Cobden Cross Hill Reps - Runner Vs Bike!

Since "The Trigger" I have mainly being doing the Cobden Cross, Mellor Church route, which is about 16 Km (10 miles) with about 450 m of climbing. This is a 1:45ish run but I have being doing it quite regularly since January so my fitness levels are not too bad. I am due to help out PaulB on his Bog Graham in the second half of April so it is time I start to ramp up my mileage (and more importantly climbing). I enjoy the Mellor Church but there is not a large amount of climbing on it as once the initial climb to Cobden Cross is complete I more or less stay high until the decent after Mellor Church. The running around Marple would not be true fell running territory, it would be mainly trail running but they would be pretty challenging trails. The longest climb in the area would be about 200 m (over 1Km) of assent from the river Goyte up to Cobden Cross.

Last night I dropped off my daughter off at the Gang Show, went to the supermarket to get some coffee for my wife who has failed in her attempt to give the stuff up. Then at 19:20 off on a run,  with the head torch and  2:30 hours available to me before the post show pickup. I do not normally get out this early, it would often be after 9pm before I get out. I though being out earlier I might meet some mountain bikers as the Marple trails are popular MTB territory. Out of Marple and down the Roman Lakes road to meet a coupe of MTBs comming up and then further down a runner without a light. Obviously he was out a bit longer than intended as it was pretty much dark at this stage.

Overlooking Manchester from Cobden (Mellor) Cross

 I decided to try a few reps up to Cobden Cross. This is OK as are there are a number of routes up to it from the Goyte river valley.  I done my first "up and down" and on the second "up" from Shaw Farm I saw a runner coming towards me it turned out to be Pennine's GeoffB. I have been running these hills for four years and, despite a number of club mates living around the area, only once before have I met another Pennine runner. A little chat about the Edale Skyline then continue the climb. I got up to Cobden Cross four times so you can have a bit of fun trying to trace my route on the map below! The weather conditions were great and underfoot it was not too bad either so a very enjoyable run.

Up and Down from Cobden Cross

Passing Linnet Clough scout camp on the final decent to Marple I met a group of about ten mountain bikers resulting in a race down to Bottoms Hall. I threw caution to the wind struggling on the rocky decent as my batteries were getting a bit tired. I reached the bottom in about 7th place. They waited at the bottom for the stragglers to catch up and I kept going up to start the final climb up to "Strines Rec". They came after me but once on the climb they could not catch up with me as running up hill is faster than a bike.  Another one of my regular climbs is from Strines Station up to the Fox's pub. A couple of times on this I overtook MTBs on this climb. When I first started using Strava I accidental uploaded one of my runs as a bike ride and, I felt very proud, as the Strains Station up to the Fox's pub segment had me in 9th place out of 80. When I realised my mistake and changed it back to a run I was down to 3rd out of 4.
I waited at the top to have a chat and the leaders were a bit put out that I beat them to the top!

Manchester From Cobden Cross

In the end I done 20 Km with 840 metres of climbing so not a bad run.

A Blustry Night With Pennine

Another Thursday night another Pennine run. There were quite a few of us tonight, probably about 20. Little bit of drizzle in the carpark but not a bad night. The quick guys were around (DaveW, StevieK, Stefan, etc) so I though there is a change for a "quick one" tonight. My progress as a fell runner has been slow enough, plain and simply, when on my own, I do not push myself enough (or at all). Thursday night hanging onto the coat tails of the quick lads gives me an opportunity to inflict some pain on myself!

They decided on the "round the res" clockwise route, which is a route well know to us, despite the fact that I went wrong, when navigating it, last week. The route is on the map below, took a bit of work to get that map. I use Strava on my phone and from the Strava website I exported to GPX file and imported it into "My Routes" on Bing Maps. Bing Maps is great as it uses the OS 50,000 and 25,000 maps.

