It's almost flat, along the sea front. There are a few ramps where you have to change level from one promenade to another but it's essentially a flat race. I think the problem I'm going to face will be the wind. It's a notoriously windy area at the best of times, but it's unsettled atm and so is likely to be pretty blowy out there.

The course has changed a few times but last year it was two short loops in one direction, then two longer loops in the other direction. That's probably better than just one loop because we get constant changes in the wind rather than running into it for half the race non-stop.

Just seen my entry for the Ben Nevis race has been accepted. It's a massively over-subscribed race so you just have to send your entry form in and hope you make it.

I got in last year for the first time but pulled my calf the weekend before so had to miss it.

The race is in September, and it's 8.7 miles with 1350m of climbing, straight up and down Britain's highest mountain from almost sea-level (hence the biggest single climb you can do in the UK). It's an absolute classic of a race, held in high regard amongst fell runners and for some reason it's always been a favourite of my club. This year it looks like we've got 11 runners, which is a fairly high turnout for such a small club.

Heh, that's about as many feet of climbing as I'll usually see in a moderately hilly 100 miles, or a fairly hilly 60ish miles. That's nuts.

Yeah from all the tales I hear from people that run it (lol "run") it's supposed to be a mega tough race. It'll be something like 1:30 to the top, then 40m back down. That's 90 minutes of steep climbing and I'll have covered about 4.5 miles. That's the same time I'm expecting to run 13.1 miles on the flat this weekend!

The closest race to this that I've done is the Skiddaw race. That's also straight up, straight down, and it's over the same distance, but "only" 820m of climbing. That race is tough enough but the thought of getting to the summit of Skiddaw and doing another 500m is a pretty sickening thought!

Would the effect of altitude be much nearing the top of Ben Nevis? I know it's not as high as what people would typically go to for specific altitude training, but I assume there's at least some effect.

I guess you wouldn't even notice anyway - you'd be ****ed after 90 mins of climbing, whether the air is thinner or not.

Haha yeah. A guy from my club did it last year on not much training and he said he couldn't even remember getting to the top because he was so ****ed! Whether there is any altitude effects, I'm not sure, but I'd guess not. There may be some small effect, but not really noticeable.

looked at a few videos of the ben navis race, nice! and good luck for the HM!

i also plan do to some mountain races myself over the summer. http://www.lodrino-lavertezzo.ch/ind...d=70&Itemid=76 seems like a great option. it looks awesome, from one valley to the one next to it over a steep mountain pass. very low-key. but tough! http://www.lodrino-lavertezzo.ch/ind...d=73&Itemid=77


you mean in your bike rides, right?

vertical kilometers are becoming increasingly popular in switzerland. the steepest one is 1k climbing in 1.92km distance. and the course record is a mind boggling 29'42.



i plan to run one (just the strava segment, not the race) to benchmark myself for the future

probably the hardest (short) race here is the niesenlauf, it's along furnicular tracks, 1669m elevation in 3.4km for a whooping 49% average grade (up to 68% max).

not my kind of terrain, but the views during the race are still awesome.

(it's not my intention to "one up" ron. i just thought of those two when i saw the talk about steepness)

the effect will be minimal imho. afaik about 1500m is the absolute minimal altitude needed for an added training effect, but 2500m+ is better. so even though air pressure is already down to 85% of sea level, the body can still function nearly normal at 1500m. and we're not talking about exercising 5hours at this altitude, it's just "a moment".

I really want to run up ****! But I'm training for a stupid road marathon right now, so would be kinda at odds with that. It's on in the summer time tho.

Ty sir! Looking forward to getting it out of the way so I can get on with more hill running, just hope I can perform to potential on Sunday.

Why not do the race? Nothing to lose (except your lungs!). There's a VKm race in Scotland this year as part of the Skyrunning series, but it's a long way to drive for one race, especially as it's just a few weeks after the Ben Nevis race which is like a 6-7 hour drive each way.

That looks utterly nuts. Would definitely like to have a go at something like that one day.


Haha you're not one-upping me. It's Europe one-upping the UK. We just don't have the terrain here to get too much stuff like that. It'd be impossible to do a vertical KM in England for example as our highest mountain is 978m.




