Coffeeman's Running Blog: A big move and a running evolution

Although it became a pretty protracted process in the end, the second half of 2021 brought an end to 6 years of living, as well as running and hiking, in the Dartmoor National Park. We have now settled in Oakham, Rutland, 30 miles from where I was brought up in Spalding, Lincolnshire. Although the hills have not totally disappeared from view, around here is more "rolling countryside" than the "moors and tors". Trails are at once better defined but also more heavily frequented. However they are certainly more "runnable".

During the six years in Sticklepath my elevation "stats" were pretty consistent. Week after week I would log over 2000 metres of ascent (and by implication descent) in my running. Once or twice in the last 2 years, I "binged" with weeks of over 6000m and nearly 9000m as a part of lockdown challenges. Neither of these, nor the several hilly / mountainous races over distances over 50 km, gave me any serious effects of fatigue. I "bagged" local tor tops after steep climbs as a matter of routine. I became accustomed to the continual gradients and in the parlance, I undoubtedly became "hill hard".

From Summitbag.com

Looking back now, a three month house sit at the foot of the Chiltern Hills over the middle of winter gave me some hope of continuing to embark on the type of hilly training run that was my regular fare on Dartmoor. But gradually the realities of the change in terrain seeped into my stubborn runner's brain. I entered 3 road races; I started running more road miles (sorry Cocoa); I started going to Parkruns on fast, flat courses and I began to re-evaluate plans for the summer of 2022.

At the start of the year I had the following in my calendar:

LDWA 100 mile in the Peak District at the beginning of June.

Eiger Ultra Trail 35 km +2300m ascent in mid July

UTMB / CCC 100 km +6300m ascent in late August

I have now withdrawn and been partially refunded for all of these events, as I just could not imagine how I could prepare properly for any of them. DNS (do not start) has always been way preferable to DNF (did not finish) in my eyes. I like to feel I am competitive, at least against my own age group, in anything I undertake, and all of these events incur varying amounts of peripheral expenditure that becomes hard to justify when the chance of a result dimishes. To fail to prepare is to prepare to fail, as someone wise once said, and how do you prepare for hills and mountains when your nearest hill, and the local high point, is just 60m of elevation above where you live?! And it is no surprise that I have not had an outing, run, hike or walk, with more than 300m of elevation this year. For much of the last 6 years, that was almost a minimum.

I'm going to deal with the road races in another post. I've tucked those away. They served their purpose.

So what now? First of all I think I can still train and race for events up and around 50km in English "undulating countryside" conditions. We have that here and its just a matter of agreeing with my coach how best to approach that. But as for the mountains, British or elsewhere, I've decided that I'm going to get my pleasure there from hiking in them, non-competitive but "challenging". I've tested the driving distance to the Peak District (Hathersage) and I'm sure I can work on some great days out. Cocoa and I made a pretty good start about 10 days ago up on Stanage Edge.