Howgills UltraTrail 26

On Sunday the Iron Man and I had a trip to Sedburgh for this event.  The Howgills are an area I have neglected in the past, quite wrongly it turns out as they are really nice hills- round, rugged, craggy, and good views.

The route is basically a big up in the first 5km, then up and down.  Underfoot varied and was generally quite technical.  Strangely, this felt the hardest of the three UT26s we have done, although last weekend's run may have something to do with it.  I came in under six hours, which was my aim.

Rivington UltraTrail 26  3/11/13  43.9km  1016m ascent  5:39:36
Grizedale UltraTrail 26  23/2/14  43.6km  1183m ascent  5:46:59
Howgills UltraTrail 26  25/5/14  42.5km  1153m ascent  5:58:41

Incidentally, in 2014 I have run 535km and covered 8899m ascent, which is more than the height of Everest and was one of my aims this year.  The other running aim remains unspoken.....

Lakeland 50 Recce Pooley Bridge to Ambleside

Did this today with the Iron Man.  Really, really, really hot.  And tough.

46.2km
2000m ascent
7hrs 40.

Hard, but the 50 is a reality.

Woo hoo

A big clap for Ben as he helped significantly in his team's Under 10s cup victory in today's final.  He played really well, made two great saves and was generally awesome.  Nice one Ben!!

Denham Quarry 28/04/2014

I went back to Denham on Monday after a recent trip where I did nothing. I had noted a possible sit start to Hypno-Toad, but since I didn't get close to Hypno-Toad stand up I dismissed it last time.

This time I warmed up at the left end and managed to do R-Man's nice wall of Living Next Door To Acid (stand), so I thought I'd have another look at Hypno-Toad.  It took ages to do the stand up, it's a weird move.  The sitter adds one fairly OK move, but it's then harder to do the slap.  I managed to link it after a good few goes.  Very morpho, but I suggest 7a-ish for now.  I then managed to do Snap Derision after not even managing to pull on last visit.  It's about 7a now the broken hold has stabilised and is usable.  When I did it originally, there was a crimp higher up and it was 7a+.  When I snapped the crimp off, the sequence became harder and used a foul 2 finger sloper below the new hold (this is in the video below).

Video of the four things I did on Monday, plus some old footage from 2008 to 2011:



Denham Quarry Bouldering from GCW on Vimeo.