Road training will still help by building a great aerobic base, then you will just need to adapt your training to get used to the climbing.

niesenlauf is instantly booked out every year (they only allow 200 total entries). and the fully VK is too far away (it's only 3.5h by public transport, but that's faaaaaar for switzerland. nearly across the country, hehe).
but because it's not really a race (unless you're super elite), but much more an individual time trial anyway, i'm happy with just benchmarking myself at a closer-to-home VK segment (and at one that's always accessible). and i mean, a nice trail race is just a lot more interesting than a super steep straight up VK where you just look at the ground while walking at lactate treshold for ~60 minutes of straight pain.

i assume you're talking about glen coe, right? an acquitance of my hometown is "running" it this year (the trailrace, not the VK).

definitely too exposed for me atm. (i'm getting my feet wet in light mountaineering, but not ready for something like that yet). but otherwise, wow, looks amazing.


not europe, just the alps. but i really can't imagine a more perfect country for outdoor stuff (as long as your earn swiss wages)

Yeah it's part of the Glen Coe weekend. There's a VK, the Glen Coe Skyline race and a half distance one. Looks like a pretty awesome weekend of racing, but it's just too far to travel for me really, especially when the Lake District is only 1-1.5hr away and there are plenty of quality races there.

So tomorrow is the HM and this is the forecast....



This is gonna suck.

Having done plenty of fell races in awful weather, it's not the fact that it's windy and cold and wet that bothers me, it's more the fact that the idea of this race is to perform to peak potential, with very specific pacings. I'm not sure how the wind will affect my pace but I'm sure it will slow things down - whether that's by a significant amount or not I'll find out in the morning I guess.

A bit of research tells me I could easily drop 5 minutes off my goal time with this wind, which really sucks. Ah well, there are always more races, and at least I'd be guaranteed to set a PB in the next one I run after tomorrow!

What time are you starting? Looks like between 6-8 won't be too awfully bad.

11

Unofficial time 1:31:50

Not the time I wanted but under the conditions I'll take it. Man that wind was brutal. Will post up more later or tomorrow. Just about to smash a Nando's!

congratz! it's still a very strong time even though you missed the goal.
i looked at your splits on strava, the wind effect is just ridicolous. 4min pace with the wind, 4:50 against it, lol

21st February

Great Northwest Half Marathon

1:31:51 - 57/1173

It was pretty clear from the forecast the night before that no records would be set, and on the day, Blackpool sea-front in the middle of February didn't disappoint. The best we could hope for was a side wind that wouldn't impact speed quite as much, but no it was howling at about 40-50mph almost directly down the promenade.



The route started off as two short laps. After reading up on pacing strategy I was very conscious not to go off fast. The advice I'd read was that the pace should actually feel boring for the first few miles so I was ready for this, however shortly after starting I looked at my watch and it said 3:45/km pace. I did actually feel like I was running very slowly so thought maybe my GPS was out, but I made an effort so slow myself down but it still kept reading 3:50-3:55. At this point the runners were still in a pretty big pack so the wind wasn't having an effect. Annoyingly the race was marked in miles, which I'm not familiar with, but I did know that 4:15/km pace was about 6:50/mile pace, and at the one mile marker I got the confirmation that I had indeed gone out too fast because I hit it at about 6:20. I still felt absolutely fine though, low heart rate, not really breathing heavily and able to converse with the runners around me.



By the time we turned around for the second short lap the field had thinned a bit and the wind was having more of an effect. I managed to fall in with a pack and hide behind them for a bit of shelter which seemed to help a lot. From the turnaround point we then had about 5k to run directly downwind on the first of the two long laps. All the way down I was looking at my Garmin and seeing my pace hovering around 4:00-4:05/km. My target pace was 4:15/km to get me in just under 1:30, and although I knew having the wind behind me was helping, I still felt great and was actually pretty optimistic. I knew I'd slow down once I turned back into the wind, but I was gaining a ton of time on my target. Then I turned back......

Wow. When you're running downwind you barely feel anything and don't really notice too much that there's a wind assisting you. When you turn directly into a 40-50mph headwind, you notice it! My pace immediately dropped to about 4:50/km. At first I was running on my own but I worked hard to catch some guys in front of me to run in a pack with them and negate a bit of the wind.