This route starts with the 1.5 Km climb up the Snake Path to the Shooting Cabin. The benine conditions in the car park were quickly blown away as we faced strong head winds and driving rain the whole way up. I am doing a lot of running these days as I try to get the weight down as part of the "Overweight to Race Weigh" thread on the FRA Forums. As part of this (and compition on Strava) on Monday night I done a 20 mile run on the Middlewood way to Macclesfield and back. I was a bit tired, as most of tonight I was in the bottom half of the group when usually I would be further up. It was Ok, the group kept together, as the fast lads kept stopping to allow the stragglers to catch up. We were rewarded for the hard climb into the head wind  when we crossed the bridge below Mermaids Pool. This bridge is followed by a climb and we never went up it as fast as we were literally blown up by the wind, great way of climbing! When I got to the gate below Kinder Low End, the lads were waiting to regroup before the decent down through Tunstead Fields. I saw some head torches continuing towards Swines Back as one of the lads shouted "go on Pat you know you want to!" So off I went trying to chase down the fastest runners in the club. When they got to Swines Back they saw me coming  behind them so waited and asked if they wanted me to wait for them I said no as I assumed they were just going to head down the bridle way and back. But no they turned left and headed over to Dimpus Clough, bloddy 'ell this is going to be hard they are going to head up to South Head. I kept them in sight by running my heart out and kept the gap down to about 50 metres. Crossed Dimpus and "now where are they going?" they kept low rather than the expected climb crossed a stream then started climbing. It went on forever and they were slowly drawing away from me. I had no idea where I was and this climb kept getting steeper . With the mist closing in I lost sight of them. Eventually I hit a trod and and I had no idea where I was. I choose to turn left and head down hill and quickly I hit a wide bridleway and still unsure of where I was but I could see street lights to my right so that had to be the way. Very quickly I hit a gate and knew exactly where I was. We had actually went directly from Dimpus Clough to Mountain Famine and I had hit the trod just below the summit. The other lads had turned right on the trod to go back via Mountain Famine and the Dragon's Back while I turned left to hit the Trans Pennine Bridleway and headed straight down that to get back. I had a great run down the bridle way and arrived in the car park where Stevie was just changing so they were not that far in front of me. Stevie was glad to see me as they did not like abandoning somebody in those conditions. He reckoned I picked a better route back as the Dragons Back was very difficult in the conditions.

Glad I done it as I pushed myself hard and got in a good 13 Km run.

A Kinder Meander

Another planned Pennine 3 hr run last night. Helen had two volunteers, PaulB and me. The intention was to do the Kinder Trog, but going up the Giggle Gaggle rather than the road via Sunny Side. Started off OK but Helen cried off at the top of the Giggle Gaggle as she was feeling ill so Paul and I continued on. It was a nice evening and we carried onto the top of William Clough OK. By now it was getting quite a bit colder and Paul was not dressed warm enough so was not keen on going over Kinder. I would have carried on but we decided to head down William Clough and then follow the res around to Kinder Low End.

Turn right to William Clough

William Clough Decent

 Now I have been around this numerous times,in both directions in both day light and night time. We were going OK got to the woods below Mermaids Pool, crossed the bridge, up the track, took the left fork, through the gate, down the steep hill, through the next gate crossed the stream, crossed the stream again (WHY!!!) I knew I should not be crossing two streams but there was a trod going that way. I just switched my brain off - if there is a trod it must be right! Continued up the steep climb having long since lost the trod and my confidence we were going in the correct direction was waining. We finally got to a small rocky outcrop and I knew this is wrong. We decided to abandon it at that stage so turned around and headed generally west as Hayfield had to be in that general direction.

While messing about we could see a number of head-torches on a hill above and were curious as to who they were. Apparently the main Pennine group had gone up the 3 Knolls path, followed the Pennine Way to Kinder low Trig Point. From there they headed off towards Kinder Low End to decend. After quite a bit of running in the mist they ended up at Kinder Low Trig for a second time. Like us they done a bit of brute force navigation and headed off on a westerly compass setting to get off the hill. We probably  saw them as they found their way off. Kinder is quite forgiving on that front as there are relativly few places where it would be difficult to get off the plateau.

Some excellent navigation by Pennine's best!

 Out compass bearing took us a lovely decent through a number of fields (no right of way) to end up a Hilltop houses, from which it was a straight forward return to hayfield. We ended up doing 10 miles in 2 hrs so a decent enough run, despite my dodgy navigation. The main group had just got back a few minutes before us as many of them were still in the carpark as we arrived back. I fell a bit better about it knowing somebody as experienced as GeoffB also went wrong :)

Paul got the plot up on Strava and we can see this lovely little out and back for 300 metres or so going in an easterly direction. The rocky outcrop we got to would have been in the three knolls path area.

