More Of The Same

and it's all good. Been over to the mountains again today. A shorter run this time. Only eleven miles but with a reasonably hilly 3,300 feet of ascent. We were out there for just over three hours checking bearings, markings and general route thoughts. It was a bit colder than I had anticipated across the top from Pen y Gadair Fawr to Waun Fach and back - we're talking freezing. There was a good solid frost but ever the precaution-ist, I had spare gear in the rucksack to which I had to resort. My feet, on the other hand, - something not quite right there, but then this is the Forest of Dean - got really cold across the unending abyss of peat bog to be found there. That was a somewhat distressing twenty minutes but once we got onto some drier running my feet soon warmed back up and everything was fine.

Before I go on, I have to say, I really cannot thank Pat W enough for sparing me the time to show me around. It's been great couple of days running.

Today's recce was the most useful of all. What I think will be the two trickiest bits in the east black mountains are done. I can tick the box on both the 'drop through the forest' from Pen Twyn Mawr and the 'climb through the woods' on the other side up to Chwarel y Fan. It's all logged safely on the GPS so I can get back over there at my leisure to further familiarise myself with those sections - but I'll try to avoid building too much contempt. To be fair though, the forest drop is, what could be described as, 'a right bastard'. Shit, I think I already have a bit of contempt - doh. We even managed to try a few route variations - as my Nepalese Guru would say, 'You can never over optimise' - and there are a few others I'm going to try in the coming weeks and months.

I'm going to hop on the exercise bike in a bit for an ease down hour. Been a good training weekend. 35 miles in the mountains safely banked with close to 9,000 feet of ascent and the blister is still healing well - I think that deserves a 'Gert mint' rating for a successful weekend. All it really needed to make it a perfect ten out of ten was a good ol' piss up in thrown in there somewhere. Never mind, maybe next week...