Posts Tagged ‘lake district’

The Keswick Mountain Festival is the UK’s premier mountain festival. How many mountain festivals are there, though?

I signed up for the 25k. I do not do a lot of hilly running but I thought “even if it is twice as hard as a normal 25k, that would make it a 50k, and I can manage that.” Luckily, it was somewhere in between. It was hard but not in the way I expected. The uphills were fine but the trail was quite technical: a lot of it was rocky or steep gravel descents which meant I was carefully picking where I put my feet.

This meant I was moving slower than I expected. When I signed up I put myself in the sub-3:10 category because I thought I could pretty much walk it in that time and how hard can it be to maintain a walking pace? Well, pretty hard when you’re worried you’re about to go flying. It was unrunnable. And yet, everyone else was running it. I didn’t want to do that because I was worried I would slip. But everyone else just got on with slipping (and they did slip!).

In the second half of the course, it got flatter and less technical and I was able to speed up. I hit the 24k point at around three hours and thought I would probably make it in under 3:10 after all. But the course turned out to be 25.5 km long so when I hit 25 k I could not see the finish. One last push and I crossed the line in:

3:08:38

Good enough for 176 out of 408.

The weather was okay. A little bit of train. In the UK, you sometimes get all four seasons in one day. But in the Lake District, you seem to get all four seasons every day. The route was beautiful with the caveat that I rarely dared to take my eyes off the trail.

I made a video about it that you can watch here:

Last month, I completed EpicMan Windermere triathlon and as COVID had cancelled all of our holiday plans, we decided to make a long weekend of it and spend some time in the Lake District.

It was my first time spending any time there because I live in Yorkshire and so why would I need to go to other places?

The roads are not great for driving or cycling. One of the nice things about Yorkshire is that the roads tend to be pretty wide and once you get off the main roads, quiet. Perfect for cycling. Driving around the Lake District was unpleasant because the roads are super-narrow and there is little visibility. Add cars everywhere to that and it doesn’t feel like a great place for cycling (even if you really love hills).

That said, we were around the south end of Windermere, so maybe that is just a traffic hotspot. But the triathlon bike course took us away from Windermere and the traffic did not get any quieter for at least the first half.

It’s a pretty hilly, which makes it great for walking up and down hills, but less good if you like the flat.

We went to Bowness and that was unpleasant. It was like a run-down seaside arcade with nobody wearing masks indoors. We stopped at an outside cafe and had fish and chips. Which is awful. I’m not even sure they had a fryer it was so bad, but I’m not sure how you could get fish so dry and stale in a microwave. And it was cash only. Even in a rundown seaside town in Yorkshire, you would get good fish and chips. This was almost inedible.

Kendall was lovely. Everyone was wearing masks in Asda.

The scenery around Windermere was very pretty.

Conclusion

The Lake District is a beautiful area of the country and has some good walks. But it is not a patch on Yorkshire.

It’s been a challenging year for all of us. Thanks to a receding coronavirus, there has been a triathlon season, however. Albeit a short one. I signed up; for five races: Evolve quarter, sprint, Derby, Windermere and Goole. Goole was cancelled and I picked up a cold just before Evolve sprint so I wasn’t allowed to race. It lastest past Derby triathlon, meaning I only got to race two of the five races.

Still, two is better than none, and at least Windermere is one of the pretty ones. We made a long weekend of it, renting a converted barn in Crosthwaite and used the time to take in some of the lakes, including Venla beating us all up Gummer’s How.

The swim

I had a pretty terrible swim: it took nearly 50 minutes. I am a slow swimmer anyway, but I am usually under 40 minutes for 1,500 metres. I think a couple of factors contributed. I took it easy and decided to treat myself to breaststroke. That way I could look around at the beautiful scenary, especially looking up at the north end of the lake. It was also a slow start as you cross the timing mat, then run down into the water. But it’s pretty stoney and shallow, so it doesn’t lend itself to running and diving.

The course was also a little confusing. There were supposed to be eight buoys on the water, and the standard distance went around six of them. But, on the day, there were actually ten of them, of which we had to go around eight. This led to some confusion in the swim pack ahead of me on the way out, and me getting confused on the way back as extra buoys kept appearing.

I was second to last out of the water, although this isn’t really an accurate measure because it was a staggered start due to COVID and I was in the second-to-last wave, 25 minutes after the race started.

The bike

The bike course was a story of two halves. One of the issues with the Lake District is that there is a lot of cars and the first half of the bike course meant we were travelling down main roads with cars whizzing by, or on smaller roads, cars would get stuck behind slower cyclists (especially on hills) and I would get stuck behind the car.

The second half was on smaller roads and this was much nicer. It was reasonably flat for the Lake District: 450 metres of climbing over 37.5 km and only one steep climb that topped out at 13%.

The run

The run took place in the grounds of YMCA Lakeside. It was all trail, and some bits involved scrabbling down a few rocks. As I climbed down one of the little walls, the rock beneith my foot gave way and started rolling down the hill. I had to jump off it Super Mario style.

Given the sun was up and beating away by this point, I was pleased to be running through the trees most of the time, though. I had a small issue 2 kilometres from the finish when my running shoes ripped but luckily they stayed on for the remainder of the run!

I am very glad it was dry as it would be a challenging run course in the wet. Some parts were muddy and I slipped a couple of times. But I was wearing my road shoes.

The result

My official time was:

3:20:32

But the splits were initially bit of a mystery. Officially, my swim time was 12:30:45, my bike was 1:26:50, my run was 1:01:08 and my transition times were instant. On my watch, I clocked 49:20, 3:15, 1:26:52, 3:59 and 57:07.

But they later updated the results to be 49:19, 3:15, 1:26:50, 4:03, 57:05, which matches up with my watch.

The pictures are available for free, although heavily watermarked and to find them you have to manually search through the nearly 12,000 photos they have uploaded. As there were three distances going on at the same time, there was no indication where I might be in the pictures. I found my bike and run ones, and I don’t think there is a finish line one. Still, free, so no complaints.

Conclusion

Organising a COVID-secure event is a huge challenge and it’s not like triathlon events are a profitable industry in normal times (unless you’re Ironman, and even they are in financial trouble). So, a big thank you to Epic Events for getting it organised.

Some triathlons are fast, flat and great for PBs. Others are more about having a great experience in a beautiful location. This race is the latter.