Strava Plot here

Strava - Sandy Hays Segment

I have got sucked into the Strava club following a creation of a Pennine Fell Runners (http://app.strava.com/clubs/pennine-fell-runners)and FRA Forum club on the site. It is actually quite enjoyable seeing what other people are up to and how fast some of them are! Strava has a nice idea called segments which are marked routes that when you do that route you are automatically added to the league table containing others who have done that section. Went over to Hayfield last night specifically to do the Sandy Hays segment. Very cold night  and the underfoot conditions going up Sandy Hays were perfect. I thought I was going to get sick by the time I got to the Pennine way but I pushing as hard as I could to set a good time. It turned out that I am 8th (18:22) out of 16 people who have recorded completions on it. Quite a few familiar names from Pennine in the list, but not the leader at 14 odd minutes (amazing time).

Link to Strava - Sandy Hays Segment

From the top I traveled along the Pennine way to Red Brook then down the Three Knolls path. That was a challenge and there was loads of frozen snow that kept breaking under my feet. Lost the path a couple of times.
A couple of photos nicked from Google!

Looking back to Kinder Low End from Tunstead Fields

 It is very different being out on your own, cannot help but think of the safety issue as even a small accident would have you in a serious situation. I push myself so much harder on the Thursday club training runs knowing that I have people to help out if necessary.

Nearing the top of Sandy Hays

Trigger Happy

Nicky's Black Hill Trigger Diversion

 By my standards I had a very good result last year (70th out of 170ish finishers). There was no way I was going to miss it this year so the entry was in good and early. The past twelve months went very well so I knew that I had a massive challenge on my hands to even match last years result. My prediction was down in writing, which was improved time but finish lower down the field. Before the race I had not really thought about how much the time improvement  would be, but ten minutes seemed a reasonable target. Generally I took reasonably good lines last year with it being the inaugural event many runners had yet to identify the best routes over Bleaklow and Kinder. Before last years event IanW  and I went on a reccie that thought me a lot and really stood to me on race day leading to my vertigo inducing finish position. I  have done a reasonable amount of work for this years race but generally my advantage will have been seriously eroded this year leading to the prediction of finishing lower down the field.
A successful reccie day on Bleaklow  identified the route via Lawrence Edge, Bleaklow Head, Wain Stones and onto the checkpoint at Higher Shelf Stones. Another three days sorted out the  Kinder crossing. After last year’s race it was mentioned on the forum that Oli Johnson had “gone much further along the path and crossed via the plane wreck” That got me thinking so I brought up Google Earth and found a possible candidate for the “plane wreck”. That looks interesting, it is probably a bit longer that going via Within Clough or following the quad bike tracks over Featherbead Top but worth having a look at. A couple of reccies identified it as a very viable route it is more runnable than Featherbead or Within Clough with burnt heather and trods up to the plane wreck. It  was decided that would be the race day route.
Last year my Kinder crossing involved going via Crowden Tower. This is not a particular good route as the grough is quite hard going (especially last year with the ice) and it is not as short as the more direct routes.  More “Google Earthing” identified a couple of large rocky outcrops on kinder in the Crowden Head area which would aid navigation and make for easier running. So basically the route involves following the river Kinder to the two “Christmas Trees” and then head directly East from there. The conservation work in the Crowden Head area involves damming up the groughs which is making the area incredibly wet. However it is quite a short stretch so worth it.
Finally into the final week before race day and incredibly the weather forecast is predicting freezing temperature by the weekend. The general consensus was that it would be too-little-too-late and the freezing temperatures would not have time to make a significant change to the very soft underfoot conditions we were experiencing on our reccies. This consensus was to prove wrong as in reality the conditions were actually pretty good. Not as much ice as last year on the flagged paths but still the peat was considerably stiffer that expected.

Frosty Morning for "The Trigger 2013"

The Trigger Race Day

Two happy "Penniners" before going on to have  fantastic results

5 am rise on a frosty race day to drive to Mellor to pick up  Stefan and Mark then off to Edale to meet the “Grabba Cabba”. Back to Hayfield to pick up the Pennine late risers and off to Marsden. Descending the long hill into Marsden the bus driver shouts out does anybody know where the sports center is? Some off the cuff navigation by me based on having briefly looked at the new race start at the Cricket Club got us to the start without any issues.

