Bob Graham training

I’m training for the Bob Graham Round again this year and have an attempt planned for June 17. After spending nine months training I was halted by twelve hours of continuous rain and high winds in July last year, managing to get to Great End but ninety minutes or so behind schedule, with no sign of a break in the weather. A hose-pipe ban was announced the day before my run so there was certain inevitability about what happened! Five weeks later I tried again but found it very difficult and bailed out after just two legs. Getting lost in clag coming off Skiddaw in the dark broke my spirits I think. It’s terribly demoralising to find yourself thirty minutes down at the start of leg two in Threlkeld and a bad climb up Clough head after running through Threlkheld virtually without stopping didn’t help. For a back of the pack fell runner like me there is a large amount of luck needed in a successful round and I just didn’t seem to get any during my 2010 attempts

Training has gone well this year so far and I’ve already done the Hardmoors 30 ultra marathon on New Years day as well as increasing my weekly mileage and more importantly, climb. This weekend was the Hebden LDWA challenge event (23miles / 4500+ft) on Saturday and Stanbury Splash fell race yesterday on Penistone Hill near Haworth (7miles / 1200ft). Both events went well as training runs and it was great to catch up with many friends over the weekend. The only sad news was hearing from Alan Greenwood (the organiser of the excellent Hebden) that a fatality had occurred early on in the event. My thoughts go out to the family of the deceased