I stuck with these guys till the turnaround point then managed to put a bit of a spurt on and left them behind on the final downwind leg. My pace was back down to 4:05/km all the way but on the last turnaround the wind had picked up even more and I was completely on my own with no shelter. It was a weird feeling to be running on pretty flat ground as hard as I could and barely managing 5 minute kilometres.



That final upwind leg was pretty brutal but I pushed it pretty hard into the finish for a time of 1:31:51. Not the time I hoped for but given the conditions I'm very happy with it. I was gaining 10s/km on the downwind legs, but losing upto 50s/km on the upwind legs, so I'm very confident that on a calm day I would have easily come in under 1:30, and will do sometime soon.

A couple of issues. Almost immediately on stopping running my left knee tightened right up. It's an ITB problem that I've had in the past and pretty sure I know how to deal with it, it just means it's going to be sore for a few days at least. My right foot is also pretty sore today. I've felt a bit of soreness on and off over the last few weeks, but it's now pretty painful to walk on at times. Hopefully all this will be fine with a few days rest though.

Final thoughts are that I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would. I was dreading racing for that long on the flat, but it was actually a good experience. A huge difference between this and fell racing is that I was feeling very comfortable for about the first 40 minutes (and probably more if I hadn't had to turn into that wind). In a fell race you're immediately running uphill so you hit that lactate threshold straight away, even on long races, and you spend a lot of time dipping in and out of the red-zone. I kinda liked the 'easy' first half of this race, knowing that I was saving myself for the effort at the end. The fell racing season proper starts in about 6 weeks so my efforts will be going into that now, but I'm definitely going to look at doing another HM at some point in the year when I can fit it in. I'm considering it unfinished business, at least until I can get under 1:30.

Awesome trip report!! Sounds like some crazy ass weather to be racing in...I'm sure you would've easily crushed 1:30 otherwise.

Thanks! After spending so much time running in the mountains and experiencing all conditions, I thought my TR for this race would be something along the lines of "set off at 4:15/km pace, ran 13.1 miles, finished".

I forgot the best part of the race was a mother telling her daughter before the race "we'll be here a bit longer than we planned because Daddy thought he'd signed up for a 10k but it's actually a half marathon", lol! Poor guy came in last male and looked thoroughly miserable on the professional photos, but good on him he got out there and did it when it'd have been so easy to back out. Have to give him respect for that.

I'm having a couple of days off. My knee is feeling way better today. My foot's still hurting a bit but it's nothing major, just a dull ache. Legs are still stiff and heavy though. Will get out tomorrow, either the normal Wednesday club run, or more likely an easy flat run in the morning.

Back to it....

24th February

5.3km, 30:00

Nice easy run to get the stiff legs moving again. Felt pretty good but hamstrings are pretty tight. The foot and knee problems I had after the race seem fine now.

It's time to start thinking about stepping my training up to the next level. I've just checked my stats for this year and I've averaged 43.4km/week (27 miles). That's not terrible but there's plenty of room for improvement. I'd like to up that to closer to 60km/37 miles.

Things I need to do...

1) Get volume up to regular 60km weeks.
2) Fewer rest days. Instead of rest days I can be doing 5-8km easy paced runs as these will have very little impact on my body.
3) Get up early as much as possible to fit the run in before my day starts. This will help getting volume in because I won't run out of time during the day.
4) Add in more speed work in the form of intervals or tempo runs. If I have limited time in the morning I can still fit in a 10k run that includes 5k at tempo pace.
5) Get on the hills.

What's your Strava profile link? Or would you not want randoms off 2+2 following you? I'd completely understand.

PM'd you as don't really wanna put my name in here

25th February

8.9km, 43:26

Ran up to the nearby university campus and did a fast lap of the perimeter road, which is about 3.3km in length and has a dip and a climb back up at one point. I'd decided to do it because it was a Strava segment that I thought I could win, but I went the wrong way round one part of it so missed out on that.

Still, I made a new segment for the route I took, and I did the 3.3k in 13:18 which was about 4:00/km pace. I wasn't racing really but I was going pretty hard, so I think that Sunday's race is still in my legs because I would have expected easy 3:45-3:50/km pace.

I'm definitely going to try and do more of this kinda stuff on my morning runs, mixing in speed work even if I don't have much time.