Last year we had to stand around in the freezing cold for an hour waiting to get going, this year was not as cold and we had a lovely bar we could relax in while going through kit check and registration then down to the entrance for the pep talk and then “the off”. We had about 100 metres down the road then a right turn to join the path to cross the dam wall to rejoin the traditional route. I was at the back and did not realize it but apparently quite a few of the leaders missed the right turn and and had to do an about turn. This led to many comments on the forum about nobody reccing the start.

The paved path to Black Hill

 This race does not really start until Crowden (about 10 miles in). Up to that point the field is quite close together and it is pretty much an established route, so just a case of follow the leader. The really horrible bit, of this section, is the final decent into Crowden before entering the woods. It is an incredibly rocky track, I found out in the pub afterwards that there is an alternative to that, which I must get over to have a look at. Like last year I choose to do Lawrence Edge where we got spoken to (rightly so) by a lady for climbing over the wall by the old railway line. Got up onto the plateau OK (via an easier final accent than last year) and headed across the moor on a, southerly compass bearing. I somehow displayed a complete inability to keep a straight line possible caused by the two blokes ahead of me who were veering to the west. It was right tussock hopping stuff and then I saw a grough just to my left so I veered over to it to find a lovely trod that brought me to Wild Boar. I overtook the two bloke in front of me so they dropped in behind and followed me the whole way to Bleaklow Head.

Black Dyke Crossing on the way to Black Hill

Approaching the summit of Black Hill

Went a little wrong between Wain Stones and Hern Stones as the trod I picked up veered too much to the right so I had to cut back across some wet ground (involving a bad fall as I put my foot into a deep hole) to got to Hern Stones to pick up the trod to Higher Shelf Stones.
Now I am not sure if I am doing the right thing here. There are two trods from Higher Shelf Stones to the Crooked Clough path. The right hand one is shorter but involves a little bit of re-accent. That is the one I use but I do not know if it is faster or slower.

Snake Top to Kinder West

River Kinder (grinah.org)

Now the homework comes to fruition off down the flags to Moss Castle with nobody following me as everybody else was heading down Within Clough. Then strike directly south. It went very well, totally runnable the whole way and the two streams were much lower than when I reccied it so up the plane wreck and the accent up to the plateau. The accent onto the plateau was probably 80 odd metres to the right of the boxing glove and this give a slightly more difficult line to Kinder West as the ground was just a bit softer. Nice to have the radio mast to home in on!
The crossing to Grindslow was to have been directly east from the “Christmas Trees” To get there I had to turn left at the second cairn. But somehow I missed the first one so when I got to the second I was not sure if it  was the first or second. I thought to continue is the safer option because if was the second then I would just take the more southerly route across the plateau.  Pretty quickly after passing it I knew it was the second one, I was not going back so down the first left hand grough  to catch up with a bloke who had just climbed out and seemed a bit unsure of where he was going. Another couple of blokes were heading south. I just headed directly east towards a rock formation that looked like stubby fingers.

