More Hike Recce - 25/09/2011

On top of the world (well the Stiperstones anyway) in my Mercia top -
bring your own sunshine!

I did a little more recce for the Hike yesterday, but this is really into the finessing stage now.

First effort was to start in White Grit and climb Corndon Hill, then check out the wide right descent route Andrew and Prue had used earlier in the week. I ran a couple of variants at the top of this but have settled on following the fence round the corner and then just going straight down the path at the second waymarker. I passed a couple of groups of three mostly walking, also out on reccies.

At the bottom turning left through the gate leads to a metal gate in the corner of the field and avoids the need to electrocute oneself...

The second recce was really just being sure of the effort required on the road. I started at Bridges and ran to Stiperstones summit (mostly runnable, I only walked briefly about three times on the steepest sections). You can stay on the verge or run in the fields for about half the distance. Walking the last section up to the Stiperstones checkpoint is probably advisable, given the roughness of the path.

Coming down I ran two nine minute miles fairly easily: I doubt this will be the case on Saturday!

I walked into the Bridges pub and Terry (one of the Hike organisers) bought me a pint! Shortly afterwards one of the walking groups I'd seen earlier on Corndon turned up and we had a nice natter. See you all on the big day, folks!

Stats were 9.3 miles in total and 2,220 feet of climbing in almost exactly 2 hours. This week's total (I've started keeping count again) was 46 miles and 8,500' of climbing.