Calderdale Hike 2009

Calderdale Hike - Saturday 19th April 2009

This was my first race in the Vasque series this year - and it was a good start. The weather was lovely - blue sky and hardly any wind. The route this year was new -- i had decided to cut-up my "South Pennines" OS map so that i could manage with a few sheets of map in order as i hadn't reccied any of the route so i knew navigation would be important. As i haven't done any of the races in this area, like the Howeth Hobble, most of the terrain was new to me (a little overlapped with last year - but not much). The route took an anti-clockwise route, generally to the north-west of Sowerby Bridge. It saved quite a few climbs for the second half - with an ascent to Stooley Pike about 6 miles from the end to make sure you were finishing tired. The terrain was generally very runnable on big paths - the only section of road was the last couple of miles to the finish (which was especially tough for me as i had to really sprint them as Wendy Dodds caught me up at the last checkpoint). During the race i also took part in blood glucose measurements for the University of Lincoln project on the physiology of ultra runners. This caused interest at the checkpoints from both other competitors and the race organisers wondering quite what was going on! I hope the results from the runners taking part (about 10 of us i think) are useful -- we were also wearing heart rate monitors throughout. Aparently my blood glucose stayed pretty stable.. they said i must have eaten well - so i guess 1 and 1/2 bananas, 3 custard creams, bite of flapjack, 2 dried apricots and some jelly babies did the job!! I wasn't really thinking much about food as it was a lovely day, but generally keeping an eye on the route was my main priority (once i'd managed to catch Claire Kenny up). I finished in 6 hours 40 minutes, which was faster than i had expected, and after a sprint down the last two miles of road just made it to be 1st lady. As Martin & Martin had finished in about 5 hours 40 mintues as first men it made a good finish for Team Vasque. It was great sitting around in the sun recovering & eating jacket potatoes watching others finish - everyone seemed to have had a good day and enjoyed the new course. I was very pleased -- i think my next Vasque series race will be tougher though.. Fellsman in 3 weeks time...

Open5 Adventure Race - Peaks

Finishing an Open5 in the Lakes in May 2008, me & my husband David Lawrance

Sunday was another great day in the Peaks - and yes over Mam Tor again! It was the last in the "Open5 08/09" adventure race series - check out their website (www.openadventure.com) for more info. I have been competing as a mixed pair together with my husband Dave. The race format is that you get 5 hours to get as many points as possible - split between mountain biking and running. We've found it works best for us to bike first - on sunday we biked for 3 hours - then do the running leg. Dave is in charge of the bike route choice and nav whilst i struggle to keep up, and then we reverse for the running leg so makes it pretty fair! It's a great day out and everyone seems to pick different route choices so you pass people in lots of different directions. We had a good race - we felt we did our best and didn't make any stupid mistakes (like running past controls as the scale of the map is so huge!) -- we finished 3rd mixed pair (out of about 30 on the day i think) -- but were a bit disappointed as we missed out on 3rd in ther series by only 0.2%/300%! But they have been great events - we've raced in North Pennies, North Yorkshire Dales, Lakes & Peaks so they cover great bits of the country and a good 5-hour day out. Next for me is proper Vasque series race -- Calderdale in two weekst time.....