Running Hurts!

I haven’t been running much lately. I did a bit just before competing in a Triathlon back in May, but very little since. However, I can’t swim at the moment thanks to injured ribs, so last night rather than drive into Aberystwyth just for a circuit training session I decided to go for a run instead.

I did a course I;ve done a few times before. From home, I ran south along the beach (if its high tide I go along the golf course instead) and then up over the pebbles just before getting into Borth, across the golf course and level crossing and then along the track past the Bird hide. At the Leri I turn left and run north along the grassy embankment besides the River Leri then across the railway bridge, back to the boat yard, down the track besides the boatyard and out onto the sands of the estuary. I then run along the side of the dunes to the road and back home along the road past Searivers Caravan Park.

It’s a 4.8 mile run, although last night I overshot a little on the beach and it was 4.9 miles. Despite running a slightly longer distance, I actually beat my previous best time by almost 2 minutes! So that’s it, the best way for me to improve my running is to not do any! It may have something to do with the fact that I was listening to a ‘podrunner’ music mix  on my iPod rather than a podcast. Podrunner are free exercise music mixes by DJ Steve Boyett for runners offering nonstop, fixed-tempo music for training. Last night ‘mix’ was called “Ballistic” and was at 149bpm. It certainly seemed to take my mind off the pain and keep me going.

Although, to be honest, looking back through the past times I’ve ran that course I’ve been getting faster and faset anyway:

• 20th March – 40:47
• 15th April – 39:14
• 26th April – 38:54
• 7th May – 37:30
• 3rd August – 35:34

I’m quite pleased with last nights time, not bad for an old man who doesn’t really run! My calves are pretty sore this morning though and walking around the house isn’t as easy as it usually is!

I managed to beat my Personal Best around the ClimachX Trail last night.

It was supposed to be an Ystwyth-MTB night ride at 6.30pm. As usual I was there early, but by 6:45pm nobody else had arrived so I let Anna know I was going to go around on my own and headed off for a quick circuit of the ClimachX Trail.

The first climb felt good and I was once again pushing a gear larger than normal. I got to the first bit of singletrack within 10 minutes, a couple of minutes up on my previous PB. Once onto the single track though, I was a little out of practice and hadn’t ridden ClimachX for a while so things slowed down. It was also very wet with lots of running water in places and lots of deep puddles. At least the puddles were warm though. Also, the recent heavy rain had weighed down the surrounding vegetation which was now encroaching on the trail. My arms and legs were getting ripped apart by brambles and gorse and I even came off the trail once or twice where I couldn’t see too well. By the end of the second bit of single track I was only 40 seconds up on my previous PB having lost a bit of time.

This pattern continued for most of the course. I gained time on my previous PB on the climbs, but lost is again on the descents or singletrack. By the time I got to the beginning of ‘Better Late than Never’ I was once again 2 minutes up. But this was back down to a 1 minute advantage at the beginning of the final bit of singletrack across the top. This bit of singletrack however is mainly uphill so by the end of it and the start of the final descent I was 3:33 up and looking for a PB, if only I could negotiate the final descent without loosing too much time.

The final descent was fun as always and wasn’t too bad as far as being wet or overgrown was concerned. I was still descending cautiously though, partly because I hadn’t been down here for a while, partly because I was on my own and partly because I’m a wimp, but I managed to hold onto part of my advantage finishing in a time of 54:31, 1 minute and 46 seconds faster than my previous PB which I set in May 2009.

I haven’t been out on my Mountain Bike much lately. Since the end of April I’d only been on a couple of short rides, totaling less than 20 miles, that’s a terrible 20 miles in almost 2 months. I though I’d put that right today and headed off into the hills for what would hopefully be quite a long ride.

I had plenty of food and water with me and the conditions looked good. I though I’d punish myself for not getting out on the bike much lately by starting off with the brutal hill behind Tre-Ddol. My bike was still creaking terribly but I actually rode up it without too much trouble. Obviously it wasn’t easy, my heart rate was up around its maximum and my legs were on fire but I made it without any thoughts of giving up. It is pretty steep!