Unintended Kinder Crossing to Grindslow

 Looking over my shoulder a few times I noticed I had developed quite a tail as I picked up bits of trods across. Got to the stones and I had no idea where I was as they were not the stones I thought they might be. Best thing was to veer a bit to the right and I would hit the edge path eventually. My tail followed me the whole way so they did not have a clue either. As it turned out looking at the satellite trace it was not a bad line as I hit the edge path not far from Grindslow Knoll. My watch was telling me that I was cutting it close to beat last years time, I  would probably be OK but I had to keep pushing. My tail finally caught me and overtook me rounding Grindslow and then the decent to Edale. I had reccied cutting the corner from the rocky descent path from Grindslow so going down the extremely steep descent through the heather  I overtook one of them and had to keep pushing hard to the finish to ensure he did not catch me again. It was a small victory and I came home 3 minutes faster than last year.
How do I feel about it? Well none of the reccing produced perfect results, with family commitments I just cannot get  get over to the Pennines to do enough work. So lots of small errors that would have added numerous odd minutes to my time.  If I had got ten minutes off last years time I would have been ecstatic so with three minutes I am reasonably “Trigger Happy”. Tighter lines without being any faster would probably easily have gained those extra seven minutes. So it goes to show the importance of route finding in this race.
Splits
I had my phone running RunKeeper with me on both the 2012 and 2013 race (about 200 metres difference in length) so it was possible to use the runkeeper website to compare splits for the two years. Overall I was faster up to Crowden in 2013 but slower for the remainder of the race. I was 40 seconds slower from Crowden to Higher Shelf Stones which was surprising as I know I went wrong before Bleaklow Head last year. I was disappointed to see that my kinder crossing from Kinder West Trig was actually 2.5 minutes slower in 2013 as the section along the river Kinder was very difficult in 2012 because of the ice and visiting Crowden Tower is a longer route. Likewise the split from Snake Top to Kinder West was also 2 minutes slower in 2013. Obviously I had tired more than I had realized. Maybe that is no surprise as last year I actually done a couple of 4 1/2 hr training runs. This year I done quite a few 3 to 3 1/2 hr runs so being out for 4 3/4 hours is considerably more than what I had done in training.

Even though the route via the plane wreck was two minutes slower than Featherbed Top, I still think it is a better option to pass down to the west of Within Clough. Possibly leave the paved path a bit earlier.

Tales from the Dark Side - Stockport 10

This is a road race so stop now if not interested.  My wife done this a couple of years ago and enjoyed it. Last year I entered to give here moral support for her second attempt. I would not have entered only there are two considerable hills in the race both in the second half at 6 miles and cruelty 8.5 miles to give a total assent of about 550 feet, which is a lot for a road race. Last year I done no training for the Stockport 10. Probably 3 years(ish) since I done that distance on the road and I done a five hour reccie for "The Trigger" the Thursday before. So I was pretty chuffed to come in 1:16 in position 268ish out of 780ish finishers. Twelve months later my wife wanted to do it again. I knew entries were open but I was not bothered about it so for a few days I did not mention it hoping it would fill up. Finally I decided I had better mention it is open so ended up paying 17 quid each to enter (ouch!). Soon after entering she got injured and just too busy with the new job so she cried off and deferred the entry until next year, which was nice by the organisers. So here I was doing it on my own. This year I actually done a hand full of 4 mile sprints around Marple thinking I should at least try for the Stockport race this year. But then on the Thursday before the long distance coordinator at Pennine scheduled her 3 hr training run for that night. I was not missing that! It turned out to be a horrible night with driving rain and sleet so it got cut back to 2 hours which suited me.

Up on Saturday morning and it was horrible oh well what do you expect in December. Got to Woodbank Stadium in Woodbank Park to retrieve my number.
It was a nice touch having my name on it, but caused some confusion during the race as a couple of time people called out "come-on Patrick" and I was looking at them trying to work out who they are as they must know me and I have no idea who they are!!.  The race number also had a little chip bonded to the back for the automated chip timing.

Puma Stockport 10 - Come-on Patrick!

The conditions actually improved by the time the race started we had one heavy shower within the first couple of miles but after that conditions just continued to improve. Actually turned out to be a perfect day for running. There were so many people who were over dressed for it with long running leggins and/or jackets. Some people are such whimps at the beginning of a race and do not appreciate how much they will warm up once it gets started. Early in the race I recognised a Glossopdale vest in front of me, I pulled along side and commented it was nice to see another Fell Runner to be informed that this was actually on the Glossopdale club championship and there are 14 of them out. We would have a riot in Pennine if they tried to put a road race in our championship.

The first down downhill,which was on  a rough track

The two big climbs are both in the second half. Despite this my split for the second 5 miles, the previous year, was a couple of seconds faster that the first five. At the start of the first climb I said to myself Pat you are a fell runner lets show them what you can do so I started to push up the hill overtaking quite a few people and just kept it up for the rest of the race. Done the same this year and near the top of the climb I caught site of my club-mate "Barnaby". Now there was a target. Every so slowly I was pulling him in. Until we got to the big decent at about 7 miles and he was just faster than me on the downhill. He ended up finishing 15 places (50 seconds) ahead of me. The real sting in this race is the 1  mile climb up New Zeeland Road at 8.5 miles. It suits me as everybody is knackered at that stage and I was able to gain a hand full of places.

