Edale Skyline

Photo by Dark Peak Fell Runners

Sunday 29th March 2009 - Edale Skyline

It was a lovely day on Sunday - blue sky and a great temperature to run in - i was glad i opted for shorts & t-shirt. I did the race for the first time in 2008 (so missed out on the infamous awful weather in 2007) so i have been lucky to have great conditions both years. It is a 21 mile route, with 4500ft climbing, but most of the climbing is in the first half. Its worth taking it a bit easy in the first half, as you still need energy on the moorland sections later in the race. See the Dark Peak Fell Runners website for a profile (and maybe some photos). I had a really good race, finishing in 3 hours and 35 minutes as second Lady (mind you about 20 minutes behind 1st lady - Jackie Lee). I was 10 minutes faster than last year so felt like a good start to the year. It was great feeling that i could run well and pick up speed later in the race, not having raced that far for a while, and i got great support from fellow runners later on in the race as i caught people up which was really nice. Good samosas(!) & cake in the hall afterwards and came home with a bottle of wine - so a good day out. As ever, many thanks to the organisers for a smooth running event which everyone i spoke to seemed to have enjoyed. Next thing for me is the last in the 2008/2009 "Open5" adventure race series - it is from Hope on Sunday (so maybe will be up Mam Tor again!) -- i am racing with my husband Dave so hopefully my legs will have loosened up a bit before then....

Starting my blog

OK, so not a very exciting first blog post (sorry never done this before so just trying to work it out). Just had blitz of entering races for this -- run further series ones (as a member of Team Vasque we are hoping that the ladies Vasque team can do well in the 2009 series) & also some of the Lakeland Classics races - mind you some of them are apparently already full!). Am running Edale Skyline tomorrow so will be a good test of how winter training has gone -- and probably a wake-up call of more hill training needed! My first run further series race will be Calderdale and then want to try and run well at the Fellsman -- but never having run that far, nor raced in the dark am a bit apprehensive about it. A reccie over Fleets Moss in snow and mist in February convinced me it is going to be a tough race. So will "blog" again when i actually having some running to talk about....