Sunday, September 03, 2017

Curious Incident Of The Cramp In The Nigh-Time

By 'eck did the cramp ever strike last night and of all the places - ssshh, no, keep it clean - my left shin! What is that all about? And how does one even stretch the muscles in the shin area? No, I don't know either. With a calf cramp, it's pretty easy to stretch out. The shin? Not so easy. Cue fifteen minutes of pain, trying to use Jedi mind tricks to relax in the hope that the muscle tension would ease. Thankfully it did.

Anyway, today, just like Johnny Kidd & the Pirates, I was achin' all over - did you see what I did there? My quads and hamstrings are stiff and aching. Must've been a good workout yesterday.

Saturday, September 02, 2017

Nice Morning Out In The Mountains

It was over to the far side today, my favourite area of the Black Mountains, for the Fan Brycheiniog fell race - but don't panic, I wasn't racing. I was marshalling at checkpoint one, Fan Brycheiniog summit.

I set off from the race HQ at the Tafan-y-Garreg Pub - a lovely little pub, serving good food and the availability of camping, making it a great base for a day out in the mountains - with what I thought would be plenty of time to get up to the summit. As it turned out, it was plenty of time, but not before I had a few moments of panic, thinking I was going to do a Finch and not make it to my position in time for the first runners. Having averted doing a Finch, I sat down at the trig, taking in the views to await the runners.

It wasn't too long before the runners started to arrive and it wasn't too much longer after that that they'd all gone through the summit on their way to checkpoint two and beyond. With my work done I packed up and headed back down.

I decided to cut down from the top ridge to follow and run with the race on the path below the ridge, joining the race route just after the checkpoint at Llyn y Fan Fawr. I put in a good effort on the way down for a decent 6k run. (The 6k on the way up was more of a brisk walk, if you were interested).

A good days training and it's always nice to give a little back to the race scene. My calf muscles are a little stiff now. I put that down to the brisk walk up followed by being sat down in the cool conditions to marshal followed by getting straight up and running back down without re-warming up.