2011 was ok but not brilliant. Coming off 2010, which was the horror year of injuries, it was good to get a couple of races under the belt. The double achilles injury took 14 months – complete ‘mare.
Anyway, as I worked on developing the MARCH here is a quick run down on the MARCH adventure racing year:
(1) 3 to 7 Feb ‘11 – Winter Climbing in Scotland
An epic time with Tom and Dave. Super cold. Camping out and climbing Cairn Gorm and the surrounds! The highlight? The first night when I picked the wild camping spot. A nice spot next to a wee stream….A few too many beers in the local pub….A wake up call by the Police at 2am to say the river was in flash flood. We’d be swept away in minutes and we had better jolly de-camp quickly! Great work me!!
(2) 2 to 14 March ‘11 – Atacama Crossing 7 day 250 km Desert Ultra
The first big test of the achilles. No training races. A rushed couple of months of training….Ended up a cracking race. Super tent mates, amazing scenery and decent, tough race. The whole 7 days we never dropped below 10,000 feet. Coming from sea level and running a marathon a day at that altitude was tough. Started too fast (no surprises there!) after the long lay off. In a competitive field, with a few pro athletes, I placed 13th the first day and 15th the second. Happy with that, but ended the second day in trouble – well, actually, on all fours vomiting up fluids and minerals I really needed to keep inside. Struggled to rehydrate that night (given I had vomited up about 1/3 of my daily water allowance!). Struggled the next day badly. Hated the day. Fought my way up sand dunes with my teeth, screaming obscenities. Clawed it back a bit over the remaining days and finished the race in 21st. Some pretty cute, full time athletes there – one guy had spent 3 months at altitude acclimatising – so an ok result after a tough 2010.
(3) 22 May ‘11 – Gherkin Stairclimbing race
In aid of the ChCh earthquake appeal I put in a team to race the 1,083 stairs up the Gherkin. Spent a few weeks training specifically for stairs and it came off well. There were over a 500 competitors and our team won with an average time of 6 mins 35. Turned out a few days later that the computer had a problem and we were actually second – but they gave us the trophy anyway!
(4) 5 June ‘11 – Cork Marathon
The annual tradition – the Mother/Son marathon. This year we chose Cork. Always awesome to have Mum over and to smash out a city marathon. As usual training was pretty patchy. Takeaways and beer mostly winning out. Achilles had started to play up again. Started off at a good pace. Swift but not silly. Felt good. Went through the half in about 1 hr 40 so aiming for 3.15/3.20. I had only done one long run in training, which wasn’t very long (god I’m hopeless!), and started to pay around 18 miles. Struggled on and came in a slow 3.44. Not too pleased really but probably where my fitness currently is – and clearly somewhere it cant stay!
(5) 25 to 30 August ‘11 – Climbing on the Isle of Skye
A great time with Tom and Dave. Camping in Glenbrittle and climbing around the Cullin Ridge. Up the Sgurr nan Gobhad (Peak of the Goats) and associated crags. Tried to live wild – fishing for dinner and larking around. Fresh Mackerel sashimi on the rocks minutes out of the sea. Any Camo moments? Umm, well yes….I managed to lose Tom’s spool in the ocean (don’t ask why it wasn’t on the rod). In a panic (Tom looooves his kit) I tried to retrieve it. Struggled to reach it. Crashing waves, sharp rocks etc. More panic. What to do? What to do?!! In desperation ended up stripping naked and jumping in. Diving under and swimming along the bottom being smashed (naked!) against the rocks. Managed to find it and got myself out. Fishing from a distant rock out of earshot Tom and Dave thought I had cracked up and finally lost the plot! Curiously they didn’t make any effort to come and rescue me!
(6) 9th to 11 December ‘11 – Climbing in the Peak District
Perfect end to the year with Tom, Dave and Big Neil. Started snowing as I got off the train in Edale. Tom’s long drive from Southamption forcing me to start the weekends climbing with 5 pints of climbing ale at the Rambler (it was a long wait I promise) and Jim Perrin’s autobiography of Don Whillans. Slept in a stone shed on a farm, which offered comfort not found sleeping in the snow! Hiked up the nearest peak to the Lords Seat on the Saturday. Snowed pretty constantly with little visibility – we were the only ones climbing up the ridge that day! Followed the ridge line to Mar To and then on to Back Tor and eventually back to our shed. Sunday was spent lower down checking out the Ladybower Reservoir – poured all day. A light work out and a decent end to the year.
