Its been awhile

I've struggled a bit for inspration and a lot for time to blog recent events. So here is my summary.

Early March saw what felt like a well earned rest from training and holiday from work. Behind the tourism I learned Tenerife has a lot to offer the hill runner. I didn't run much, but in my jaunts from my hotel in Los Gigantes there was a great climb of about 400ft in less than a mile just to get to the road to the next town, which was itself a tad undulating. My last mornings training run saw me keep heading out of town along the winding road into the hills to the next town. A bracing 1000ft in less than 3.5m and the same descent to follow. So, no trail running, no problem.

The potential of Tenerife doesn't end there. In the centre of this comparatively small Island, ringed by peaks sits the Las Canadas caldera - at over 2000 metres - and somewhere in the middle the highest peak - Mt Teide at about 3718m. Not a little bit impressed? Well remember Ben Nevis only pokes up to 1344 metres and the highest peak in europe - Mt Blanc - is less than 1100 metres higher. Ultra Tour de Tenerife anybody?

Only a few weeks later I was back testing myself in the UK on paths and trails sitting atop the North York Moors. Last years freezing cold, 'clag down', conditions were replaced with quite the opposite this year. Slightly pleasing is that I was faster on nearly every section this year than last. But the full story saw me tired by Osmotherley and haemorraging pace over the tough 20m to Kildale. 12hrs5mins was an improvement on last year, but I felt a bit disapointed with a less than 30min improvement given the conditions and another year of experiance and training.

I got a bit of salvation in my next ultra a few weeks later. Another sunny day - were going to pay big time for all this weather 'luck' soon! - for the Calderdale Hike. 36 or so miles of self navigating along a pleseantly challenging and varied route in Calderdale and the Pennines. I'd enjoyed this one last year and this year I had a good run, keeping a good pace and achieving a 7:14 time for 36.6m. Being not far over the 36m 'advertised' meant some savvy navigating and a few cock-ups too, but overall a good day running. Making good pace in a good group of 4 runners for the latter miles. This route which visits Stoodley Pike, Thievely pike and Sunny bank amongst other climbs will be changed for next years event. A bit of a shame, but who knows, there could be another classic in the pipeline.

Next up came a 5 day Coast to Coast attempt. I'll save this one for the next post.