Canter Recce - 27/01/2011

Looking back toward the top of Calf Ridge

I finished work at quarter past two today (after a very busy and quite frustrating day) and drove over to Church Stretton to recce for the Cardingmill Canter race (it's on 5 Feb).

I felt quite destructive today and it was good to get all the negativity out of my system with a good hard climb up Calf Ridge. The path at the top here is along the lip down to New Pool Hollow - this is good runnable ground so I will need to get moving quickly as soon as I come over the top. Crossing over the road I took a nice line down to the Devil's Mouth and Burway Hill, and made a sensible but quick-ish descent to the cattle grid on the Burway Road.

I cut the corner off crossing Cardingmill Valley (you have to go round the fingerpost in the race), and headed off up the Stanyeld path, alternating running and hiking in a sort of micro intervals way. The slog up Stanyeld is very steep but over quickly. By this point my fell shoes were starting to hurt my heels again - I really need to sort that out one way or another. There's a nice run along the fence, then another short steep climb to Bodbury ring. From there, it's quick running ground to the corner of the golf course fence, where I went leftish and up, steeply at first, towards Haddon Hill. If I've got enough left I know the ascent is runnable after the first steep section now. I had one short recovery walk part way up.

The descent from Haddon comes down from the col between the two tops. It's astonishingly steep at the top! I made it down the first bit, but then attacked a little too hard and lost my footing, landing on my arse and then sliding head first down the hill a few yards. I was back up and running straight away though - you run most of these off after a couple of minutes. At the bottom, I leapt the stream and followed the Mott's Road path down the valley to the finish, which is just above the top car park.

My time over the race route was 72:23. The target for the race (allowing for the extra bit of running crossing Cardingmill Valley, but at racing speed) has got to be sub 65 minutes then.

I jogged up from town at the start and back down at the end (just behind another fellrunner who headed off towards Little Stretton before I could catch him), so my total time and distance were longer than for the race route, at 6.8 miles, 1,962' of ascent and 1hr 28mins. The GPS track and profile are below:

Today's GPS Track - the little triangles mark the miles. and direction (the southern loop is first)

The Profile - the race has about 1,850' of climbing in 5.1 mles