Tuesday 17 June 2014

Beacon Batch Fell Race, a pint of Doombar and a bag of chips


On a balmy midweek adventure Team Bath made a raid to the Mendips to try our luck in the Beacon Batch fell race.

It's never nice having to try super hard from the gun and with this 5mile course being the shortest by a good 8miles that I had ever put a race number on for, I knew it was going to be a right old lactic acid festival.

2.5miles up, 1 mile flat and then 1.5miles to drop like a stone to the start.


Nervous runnners anticipating the 300% heart rate spike
 
There had been some top Team Bath banter in the car with the insatiable Andy Mullett on the way over. With the threat of worsening piss taking on the way back, and forfeiting a pint and chips in the pub I decided I better put on a good showing.

The hard and fast and relatively short distance event that is Fell Racing is a predominantly Northern spot. This is because Northeners are generally hard. Fast as well. Yes and maybe short works too.

And once we were off it didn't fail to prove anything less than the body mutilating exercise I imagined it to be. Elbows are used in this event as bargaining tools to crowbar yourself into a marginally preferable water gunnel on the single track byway we started up. Views are not savoured; they are slobbered over. Descents are not a rest; you must fall down them.

We gathered in the TBAC troops at the finish line and gave a rousing cheer to our successes before toasting them further at the prize giving where I picked up a nice little bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon for my second placing. Tom took the much more topical prize of a football for his strong showing and 1st V60. New heights of inappropriateness were had on the return journey from this successful raid and it was late Tuesday night that we arrived home to fall asleep thinking about being proper fell runners; to one day compete  in such revered races as the Grasmere Senior Guides fell race where they run so fast downhill that they vault the dry stone walls.... Drifting off. Counting them as they come. One Northern hard man. Two Northern hard men....Three Northern hard men....Four............

BEACON BATCH FELL RACE 17 JUNE1 0:34:03 POTTER, Adam BrisOC JM
2 0:35:18 MAYNARD, Matthew TBAC SM
23 0:41:40 HUTCHISON, Tom TBAC V60
51 0:46:12 WATSON, Nick TBAC V50
60 0:48:00 MULLETT, Andy TBAC V50



Sunday 15 June 2014

A week on the run - Sardines for breakfast

Monday


I have less than 6 weeks left until the Lakeland 50. Ever since the Mallorca Ultra I have been putting my feet up really and this week I decided that, if I am going to give it a go in the Lakes, then it's now or never.  To get the sessions in I took full advantage of the commute to work run. I am increasingly appreciating the pleasures of this at the moment. In understanding the satisfaction of the commute to work run, the folowing formula is vital:

Time lost to running = normal commute time - running commute time.

In other words, the only commitment of time spent running is that spent over what you would normally have spent sucking on someone else's exhaust fumes in traffic. In some urban instances I can imagine that this time could be close enough to 0mins!
 
Anway.....Monday's run was a good blast over the Cotswold hills from Bath via the long distance footpath, up to Kelston Round Hill and then a fantastic steady descent from the ridge to North Stoke with views to the south of the Avon and the Mendips beyond. I arrived for that endorphin drenched shower just in time. I then rushed into a 8:30 meeting to discreetly see my way through a tin of recovery sardines and rub the welts from stinging nettles that were just coming up nicely.

Tuesday
 
Celebrating James' bday at the Pultney Tavern
Tuesday was track night! After a nice little warm up with the kids at school at Athletics Club and then a balmy ride home on the route 4 to Bath it was up to the club for some speed! 24 x 100m reps in 4 sets of 6, with 3 minutes rest, and 100m jog ons between each 100m within the set. Blimey. Then it was Paul King's core class which is always a big gurning session. After this we needed cake and lots of it. That's my big training tip for this post really...oh and to take advantage of 2for1 night on food at the Pultney Tavern on the road that the Bath Half starts on. 2 portions of seafood linguini and a pint of Otter- bosh!
 
Wednesday - is double day!

I hadn't run a double for over two months and so I took a pretty straightforward 10k route along the canal path to work and then back home again. Some tightness in the achilles after all that springting last night but it felt good to be clocking up the week's miles and drifting along with the pollen seeds in the pre 7am coolness.
 

Hot air balloon top left and Keynsham  village church barely visible right of shot on the horizon
 
Thursday
 
Just the usual bike commute to work. Gotta get that balance right!
 
Friday
 
Homeward bound on Friday - Kelston Round Hill in my sights top left of shot
 
Ran a solid double today starting with a really fresh morning session through the wheat fields. Explorative shoots of brambles and ferns are trying to build bridges across all the footpaths at the moment. The scratches they leave are worth it for the variety they provide to otherwise tame footpaths. Popping out of one of these verdant tunnels I run into some rowers who are getting their boats out of the water at Saltford. They too are rife with that early morning post exercise glow. I loop around on the way home to take in two good Cotswold climbs: up to the Roundhill first and then down to Wooley before climbing up to Little Solsbury Hill via Swainswick.  I clock 55 miles by the end of Friday with plans to push it out to 70+ at the weekend.
It's suprising that Strava says I got so much in. But those work miles are really the way forward I think. You definitely stick it to the man like this. Just don't let on to him how much you are enjoying yourself!




Wednesday 4 June 2014

The last time I watched the oggle box....


 
My fake ID arrived in late 2002. Thereafter I became 2 ½  years older and, for a short time known at some doors in SE London as ‘Matt Blackwood’ – but more on that later. The Friday night before it arrived however, I would have watched my last evening of telly for a very long time.
 
Robot Wars followed the Simpsons back then at about 8 o’clock. Red Dwarf next, then Never Mind the Buzzcocks and finally Have I got News for you. If I could feign interest through this last one then I would sometimes be rewarded with 30 minutes of unadulterated ‘Eurotrash’ titillation once the parents had gone to bed. GTA Vice City had just come out on the PS2 and if the night’s entertainment could still not satisfy a 16year old’s hot blood lust, a killing spree in Downtown Miami followed by some pixilated simulated backstreet sex in a comically bouncing Buick would round events off nicely. Yes, that was probably how it went down the last night that I stayed in and watched television.
However for more than a decade now I have, until recently at least, led a clean living, non-television owning, bike riding, X-Factor scorning, right on hippy lifestyle with broad brush assumptions about the kind of people that spend their lives glued to the idiot box. Before the downward spiral began, a  forthright friend of mine remarked how he can tell he'll get on with someone if “they don’t own a telly” - and I probably laughed. It is a mystery therefore how I went from an irregular and recreational user of Net Flicks, to a Breaking Bad junky; looking for a hit at any given hour of the day or night.
I have been clean for about 48 hours now – but not through any self-control – I just got to the bottom of the season 5 barrel.. So why did I end a ten year televsion fast for Breaking Bad? I think its because it's got that voyeur element of computer games and late night soft porn. Walter White is that Everyman character who cuts loose in a way that we would do  if we were less morally scrupluous....or spent less time watching TV.