The next test was the 5 mile climb up through Artists Valley. Again, this felt easier than usual. I found myself pushing a bigger gear than I normally would put able to keep spinning and all felt quite comfortable. I reached the top in fairly good shape and headed off down the MX trails, across to Nant y Moch and then onto the Conti Trail. Partway down the Bont Goch descent I headed off to the right and down towards the mines.

Test number three lay ahead with a long climb back to the top. At first I though I was going to suffer but once I got into it I again found myself pushing a bigger gear and climbing well. It was then back over the top, down Al’s Descent into Artists Valley before a few little climbs out of Artists Valley and the flat slog back home.

35 miles in total with just over 4,000 ft of climbing and a moving time of 3hrs 26 mins. Not bad for me and reassuring with the Isle of Man End2End looming in a few months.

I haven’t done any long bike rides for years. In fact we’re talking 20 years plus since I did anything over about 35 miles. Monday was a gorgeous day, warm, dry and sunny. I was on top of work (or didn’t have much on to be more precise) so set off on a nice little bike ride.

It turned out to be a lovely hilly 45 mile ride. Starting from home I rode into Borth and then Talybont where I started the long slog up to Nant-y-Moch. Then it was a lovely ride around the reservoir on smooth roads – although the cattle grids are a bit annoying. I then dropped down into Ponterwyd and avoided the main roads by heading back up to Pendam. Down into Penrhyncoch and then just to add another hill into the equation rode up to Bont Goch and back into Talybont. From there it was just an easy ride back home.

Just under 45 miles, and at a very slow pace. My legs were tired by the end of it but it was an enjoyable day out in the hills.

The triathlon looms ever closer and Jay, Brad, Matt and Beale all seem to be doing loads of secret training, so I thought I’d better get out there on my road bike again to get used to it.

Last time I went out on the road bike it was OK, but I didn’t feel that confortbale or confident on it and when I reached any hills I felt as though I needed more gears. So yesterday I decided to do a longer ride that took in a proper hill.

I headed out from home, into Borth and then along Glanfred lane to Talybont, from there I took the mountain road to Nant y Moch. Not the steepest hill around but in the glorious sunshine with the road snaking up the hill in front of me it felt like my own private little Alp D’Huez.

With my 42×21 gearing there was no way I could get up it in the saddle so I was out of the saddle and going at a slow pace all the way up. It wasn’t that bad to be honest and I soon reached the top. I didn’t see any cars, but I did overtake one guy on a mountain bike. It wasn’t fast, it wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t that steep but I did at least make it!

If you click on the ‘View Details’ link in the Garmin Connect preview below you can see (unsurprisingly) more details, including the Elevation chart which does make it look quite steep!

I then headed off around the gorgeous road that follows Nant y Moch and then dropped down into Ponterwyd. Other than the mountain-biker that I passed on the climb I didn’t see a single person or car for the whole trip between Talybont and Ponterwyd. I then joined the main road for the climb up out of Ponterwyd to Nant yr Arian before dropping back down along the main road to Capel Bangor, Lovesgrove and then on through Bow Street, Llandre, Borth and back home.

A nice loop of just over 38 miles and I felt fine.

Our weekly night rides at the moment are all exploring the trails that are likely to be part of the Dyfi Enduro. Last night we started from the northern end of the course and rode a few of the trails there. The first descent we attempted was covered in branches leftover from recent forestry operations so unless they clear that before the event I doubt that we’ll be going that way.

The other descent were typical Dyfi Enduro style descents with lots of sharp loose slate that managed to slash both Dave’s and my rear tyre. Each descent was of course followed by a long slog up a fire-road. The cold winter does seem to have released a lot of extra rock from the trails meaning that it is very loose under-tyre and slowing down on the descent is difficult as the loose rocks just slide on each other. It may improve a little as more people are up there riding the trails in preparation for the event now. The recent nice weather is drying things out a little up there as well.

Next week we’ll be riding around the Bailey’s Bridge section followed by an end of month ride around the entire route (as near as we can get to it without knowing in advance exactly where it will go).

On my way home from Conwy at the weekend I stopped off at Penmachno for a ride around the trails there.

