Training Log Archive: Mark3

Up at 5:15am for the 7:15am chasing start. Straigtforward first few controls but passed after about an hour and 10 be the 2nd place team who'd started 8mins behind. They were moving much quicker than us so we didn't even try to stay with them; just hoped they'd get lost as we went up into the mist.

Due to the mist we opted for some pretty safe route choices as we wanted to preserve our position. Where we did choose to cut a corner it turned out to be very rough and slow going, and actually even safer would probably have been faster! But no nav mistakes today either so a really good weekend in that respect. Also Mark was moving faster than me today so clearly no lasting issues from yesterday.

Our split times don't tell a great story today - 4th - but on all the splits we were within a minute or so of the top teams and so that's why we did okay; but it was easy than yesterday and so we did relatively worse.

http://www.sportident.co.uk/results/2017/SLMM/stag...

Overall results were 2nd, 5 mins down:
http://www.sportident.co.uk/results/2017/SLMM/mult...
I think our day 2 performance was better, but so was everyone else's, only more so. Very pleased with our result, and thanks to Mark for coming out at short notice :)

Treated myself to some x-talon 225s with my leaving-present vouchers from work, and got myself a new survival bag to replace my suspect entirely Chinese branded one which passes kit checks but probably wouldn't actually keep you alive.

Owain injured, so Mark Ponsford drafted in with about 10 days notice (thanks for letting me borrow him Clare!). He came with the protestations that he'd been revising for ages and so that he'd be unfit, but I decided to ignore those :)

Also no-one else was available...

Mark did Carrock last year and I did Harter, so Kirkfell was two classes up me and one up for him. It's the second hardest after Bowfell... when we arrived and looked at the course lengths I was up for doing Bowfell but Mark wouldn't let us. Looking at the courses afterwards Bowfell did look quite a bit harder even though it wasn't that much further.

Determined not to make any nav mistakes on day 1, and this was a success for a change. Some suspect mapping led to a last minute decision to cut across a steep boulderfield on the map (gentle grassy slope with occasional rock on the ground) which gained us a lot of time although obviously we didn't know that at the time. Mark can take the credit for this decision; I gave him the choice to make but if on my own I'd probably have erred on the side of caution.

Despite me doing a forward roll and landing in a stream on the next 20 minute leg, we gained 10 mins here over the 2nd place team and at were 28 mins up at one point. We had one steep climb where I had to wait for Mark for 5 mins at the top, a good route choice leg where we ran quite a long way but it was easy/flat, and then another climb before the finish. Unfortunately Mark's legs gave out about 20 mins from the end and we had to stop a couple of times to stretch them out. But overall we did pretty well and ended the day in 1st and 8 mins up and so going out first in the chasing start. Certainly not where we expected to be!

The whole evening was rainy and miserable from 3pm-9pm unfortunately, which led to quite a lot of sitting in tents sheltering and wasn't very social. But it did stop later, and also the whole day of the race had been great weather, so can't complain too much.

Mark Bown suggested Expedition Foods as an alternative to Adventure Food and Extreme Food, so will try those next time. Also my Zippo was widely derided as being ridiculous (although I still think its great and far more reliable than those plastic things).

http://www.sportident.co.uk/results/2017/SLMM/stag...

C • You're welcome! 1

Yet another day with no exercise!

Dull packing.

Wrote some stuff about Jukola:
http://www.attackpoint.org/viewlog.jsp/user_13651/...

Vaguely tried to pack some house stuff although still pretty tired so it was a struggle. May have to miss the o tomorrow :( also my knee is still a bit sore and want to give it the max time to recover before Saunders as I don't want to do something bad to it. This is the last big thing I have planned before S6D - so I figure it can recover properly after this weekend :)

Saturday has caught up with me; feeling very tired today and every muscle in both my legs and arms is unhappy when asked to do anything!