I've logged in here a few times in the past. It started off with lifting, then MMA, then I went on to triathlon. It's been two years since my last triathlon, and since then I feel like I've finally settled into my sport - fellrunning. That's an English term for running up and down hills and mountains.

I've been a runner on and off most of my life, but only over the last few years, since getting into fellrunning, have I really stuck to it. I generally find running on the road, or on the flat at all, to get pretty boring. Being able to take my running into the mountains really brings it to life for me though. Getting out in places like this is what it's all about..........





Anyway, why am I logging? Well I've suffered with injuries quite a bit so this year was all about just getting out and enjoying my running. Now the season's almost over I want to make sure I don't just go into hibernation over the winter, and instead put the effort in to build both my endurance and speed up ready for my best ever season of racing next year. When I was doing the triathlon I was training pretty seriously, putting in 7-8 training sessions per week. Over the last few years though I'd be lucky if I've averaged 3 sessions/week. I think my endurance has actually improved, which I think has just come with a few years of sustained exercise. My speed has definitely declined though, so one of my main aims is to improve my speed over short distance, which should hopefully carry over onto the longer distance races. Basically this log is to keep myself accountable for my training, and make sure that I don't lapse into a winter of laziness.

To increase my speed I'm going to have to start putting in a lot more time on the flat, including some on the road. This sucks, but it's neccessary. Running in the mountains is very different to running on the flat because while it is extremely varied and often more difficult, you don't get the same training effect of just pounding out the miles. I'm going to make an aim of doing one 'long' road/flat run at least every two weeks (every week if I don't do a long run in the fells that week). I'm also going to start doing more interval sessions. I'm going to aim for one of these every week, mixing flat/hill/road/off-road.

My absolute number one aim is to not get injured, so I'm going to start building up my flat running/intervals fairly slowly.

My second aim is to get my flat 5k time back below 20:00. My PB was something like 19:11 about 2 years ago. I haven't run one for a long time, but I'd guess my current time is somewhere between 21:00-21:30. Next time I have a free Saturday I'm going to get down to Parkrun to test it out.

My third aim is a long-term one of setting PBs in races next year. Part of the problem with fellrunning is that every race is different so you can't do two races of the same length and compare the times. The only way of really checking your progress is by doing the same race twice. I have a decent list of races I've previously competed in, but the season only really starts around April, so I have plenty of time for this one.

He lives! I wonder about you from time to time.

Might as well log this weeks activity so far....

4th October

Ian Hodgson Mountain Relay

This was the second time I've run this for my club. It's an awesome event held in memory of a fellrunner that died tragically 30 years ago. The race is run over four legs, with two runners on each leg. It's great for getting large numbers of your club out in the hills all together. Last time I did the race a couple of years ago I was paired with one of the fastest runners in the club and spent 90 minutes being dragged over the mountains in almost zero visibility and horizontal rain - that race scarred me for life! This year however I was paired with a runner that was a bit slower so it was a lot more easy going and was more like a fast training run than a race.

I didn't wear my Garmin so here's an elevation profile stolen from someone else (someone who obviously didn't know the route too well as they did an extra little bit of climbing in the middle, there should only be one peak in the middle where they have 2 close together so they must have visited a summit where I just skirted round):



Official distance was 7.5km and 570m of climbing. It was a great course for me because it started higher than it finished, and I'm a descender way more than a climber.

And a couple of photos from the day.....

Heading up at the start:



And to add a bit of scale:



Coming into the finish (I'm on the right):




6th October

Nice easy run today, fairly flattish, some small hills, mixed road/trail, very easy pace. Approx 6km in about 32:00.

I haven't been wearing my Garmin at all because I'd stopped tracking my runs and just doing stuff to feel, but from now I'm going to start wearing it and logging properly again.


I'm doing a race on Saturday that's given as 21.1km and 1450m of climbing. It's a Lakes Classic (pretty much the gold standard of fell races) and is supposed to be extremely tough, yet a stunning race. I'm heading up tomorrow to recce the route. Although I know the area reasonably well, I don't know the route exactly and if the cloud is down there's a lot of room for navigational error so it's a good idea to check the routes of these races out before the race.

Hey Rusty! Yeah I just kinda gave up even visiting this forum when I stopped logging last time. You still riding?

nice to see you logging again, subscribed.

who are you in the final pic?

gl hf on saturday.

Hey Tron, thanks for following. I'm the one on the right in the pic.

7th October

Went for a recce around the route for Saturday's race, the Langdale Horseshoe.

20km, 1400m of climbing. The race is given as 21km, but these figures are always approximate, and we did miss out a bit at the end because we took the wrong path. We were out for over 4 hours, but Strava gives my moving time as about 3 hours as we had plenty of stops to check the map and work out the best lines, as well as a few stops for food. I actually think that moving time is underestimated as I was expecting to do the race in about 3hr, and we weren't pushing it hard today.

As expected it was a really tough route. Lots of hard climbing and lots of tricky terrain like boulder fields and bogs, and plenty of off-path running. It was one of the longest runs of the year for me and I was definitely feeling it towards the end, but it's not like I was having any real difficulty, I just couldn't have coped well with much more climbing. The most worrying thing though is that I've got to do it all again, but faster, on Saturday.

Elevation profile:



Me and my dog on the final summit:

That's bad ass!! I won't gripe about anymore crummy Florida hills!!

Cool sport. Don't make this log too good or my addictive personality will have me taking this **** up.

Hey, thanks for following! Does Florida even have hills? Edit - Just Googled it and see the high point of the state is just 345ft, wowzers!

Haha, maybe you should try it first and then see how you feel! Do you live in the UK?


Well I was sooo tired last night after getting back from that run. It really was as tough a route as you'll get. Just hoping that I can recover enough by Saturday to put in a decent performance. I'm just going to completely rest till then.