I hadn’t been here for over a year and had fond memories of it from last time so was looking forward to it. This was helped by the fact that it was a lovely day, sunny and cool and not too busy by the looks of the car park.

I was soon ready and heading off up the long hill at the start and then onto the singletrack. It all came back to me as I started making my way around the trail and each little bit reminded me of what was to come.

It really is a good trail, not as up and down as most Trail Centres, instead, after some climbing it tends to hug the contours of the hills with endless miles of single track. There are a few more climbs throughout and even the flat bit can feel a little uphill by the end of it, buit as far as cross-country trails go it is really good. It has a bit of everything, fire road climbs, technical climbs, flowing forest singletrack, rocky singletrack, open flowing anf rocky singeltrack, even some raises boardwalks across the top and a couple of nice descents towards the end.

Both loops come to a total of 18 miles, which took me 2 hours 12 minutes at a steady pace. All in all, it is definitely a trail to try if you haven’t already, and one I’ll be looking forward to visiting again, hopefully in the not too distant future.

I haven’t posted a ride report for a while or any route guides. Mainly because I had a few months off the bike after being in hospital and the rides I’ve done over the past few weeks whilst trying to get back into it have been pretty hard work and not that enjoyable.

Last nights ride felt much better though. I’d done some sessions on the turbo trainer this week – 50 minutes fairly hard on Monday, 35 minutes on Tuesday and then an easy 30 minutes earlier in the day yesterday – and I think it must be paying dividends. Right from the start I felt much better on the bike.

It was a fairly chilly, windy night, so not that inviting out there but Dave, John and I met at the ClimachX trailhead at 6.30pm. After the initial pfaff as we got ready we set off up the long climb along the fire-road. I didn’t feel that fast but made it to the top within 12 minutes which isn’t too bad for me. We then did the first couple of sections of singletrack before heading off the marked trail and down the Builth Descent. This descent was a little washed out after all the rain we’ve had lately and there was a large Hazel tree down across the trail at the top so it was a little slower than usual.

Then it was up the long climb back to the top. We were treated to a bit of a lightning show on the way up and we hoped it would remain off in the distance. I’m not sure if Dave and John were taking it easy, but I was keeping up OK and felt quite good on the climb. Certainly a lot better than I had on previous weeks night rides. We then rejoined the ClimachX Trail and followed it around. The little climb after the section known as ‘Va Va Voom’ feels pretty different after the forestry work that has been going on there, but at least some of the deeper puddle have disappeared.

As we came out of ‘Better Late Than Never’ we were hit by a huge hailstorm, that hurt to ride through. We stopped for shelter under a tree just as the storm abated. Dave did think about doing the ‘Elephant’ descent and then climbing back up, but I was feeling a little cold by then and John wasn’t too keen to doing anything extra either so we missed out the section across the top (Where’s my Ball) and continued along the fire-road to the final descent. Despite all of the rain this was in pretty good condition.

Overall it was a good night ride. I felt much better than I had done the last few weeks and the 11 miles passed by pretty quickly.

Here’s a plot of the topography (blue shaded area) and my heart rate (red line). – Click for larger image

You can download a Google Earth file of the route here: ClimachX & Builth

The official results from Sleepless in the Saddle are available to download as Excel files on the Official Photographers website. Along of course with some really good photos. Hopefully more photos will be online soon and I’ll link to them when I find any.


Our teams lap times were:

Team 1   25 laps  24:23:03    Ystwyth Hillbillies

415    Ian Cowe    1    00:58:06
418    Martyn Teece-Round    2    00:49:53
417    Dan Field    3    01:02:18
416    Alan Cole    4    00:50:32
415    Ian Cowe    5    00:52:25
418    Martyn Teece-Round    6    00:48:03
417    Dan Field    7    01:03:21
416    Alan Cole    8    00:57:33
416    Alan Cole    9    00:58:30
415    Ian Cowe    10    00:58:19
415    Ian Cowe    11    01:04:05
418    Martyn Teece-Round    12    00:54:56
418    Martyn Teece-Round    13    00:53:30
417    Dan Field    14    01:16:48
417    Dan Field    15    01:18:57
416    Alan Cole    16    00:59:26
415    Ian Cowe    17    00:58:44
418    Martyn Teece-Round    18    00:49:18
417    Dan Field    19    01:10:05
416    Alan Cole    20    00:52:28
415    Ian Cowe    21    00:54:50
418    Martyn Teece-Round    22    00:47:23
417    Dan Field    23    01:11:33
416    Alan Cole    24    00:55:16
418    Martyn Teece-Round    25    00:56:44

