Eating!

On Friday night I was chauffeur for an armistice day service in Hayfield so I took it as an opportunity to get in a longish run in the bigger hills over by Kinder. It did not start off well as I was a bit late home from work so I had a quick sandwich before heading over to Hayfield. As usual with the BG training I wanted to get in some more climbing so I headed up to the Shooting Cabin and then down to foot bridge below Sandy Heys. It was my intention to try to do three reps of it. On the descent from the Shooting Cabin I did not feel great, I actually felt a bit hungry. I seriously considered wimping out just running around the res, but I decided to do one rep and see how I felt. It was not a bad night and for 4/5 of the climb it was very nice. The last 1/5 got very windy and and misty but it was for a relatively short time. Once I got to the Pennine Way I did not hang around, but just turned and headed straight back down again. Sandy Heys (both up and down) are Strava Segments so I can see how long each climb and descent takes. On my own in the dark safety comes first so I take it very gentle on the descent so my times on that are way outside my PB.  My assent PB for Sandy Heys is 15:45 but in the dark and wet ground I would not get anywhere near that, in these conditions 19 to 20 minutes would be more typical. I was not pushing myself too hard so the first one took a bit over 20 minutes. It went well so I decided I would go for the three. Second and third climbs went OK as well, each one a bit slower which is to be expected.  Not long into the 3rd descent the legs turned to jelly, I was like a drunk man trying to make my way down the steep descent at the top. A couple of times I just sat down but forced myself to move again as I knew that would not help. I was cursing myself as I knew the lack of food was the cause of this collapse. I had loads of food for my 7 hour attempt on the Kinder Dozen and felt pretty good for the entire trip, but here I was collapsing after 2 hours.There is a stream about 2/3 of the way down so I kept pushing to it so that I could have a drink. That help massively and by the time I got to the bottom I was feeling pretty OK again. It had taken me 21 minutes to descend - not good! I had recovered enough to run back up to the shooting cabin and then the longs descent on the Snake Path to Hayfield where I went into the pub to buy a couple of bags of crisps.  Despite  the mishap it was a good night  and I got in 14.7 km with 1050m of climbing.


I was a good lesson, the runs will only get harder from now to the actual attempt. I will make sure that I always carry a stocked running rucksack with me on all of these longer runs.