Nice to see you log again, I think I could totally get into this mountain running thing if only I had some mountains nearby.

Hi Nick. Yeah the lack of mountains is kind of a big issue! I have read plenty of stories of guys who've come up to the Lake District to do long distance challenges or even just a few races, and they've trained on the stairs in tower blocks or multi-story carparks.

Cool short film by Solomon about fell running in the Lake District and the people involved in it:

Yeah, Northern Ireland. I actually just did an endurance race this past weekend that included a pretty tough hill run - 1000ft elevation in 1.2 km. Safe to say I did not enjoy it.

That's a pretty decent climb for such a short distance. What race was it? I think there's a pretty active mountain running scene in Ireland so it wouldn't be too hard to scope out some routes and races.

Weather is looking decent for tomorrow which is a very very good thing! A route that I only vaguely know would be tough to navigate in low cloud, and there are some really rocky/bouldery areas that would be horrific in the wet. Just have to hope my legs have recovered from Wednesday's recce.

A race called FEARmanagh - 74km of cycling, running and kayaking. Doubt it's well known. The guy who won it by over 15 minutes, Robbie Bryson, is over 50, and apparently was (and clearly still is) a pretty sick fell runner in his day.

gl tomorrow.

10th October

Langdale Horseshoe Fell Race

Distance (as measured by Garmin): 19.6km
Time: 2:56:53

Wow that was tough, but really happy with my performance. Was hoping for <3h so to get a few minutes under is a great result. Definitely one of, the toughest races I've run, certainly the hardest this year.

Didn't get off to a great start when I smacked my knee into a rock on the first climb, so had that throbbing the whole way round. Was going pretty well the whole way, including an amazing first descent where I knocked out a 3:18 km split .

At the climb at around the 12km mark however my legs started to totally go to jelly. On the descent from there though I think a caffeine gel that I'd had started to kick in and I flew down to the bottom of the final climb. Going up Blisco to the last summit though I started to feel cramps in both my calves and my left quad. That wasn't good but by the time I got past the summit and started down again it seemed to be sorting itself out. Then I slipped and had a tumble on the descent. The natural tensing of my body as I fell just put my entire bottom half into a spasm and everything cramped up and left me in total agony. I had to stop for a minute to stretch out, and when I got going again things were still painful but it did slowly subside so I got a good sprint down the final descent that was a good steep path. When I hit the road for the final run-in though things just started cramping again and I hobbled into the finish with gritted teeth.

Things are painful now but it was well worth it, had a fantastic day out in the hills and really pleased with my performance. Unfortunately I don't think there were any proper photographers out on the course so no pics.

Edit: Here's a pic of where the race was. We ran the whole skyline that you can see plus a bit more that's off the photo. This isn't my photo!



Edit 2: Just cos I like putting pictures in, here's the satellite view of the route:

I did a fair bit of event photography last year (cyclocross races) and I think you could make some money at it - if you were out there *every time*. I don't think I'd clear a lot more than minimum wage, though, so I'd have to love it.

There is often a semi-professional photographer out on these races, but the whole thing is so low key that they don't even advertise that they're doing photos. Usually I have to visit the fellrunning forum and ask who the photographer was. There were a few people out taking pics, so hopefully one will be putting them up on a site somewhere.

I guess the problem with doing it seriously is that you're committed to going out up the mountains in all weathers. I can't imagine sitting there in galeforce winds and horizontal rain taking photos is much fun.

Managed to find a few pics from yesterday.....

About a kilometer in, just before the climbing begins:



I'm just about visible in front of the guy in red and white, on the second to last descent. The final summit is hidden by the hill in the foreground, but you can see the line of runners skirting that hill to head down to the col before climbing back up:



On the final descent, after my fall and with cramped up legs. At this point everyone's picking their own way down. The choice is to stick to the "path" which is muddy but smooth, or take on the long grass that's filled with hidden rocks:

Amazing. I kind of want to take a trip just to take pictures of it.

Way more participants than I would've thought.

This, looks fantastic!

It can be a pretty amazing sight at times. The first part of the first climb was up one side of a steep ravine, climbing about 400m. About 3/4 the way up I looked down and could just see a snake of runners going all the way to the valley floor, and the same ahead of me going up over the lip of the ridge. The main tourist track is on the other side of the ravine, and it must have been a hell of a sight for all the people that had just come out for a nice quiet walk in the mountains.

Yeah this race is one of the Lakeland Classics which is a series of 6 long standing, classic races, so it's one of those that people set their sights on and always gets decent numbers. Results aren't out yet but I reckon there were around 400 runners.

Unfortunately that's the last major Lake District race of the year. There are still a few others that I've got planned but not on that scale. I've no races planned now till next month so I'm going to get stuck into the training and try and get that 5k time down. I'm going to take it easy this week because running that route twice in four days last week will have taken a toll. My plan is to do some easy training starting tomorrow, then on Saturday get down to ParkRun and get my current 5k time, then spend the next few weeks doing some decent training with some long flattish runs and interval sessions.

For those that like the photos, here are a couple of great ones I found that were taken by yet another one of the amateur photographers out on the course. These guys are great, they'll go up and spend the whole day taking photos just to post them up for everyone to see. There was also a professional guy that I found who's pics were awesome, but he didn't frame me well enough to bother buying it imo.

This is what I was talking about on the first climb, although this is just a small section of the visible line of runners:



And I thought that the contrast in faces and posture is great in this one:

13th October

5.8km, 31:22

Very easy pace on a reasonably flat course (44m elevation). Felt surprisingly fresh after the weekends exertions.

I'm out up a local hill with my club tomorrow night for a fairly gentle run and then will try and get another flattish run in on Thurs or Fri before doing the 5k on Saturday morning.