Team 2 25 laps    24:23:03    Ystwyth Inbreds

585    Bernd Van Houten    1    01:06:50
584    Dave Reed    2    00:55:39
586    Gari    3    00:49:31
583   Guest rider    4    00:41:52
583    Guest rider   5    00:42:02
585    Bernd Van Houten    6    00:55:10
584    Dave Reed    7    00:45:34
586    Gari    8    00:51:42
586    Gari    9    00:53:09
586    Gari    10    01:03:05
585    Bernd Van Houten    11    01:01:42
585    Bernd Van Houten    12    01:05:35
584    Dave Reed    13    00:57:52
584    Dave Reed    14    00:58:36
586   Gari    15    02:04:34
586    Gari    16    00:58:04
585    Bernd Van Houten    17    01:02:28
585    Bernd Van Houten    18    01:09:48
584    Dave Reed    19    00:50:23
584    Dave Reed    20    00:56:42
586    Gari    21    00:50:00
583   Guest rider    22    00:45:16
585    Bernd Van Houten    23    01:00:55
584    Dave Reed    24    00:48:43
586   Gari    25    01:07:51

And if you want, you can click here to download a Google Earth file of the course.

Sleepless in the Saddle Course

I went on my recent trip to the Isle of Man with high hopes of lots of quality mountain biking. I had heard that there were a couple of purpose built trails in the South Barrule plantation and that someone from Coed y Brenin had been there to consult on the building of these. I also had lots of routes printed out.

As it happens, the weather wasn’t great, I forgot to take an OS map with me (despite having several of them) and many of the routes involved quite a bit of distance on the road so I didn’t get around to doing nearly as much as I would have liked.

I did manage to explore the routes within the South Barrule plantation. I actually did them both several times. They are both very short. The ‘Kipper’ route is only 1km long and is a simple loop up a fire road and then down through a short (300m) piece of relatively simple single track. An ideal starter for someone new to mountain biking I guess and graded as a blue trail. For the more experienced it only takes a few minutes to do and isn’t really that exciting.

The longer ‘Viking’ route is graded as Red, but is still only 5km long and again not too challenging (although I did manage to come off on it once!) Again it follows a loop through the forest on fire road with one short piece of single track on the way up and then has a longer single track descent back down through the forest where it joins up with the end of the Kipper trail. The single track is nice enough with a few tight corners and some nice bits of ‘north shore’ woodwork to negotiate. Nothing too challenging though if not attacked and some of the corners would probably benefit from some berms to improve the flow. I managed to come off on the first bit of woodwork in the rain when it was a little slippery.

As well as the marked trails there are also loads of other likely looking trails through the forest and I spent some time exploring some of these. Some of them are better than the waymarked trails. They are more natural and a little more tricky and some are full of slippery roots.

All in all, the waymarked trails are a great start, but are far too short to really encourage people to visit them. Some longer trails would really help and there are plenty of natural trails to explore. Some of these can easily be joined up to make a much more interesting route.

Here’s a you Tube video of the singletrack that I found.

I didn’t explore much further due to lack of time, but I did do a nice ride around the Viking Trail and then off into the Corlea plantation and onto a muddy track around the southern side of South Barrule, just above the Whisky Run that came out at the top end of the Whisky Run itself. This bit of track was well used by bikes and a little too muddy to be fun in places but rideable most of the time. From here I headed up to the crossroads and down along a greenway (The bridleways of the Isle of Man) towards Glen Maye. This descent was good with lots of banked water bars to act as ramps and some rocky sections along with a river crossing. From the bottom of this descent there would be many ways to go to make a more interesting route but I simply headed back up a steep lane and back on the road to the South Barrule car park.

There’s certainly plenty of potential and I’ll be back soon. Hoepfully this time with a map and more time to explore properly.