Woffy

9/10. One mark docked for smiling in the video.

As a - now - Southerner - I returned to the place of my birth and childhood and went to Keswick Mountain Festival at the weekend. Amazing! Did the Adidas Terrex 25km Trail Half Marathon (actually 16 miles) - a large HILLLLLYYYY loop of Derwent Water. Very technical trails - stony, cobbly, loose slate, mud, boulder filled streams, the odd fell. Perfect stuff. 'Proper' running, especially given the running history of the town. The HM was interesting, beautiful and tough - everything i'm not! 'Potential' time for the leisurely / casual runner was suggested at 3.5 hours. Managed it in 3h20m - so i was pleased with that. Might've been quicker but i HAD to keep stopping to take photos! Absolutely fantastic festival (music was a bit ropey, but that wasn't really the point) - highly recommend. TONNES of different events too, inc. open water swimming, triathlon, ultra - all of which start and finish IN the festival - so the support and atmosphere was incredible. Also, the penultimate mile or so of the running events took you through the town where the locals were all clapping and cheering - even for the duffers like me. The 10k runs (about 4!) were point to point - but they ferried the runners across Derwent Water and then they run back. Awesome. Highly recommend. #prayforgreenelksgroin 🙏

Hey, get the crappy runs out of the way - they're all good practise for the main event remember. Wow. 3:15 would still be amazing! Makes me feel like a snail! You're a 'proper' runner! 🙂

Oooo, month to go. How's the training going? Only a few weeks left when you include a decent taper!

Sound advice from an expert! Although if @JoeyT can yomp off his nut to the car park on completely the wrong side of Glastonbury festival and then yomp back to where he's supposed to be, in one evening, in the dark, then i definitely reckon he's got the minerals to finish LM! 😉

Thanks dude. When's your marathon?

Did Andover Trail Marathon yesterday. 4:50:30 Not bad for a slow old plodder like me. Pretty hilly too. It's my 'home town' trail marathon and it's the third time i've done it. Which makes it even more baffling that i managed to get lost. Actually ran 27.2 miles. What a tit. #technicallyanultramarathon

‘…one of the cats’.

5hrs3mins to finish Salisbury Plain Marathon. Happy with that considering i'd barely trained. Hilly AF and hot and humid too. With hindsight, should've got in in under 5 hours but i wasn't really keeping an eye on time and wasn't too bothered tbh. Enjoyed having a chat at aid stations and stopped with 5k to go to help a lady in distress, who had contrived to pull BOTH calf muscles! (how does that happen???!!!) One down, two to go: Andover Trail Marathon - Sept. Beachy Head - Oct.

I don’t trust anything that clown organises on Twitter.

I think about 250 are doing the marathon distance - which is a lot for that event and the small company that does it. People are gagging for races due to the pandemic. To be honest i see the same people at Salisbury, Andover and Beachy Head...and at this year's inaugural Winchester BigWayRound50k! Andover Trail Events - now Run on Trails (think he's merged with another company - have been doing less a staggered start, more a turn up between 8am and 9am and just set off. They asked for the quicker runners to turn up first to reduce over taking but last years events were quite relaxed. (I'll set off at 8:59:59!). Beachy Head 2020 (amazed it got the go ahead) was far stricter at the start with people kept in holding pens away from the start, told to stand by a cone on the ground and organised by their self-predicted finish time. RE: your final point - we all get slower with age...and i only started running in 2018 and i'm 47 now. So i started slow and now i'm really slow! 🙂 Edit: oh, and thanks! I'm just gonna trot round gently with lots of snacks and enjoy it. If i do it in 5.5 hours i'll be delighted!

Yeah, I can see it on my Garmin connect, but it usually auto-uploads immediately to Strava (where i share and compare with my running mates). Ah well.

Anyone have issues with Strava last night? Seems there was an 'outage' and it went offline for a bit. It disconnected the link to/from my Garmin and it's absolutely refusing to upload last night's run. Tried all the troubleshooting tips and it's just not having it. It'll upload a 'fake' run i can do now. Annoying. Got Salisbury Plain Marathon to come last in on Sunday and i'm a bit paranoid it's gonna lose my data again. And after heaving myself round the middle of a barren featureless desert for christ knows how many hours because i'm not match fit i'd like to be able to look back on it and analyse how shit i was.

The Adkins-Pymild Paradox

Ah yes. Heady Days. Also a fan of when we collectively talking ourselves into believing Adele might headline before Radiohead. Because something something daylight, doesn't like big crowds something.

BettingslipGate was a classic IIRC

For fucks sake. Missed all this. Was hanging around in the book thread with the other nerds.

Signed hardback copies available from Waterstones if anyone's interested.

Read a glowing (and long) review of that in The Guardian. I think you've just convinced me to buy it. Thanks. Sounds like quite an emotional read.

Let us know when you finish if you think HC is a whinger or a tragi-hero!

No worries. Ignore me. Was getting confused between users and who was doing which ultra. I'll go back to sleep or the book thread!!!

Oh, that's a shame. The runultra website is usually pretty good for finding local ones. I might have a nosey on there myself now, just because...

Isn't there the Canalathon up there? That looks good / doable.

Yes @Kalopsia - which one?! @steviewevie - just go for it! Sign up and let fear and excitement be the motivator! The first race i ever ran ('ran'! trudged, hiked, ran a bit) was the Lulworth Cove 50k. Nearly killed me but what a great experience. 9h8m!!! Felt more like climbing! Should've chosen better really! So, yeah: dive in! Where are you in the world? Edit - Doh. I'm assuming NW. I'm in Hampshire and there's loads round here, some very doable. Did the inaugural Winchester BigWayRound 50 a few month back. Lovely course and great for a first time, i reckon. Although i proceeded to injure myself halfway round due to clumsiness.

Keep us posted. I think i flagged a bit towards the end, but i enjoyed the 'process' of reading it, if that makes sense. Another problematical long read, but one which i return to often - if only certain chapters - is David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Try that whopper! Anyone else read it? Thoughts?