Edale Skyline & training
Time has been slipping by pretty quickly with a lot to sort still, I’ve had a few sessions with a friend organising and planning logistics, checking the route I am going to upload to my watch against the one published by Alfred in ‘73. There are a few options on the route, like taking a higher trail out of Ennerdale toward Rosthwaite, and adding Helvellyn into day #2, and whilst I do like making things hard for myself, I should probably do myself a favour occasionally so have taken the slightly lower altitude options. The other thing I’m not sure the answer to, is the GPX file I’ve created has the route at 183 miles, and I’m sure it was 192 when I did it with family in ‘99, so the last day is either going to be 16 miles or 26 miles ish!
I’ve tested some carbohydrate powders to add to water which worked well to take the tiredness out of my legs so am going to get some ‘Tailwind’ powder to put in my soft flasks and just run with water in the bladder, and need to do some thinking about the carbs and protein I need to be consuming for the week to keep going.
Alex and I ran the Edale Skyline to do a bit of a kit test of various bits. I wanted to check my new shoes and running a long distance with the kind of weight/gear I’ll need each day, Alex needed to check his pack weight with the mandatory items for his Spine Challenger South in a few weeks (FireFighters charity link), and he suggested I borrow some poles to see how they support the climbs when it’s too steep to run. The poles do take some of the load out of my knees on the climbs so I’ve ordered some to use for the first couple of days of ascent as I think I’ll see over 12,000ft (3600m) and could do with helping my knees where I can. I’ve also bought a raceshell to keep me warm if I end up running through hours of rain in the lakes, and a hat for sunshine/rain and general fashion awareness!
I need to do some refining of kit to work out what I definitely need to take and what I can leave behind, I tried running with my drone again, which was fine, but is a faff to get out when the bag is loaded up if I’m doing it myself so I need to think about whether I’ll bother with that (although it does give a good excuse for a few moments rest!).
The meeting points for each day have been mapped out, and the campsites for the week are largely done now - just waiting on a few to confirm. I think I mostly just need to avoid injury, keep up some running mileage and hill climbing to make sure my thighs and knees are okay, and finalise the nutrition stuff for the build up and week of the challenge itself, then I should be largely set!
