking to winter races and
events for 2014. Only when I
really remind myself do I realise that actually I still have my biggest event
ahead of me. And in a matter of
days no less.
After we’d recovered sufficiently (or what we thought was
sufficiently, anyhow) we headed off to Switzerland to couple up a visit to
Andy’s brother, his wife and their baby with some mountain running. The former was lovely, especially
hanging out with Family Bruce at Zug lake in the 35 degree heat. The latter was not so much fun,
especially for poor Andy who was not as recovered as we’d have hoped. We planned a 20 mile run up the
Zugerbeg and Wildspitz but we hadn’t planned on it being 35 degrees. I really enjoyed the run but Andy
started to really feel it on the climb up and even after a lengthy break, coke
and carrot cake up the top, the descent wasn’t much better. But, glad we found that out so that
recovery could take precedence over anything else. He forewent the planned hill reps the following day and left
me to get on with them by myself.
I loved them (hike up, run down) but got some funny looks from a few
hikers that I must have passed 3 times on my rep. they looked like they were having trouble just getting up
once! And my motivation was the
massive buffet brunch planned for afterwards where I literally ate my own body
weight.
Our next trip was 2 weeks later, and 2 weeks before TAR, and
that was to visit our friend and 2012 Transalpine finisher Chris “Jenks”
Jenkins at his family home in Shrewsbury.
The plan was to hit Snowdon on day 1 for a 20 mile loop over the
mountain, then a shorter day on his local hills of Long Mynd the following day
for some hill reps. But Mother
Nature plotted against us and with rain and winds of up to 60mph at the summit
of Snowdon, we decided to forego the 90 min drive each way to spend 6 hours
being wet and buffeted about on a ridge and stick to the nearer, lower contours
of Long Mynd. I’ll admit that I
felt a bit cheated to be missing out on Snowdon and I didn’t think that the
hills of Shrewsbury would cut the mustard in terms of what I wanted to get out
of the weekend, which was to smash my legs in a bid to stave of the inevitable
quad pain that would develop in TAR.
Turns out I was very wrong about that. The hills there, although not as long as Snowdon, were
certainly plentiful and Jenks even added in what we named Banter Hill, because
he knew I wanted hilly. After
cresting this beast and bombing down the other side, I was shattered. I had to eat a bit of humble pie and
admit to the others that I had had enough hills for now and luckily they both
felt the same so we agreed to cut out the last loop of the run which would have
taken us down off the Mynd and back up again in a 4 mile loop. I was relieved, though momentarily
concerned at my fitness, or lack of, until it dawned on me that we all felt a
bit lethargic due to the 7 bottles
of red wine we sank between 6 people the night before. So with Andy’s headache worsening with each
footstep we were certainly glad to be running through town to the car at the
end of 16 miles.
The following day Jenks and his girlfriend hiked around Long
Mynd whilst Andy and I hiked up and ran down as many hills as we could in 90
minutes. It was a lovely day a
good weekend training and the DOMS in my quads for the next couple of days suggested
that the hill reps had done their job.
So now its mostly about recovery, rest and maintenance – a few easy runs, a couple
of gym sessions an maybe some hill reps this weekend, maybe not. I know there is nothing more I can do
to positively affect my race, but plenty I can do to negatively affect it so I
will, as always (and secretly wish I could do all the time!) err on the side of
caution and follow the less is more rule of thinking.