Stockport 10 relief map

I dropped my phone in the first mile and it turned itself off when it hit the ground so I had no idea how I was going so on re-entering the park I was ecstatic to see the clock just turn 1:09 with a Km to go. I had a great opportunity to get below the 1:15 that I was hoping for so doing something resembling a sprint.

Competition!

I had just overtaken this bloke in the white tee shirt,  he was not having it we had 200 m to go on the track and he over took me again I had nothing left to hold him off.
 I got home in 1:13:21 to give me position 204. There were 749 starters so just outside the top quarter.
The overall winner came home in 49:55 and my category winner (MV 45) was 55:53, 9th overall!
I am amazed by how few finishers there were. The race was full at 1000 what happened to the other 251. I suppose there would be a few DNFs but the vast majority probably just did not turn up! Nearly quarter of the field that is appalling.

Within  a couple of minutes of finishing I received a text message congratulating me on finishing the Stockport 10 in a time of 1:09:21 eh? Apparently it was the same for most people having 4 minutes taken off their time.

Did I enjoy it? Yes. Would I do it again? I don't know!

Run The Line 6th October 2012

Back in Ireland for a family reunion when in the pub on Thursday night my twin informs me of a Trail Race (Run the Line) through the Dublin Mountains on Saturday in aid of Dublin and Wicklow Mountain Rescue.  It is a 28 Km (17.5 mile) long linear race starting in the Dublin suburb of Tallaght and heading generally south east around South Dublin to finish near Glencullen, close to the well known pub, Johnnie Fox's. This place has been around since 1798 and claims to be the highest pub in Ireland but apparently it is not! With a few pints of Guinness down 36 hrs notice is more than enough time to get my head around doing a 28 Km run. Luckily I had a pair of trainers and running trousers (but no waterproofs of any kind so just hope the weather will be OK). Short run Friday then an unholy early start on Saturday morning to drive to Dublin for the race start. Join the queue to get a shock when asked for 37 euro my brother somehow thought it was 20. Well we are here now and it is a good cause so just pay up.

It was a glorious morning and approximately 60 real man (and ladies) were ready for the off on the full "Run the Line". Another 60 odd lightweights were getting ready to board a bus to be ferried to the half way point for the start of the 14 km race. A bit of banter as my identical twin brother is a regular at IMRA events so I had a number of complete strangers come chatting to as if I was a close friend - weird.

The Wicked Witch of the East and her ugly sister

Just before the race I realised that the I had left my water bottle in the car, well too late to worry about it now just have to rely on the water station, risky as it was a warm morning and it will only get hotter. Eventually called to order given some safety instructions as the early stage of the race is on public roads. then we were off.

And we are "off" to Run the Line

The first few Km were pretty flat initially along public then private roads to get to the reservoir at Bohernabreena. As so often happens I went off pretty fast with Runkeeper on my phone informing me how fast I was going. After 3 km I decided I was going too fast and slowed up quite a bit. This allowed another runner to slowly catch up with me and as he came along side we started chatting and ended up staying together for the next few Km. The run along Bohernabreena reservoir was amazing with the autumn trees in the morning sunshine.

Bohernabreena Reservoir

At 6 Km got to the end of the first reservoir cross the dam then the first climb of the day up to the second reservoir. RunKeeper was now telling me I was going even faster but I felt OK so, "why not" -  lets see what I am capable of?

The Upper Reservoir, Bohernabreena waterworks

We pulled in and passed quite a few runners until the climbing started to get more serious. My companion was training for the Dublin Marathon later in October so while a decent runner on the flat he did not have it for the long climbs on the road. I could see quite a few runners scattered along the hill in front of me and feeling like a bit of a "Show Off" Fell Runner I put the pressure on to drop my companion and overtake quite a few runners on that long climb. Eventually arrive at the water station, at 14 Km, to down a few cups of water and grabbed a couple of handfuls of Jelly Babies. Then off down the Forest trails.

