The Trigger 2014

Here we go again. Another early morning alarm call on a very cold morning to get to Hayfield for "The Trigger" bus. Bit different this year as I left my car at New Mills Station and then four of us continued onto Hayfield in Geoff's car. The Cricket club is such a nice start venue, great atmosphere in side and warm as well. Chatted to quite a few people then outside to drop off the bag. Chatting to IanW outside I find out about another route change so that we will not be going down the road but instead a little cut through directly from the start field.

Happy Campers

 The early stages of this race is pretty straight forward up along the side of the reservoirs to the Isle of Sky. The Black Hill flags were in typical "Trigger Condition" varying from being perfectly OK to lethal due to the ice cover. As informed before the race we have a slightly changed route down to Crowden Brook, it did not really effect the race.  A Km after Black Hill I though my race was over when I got a bad step and aggravated (yet again) an injury in the top of my right foot that I suffered a couple of months previously when running with Pennine near South Head. Straight down on to the ground in agony. Got up after a bit and started a very dodgy hobble. I have aggravated this injury a number of times and I know that I can run it off. So I kept going as loads of people streamed past me. over the next 10 minutes. By the time I got onto the track to Crowden I was doing a reasonable impression of a run. I was running well upto the fall so despite the injury I reached Crowden in a very similar time to last year.

It is funny in Crowden hardly anybody carries straight on past the decision point for Torside or Lawrence Edge/Wild boar. The latter two seem to have become the de facto route choices. IanW rumbled me on Facebook (as he tagged me in a photo on the climb to Lawrence Edge) there is a pretty impressive picture of me with a good smile and high knee as I run up the steep climb. His comment "It's funny how the sight of a camera can make people run." as if I would do such a thing, its slanderous.

Poser!

Did not get to pose for this one!

I was up Lawrence Edge a few weeks previously and had sorted a really nice line over to Wild boar. That got scuppered when I followed the line of people in front of me and they veered over to the right to ascend onto the plateau via the heather slope to the right instead of the little scramble. That scuppered my reccie as I had identified a feature that I could get to from the top of the scramble, but from where I came up I did not know where it was! As usual everybody starts to veer south west. I got the compass out and headed directly south. I picked up a nice grough with a number of fresh tracks in it that brought me straight to the style where we leave Wild Boar Clough. That was a result! Bleaklow was hard going surprising how much snow there was so it did make for more difficult going to the Snake Path. Once again my snake path split was similar to last year (5 minute slower - last year's finish time was 4:47)

Higher Shelf Stones (credit http://runningdelights.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/janathon-12-plus-trigger-race.html) Hard to imagine it is the same day to the photos above!

At the start some of us were chatting about the Snake to CP5 route options. My intention was to go along to Glead Hill and head south from there. Geoff had mentioned he was going to go down the east side of Within. With the likely icy flags I had decided that I would do the same as Geoff as the ice flags would not allow us to make up for the greater distance. I followed the flags for about a Km then struck south-west from there. The Strava plot is reasonable enough, fairly straight line. I have had a look at a couple of strava plots by other people with a similar time to me and I was about 5 minutes (48 minutes snake top to CP5) slower than the people that stayed on the flags. With the old checkpoint we climb up to the plateau 90 degrees to the contours, so while steep we get it done with quickly. The new checkpoint involves a long angled climb that goes on for ever and looses a lot of time.

Snake to CP5

Leaving CP5 felt like entering hell, the conditions has deteriorate considerably, with low clouds and a driving wind straight into our faces. It was to some considerable relief that I turned left down the river Kinder and some reprieve from the wind. My race went tits up at this stage. Followed the gruff system OK until forced to leave them then set my compass to join the next system. I had a guess at the bearing but it was not south enough and I did not following it properly anyway. I really started to suffer across here with yet more eye problems as they clouded over and cold hands, I needed to get some food down but it was such hard work trying to work the zip on the bum bag. I eventually hit the edge path about 50 metres north of Grindslow Knoll. Not realising this I turned left for another 50 metres until I got to a stream I recognised from the Edale Skyline and realised my mistake. About turn and headed back to Grindslow.

It's all gone 'orribly wrong!

 Around the Knoll and then followed some tracks down through the snow to the left of the footpath  with the intention of rejoining it again further down. I got to a style and I said to my self don't cross this find the proper gate that is on the foot path which was only 30 meters to my right. What did I do? I crossed it and just got further and further from the path until I had no idea where I was Fatique can you you to do silly things! Near the bottom of the hill, near Grindsbrook Clough, I was getting the map out to find out the best route to Edale when Duncan came along with another two blokes in tow. He knew where he was going so both of us bombed it back to Edale along the Tanky's finish to arrived home in 5:40. That was 50 minutes slower than last year and I reckon I lost 30 minutes of that in the last 5 Km.

Edit:
Just had a another look at the 2013 & 2014 strava plots. The split for the cairn after Kinder Gates was 4:00 in 2013 and 4:30 in 2014. So in reality I lost 20 minutes from there to the end. Not as bad as I thought!