Sunday 29 March 2009

I KNOCK 10 MINS OFF MY HILLY 23 MILE TRAINING ROUTE!

MY TRIBUTE RUN TO ARTHUR LYDIARD, 23 MILES, 2,329 ft OF CLIMBING

Sat 28th
I headed for the hills, for some serious high mileage training! The nearest hilly area to me is
Parbold some 14 miles away from where I live, last year I'd been doing hill runs right through until the end of last summer! This was my first Arthur Lydiard type mountain run of the year!
I traveled down on my motor scooter and by the time I'd parked up my feet and legs were numb with cold!
Setting off from PARBOLD I was straight onto the first climb, and man I was really struggling to get going ! I reached the top after over a mile and had thoughts in my head to cut the run short! Next was a long downhill before the notorious HUNTERS HILL, I still wasn't feeling warmed up even after tackling the super steep Hunters hill, maybe wearing shorts on a day when the temperature was only 45 f and the wind was hitting 20 mph was not such a good idea!
Now I was running downhill along stony lane, using Jack
Nirensteins running method really let me fly down the road hitting 13.5 mph.
I was starting to feel better now, just as well because the 2 mile climb up
Ashurst beacon was my next challenge, I soon got into a rhythm and before I knew it I was over the top and zooming down the over side, I now had quite a few miles of narrow country lane between me and the next target Crank hill.
I was motoring along the country roads and was soon on the tortuous Crank Hill [ almost like a mini Alps the road twists and turns through over hanging trees] trying not to over do it [after all this is a very long run] I run within my limits up the climb hoping to pick up speed on the next downhill.
I make it over the top, catch my breath and charge onwards down the next descent, my Quads are aching now, I've not done much hill work for a long time and every time I go downhill the pain gets worse!
Two more climbs to go the first one starts easy enough, you just think your at the top and you go round a corner and there it is a bloody great wall to climb, bastard! gets me every time.
The final climb is up the side of
Ashurst Beacon again but from a different side, past quaint little cottages in the Forrest, at last I'm at the very top, 2 miles downhill to go, this would be very nice except sharp pains go through my Quads each step downhill, I block out the warning signals and hurtle on regardless.
I make it back to
Parbold, knocking 10 mins off my best time and despite the freezing 20 mph wind! Elevation Profile
I ran this course twice last August as training for the ANGLESEY MARATHON , the first time took me 3 hours, the second time I really tried hard, finishing a shattered wreck in 2.58, today I ran it in a controlled way in 2 hours 48 mins a ten minute improvement.
Was I wearing my SPIRA shoes you may ask! Well no I was wearing my trusty NIKE LUNAR'S.
23 MILES 2,329 FT OF CLIMBING, AV SPEED 8.2 MPH, MAX 13.5 MPH = 2.48

3 comments:

Ewen said...

Great running Rick. Probably worth saving the Spiras for the quicker road runs.

By the way, it might be worth lightening the background colour of your page - OR changing the link colour. The blue on purple is VERY hard to see. Makes it hard to see where to leave comments.

RICK'S RUNNING said...

Thank EWEN,
SOMETHING WENT WEIRD ON MY BLOG LAYOUT LAST WEEK, THE COMMENTS AND LINKS CHANGED COLOUR ON THERE OWN ACCORD AND I,M NOT ABLE TO CHANGE THE COLOUR BACK!

Ewen said...

That's odd. You could try a new template, but that would be a lot of work! You'd have to copy all your widgets and things from the side bar and start again.

Thanks for the link re the 1/4, 1/2, 3/4. That WAS where I saw it! Now I can sleep!