A lot of work has been done in the Dublin mountains to build very good quality walking routes for people who would not be confident in true mountain terrain. For the most part from this point on the race followed forestry roads and these good quality foot paths. Caught up with another runner who was not enjoying the descending, I passed on a hint to try to stop his stride getting too long on the decents to protect his knees. Dropped him on the next climb, not expecting to see him again. By this stage I was running on my own as the 60 odd runners were pretty well scattered along the course and I had yet to begin to catch up the the back-markers  in the "1/2" "Run the Line" race. A long decent down the forest trail to Killakee car park and the bloke from earlier comes bombing past me. He shouts out his thanks for passing on the down hill running advice. Last time I pass on useful info during a race. I was now starting to catch the 14 Km back-markers, which helped massively in setting a target to reel them in. As the race progressed  the frequency of catching them increased considerably. One of the nicest parts of the race was now coming up as we left the road after 16 Km to enter Cruagh Wood. A nice foot path and climb to cross a style then a long section with a narrow path through dense woodland and a forest road to Tibradden car-park at 20 Km.

 Cruagh Wood

Into the car park and an unexpected surprise a water station that had bottles he could give out. "I will have one of those, thanks" and then probably the longest climb of the day including the dreaded "boneshaker" to the summit of Two Rock Mountain, more commonly known as “Fairy Castle”, at 22 Km. This is the highest point of the Dublin Mountains at  536 m/1,759 ft. Just 6 Km to go now and in theory it is all down hill :)

The "boneshaker" is a popular mountain bike challenge

 Approaching "Fairy Castle" - the summit of Tibradden Mountain

The remains of the chambered cairn at the summit of Tibradden Mountain

We were unlucky and did not see anything but on some days, fairies can be seen dancing around the pile of stones which covers an old megalithic tomb.  According to a popular belief, fairies live among the old stones of prehistoric tombs and this is why the mountain was given its name.

Initially the decent from  Tibradden along the board walks and well maintained foot path was pretty easy but as we passed "Three Rocks" the foot path deteriorated considerably. At this stage I was in the thick of the 14 Km runners and hill walkers. It is very difficult to plan a safe decent over rough ground when there are so many people close by.  I ended up following a bloke who had a nice descending technique, so I stuck in behind him as he weaved his way between, the walkers/runners/rocks/etc. down the hill.

Descending from Tibradden Mountain via the Board Walks

Eventually get to yet another unexpected water station at "Three Rocks" (26 Km) that I passed by as I was OK and only 2 to 3 Km to go. This was a long decent on a forestry trail containing a couple of small re-assents that felt like I was climbing Everest. I was really hoovering up the "struggling" back markers from the shorter race at this stage so it was a real motivator to keep pushing.

Late in the race and a tired looking heel strike! with my "roll your own" 3/4 running trousers. 

Looking  Better!

Little sting in the tail near the end as we had to leave the forest trail to run along a very muddy footpath through the woods for a couple of hundred meters to break out onto another trail for the final half Km to the finish.  Rounded a bend to see a large "blow up" finish arc. It's done "I ran the Line"

This is the End

My finish time was 2:47 to give me  24th place out of 60 odd runners. Beat the brother by 15 minutes or so. Then a 1Km walk down the road to a very welcome pint (or two, or three...)

"Run the Line" RunKeeper Race Route

This was the inaugural (and low key) running of the "Run the Line" event so on the organization front it did not exactly all go to plan. At the finish line we had to give in our race numbers so they would have hard evidence of who arrived back OK. After a rest and drink, off to bag drop to retrieve our bags that were all identical brown paper bags identified by (you guessed it) race numbers. Now who actually remembers their race number once it is finished? We had loads of people peeping into each bag to try to identify which bag was theirs. There was also the issue of a rather impatient bus driver that left loads of us in the pub. Usually having to stay in a pub for another 90 minutes is not the worst thing in the world but we had a family dinner to get to - appreciated the lift in the Mountain Rescue Land Rover. The results published by the organisers were not presented that well so I hacked them  together a bit better here.

http://www.imra.ie/forum/topic/id/3193/

Hopefully it will be back next year and if in the country I would do it again.

Full "Run the Line" Men's Winner (02:03) approaching Tibradden

Full "Run the Line" Ladies Winner (and 7th overall, 02:20) descending from Tibradden

What I would do for a Tee-Shirt! but I enjoyed the couple of pints as well!!

The watering hole - Johnnie Fox's Pub, Glencullen

What it was all about