Training - 12 to 18/08/2013

Wednesday 14/08/2013 - morning
Quickish Cliffe Run
0:21, 250' (2.3 miles)

Grabbed a fairly quick run around the Cliffe just before dawn - beautiful morning with trails of mist in the wide Severn and Dee valleys either side of me and trees poking out above the sea of grey. Lovely sunrise too.

Thursday 15/08/2013 - evening
Pre-Committee Wrekin Blast
0:34, 900' (2.8 miles)

Squeezed a climbing session out on the Wrekin in between work and Mercia committee. Up the scree gully to Halfway House, down Beeches to the bottom, then up the BMX track and the main path to the summit. Down via my network of tracks on the east face to pick up the main track at the hairpin below Halfway House. Pushed fairly hard tonight, good session, climbing ok. Descended quickly but fairly easy.

Sunday 18/08/2013 - morning
Nav Coaching
0:45, 450' (1.1 miles) - walk
1:05, 1,600' (4.9 miles) - run

Coached basic nav skills to a group of 12 this morning. Walk - trip to bottom of Hundred Steps, then Townbrook reservoir and return over hill in Rectory Wood. Run - relays leg 1, followed this pretty much exactly with Kate W, Steve T and Steve B. Plenty of stops to practise map and compass work. Nice run with some quicker sections. legs a little tired on Yearlet.

Sunday 18/08/2013 - afternoon
Skyline Reccie
2:25, 2,050' (10.4 miles) - slow run

Cleared up coaching session and went straight over to the other side of Stretton to run a reccie of the second half of the Skyline with Zoe. All fine until Gogbatch, climbing quite well, then suddenly desperately tired and quite low. Dehydrated too. Found our way back to All Stretton via Plush Hill and a bit of the Batch Bash route only to discover the pub was shut. Walked back to Church Stretton along the road. Finally the blind blisters on my heels from the Hundred have moved forward a bit with one blowing up and tearing (the skin underneath is nice an hard though so it should be ok). I thought I'd done the job at Stiperstones, but it's taken another month and the use of an unusual pair of socks!

Summary
5:10, 5,250' (21.5 miles)
Another rather easy week, need to do some proper session planning. Two short relatively quick sessions, but were they hard enough? And was the running on Sunday easy enough? Evidently not in the conditions. Mileage a little low, but a reasonable amount of climbing. Would like to keep climbing >5,000' per week as I have found I go quite well off that. Distance could creep up a bit.