Green Insoles

Rock

With the Towis 4 down to the Towis 2 due to birthday celebrations in Edinburgh and the ongoing continuation of a fading football career, Carl and Tony decided to tackle the evil Beacon Hill of a couple weeks back - a good judge of how fitness and knee mending is getting on.

The check point 1 car park was packed Sunday morning, mainly due to a "walking group" assembling (that tried to sign me up) and a woman doing a survey on the South Downs, asking if I'd used public transport that day (whilst leaning against my car) and if I felt having trips to the South Downs Way was an environmentally friendly way to spend the day (again, leaning against my car, which is best described as "not very environmentally friendly").

Seagulls (honest!)

In the past few weeks I've had pain in the side of my calves, so on the advice of the Cotswold Outdoor shop had bought some "Superfeet green insoles".  As we trekked our way from the car park to Beacon Hill it became apparent they were working - usually the pain comes early and then eases, but today there was no pain.  One of those "if only I'd have bought these a year ago" moments.

For me, going up Beacon Hill was a lot easier than last time - I stopped halfway up to momentarily catch my breath, then made it to the top without feeling the need to collapse and lean on a fence post whilst trying desperately to breathe.  Tony too made better pace up the hill, so the general mood at the summit (!) was better than last time.  Jelly babies were still eaten with the same gusto as before.

Log

We then headed on at what seemed like a quicker pace, enjoying the ever warming day.   There were still a few pointy moments, as we surveyed "stopped to survey the scene", but felt a lot easier than last time.

The route climbs up and down some hills, then through some woods, before opening out into a 4 or 5km "straight" through some open fields with stunning views to the south down to the coast and Goodwood Race course, and to the north to a big hill that we really need to find out the name of.  Previously we had stopped for lunch at the turn round point, a car park by an A road, this time we decided to stop on some logs to enjoy the views and practice our ornithology - "oh look, a bird".  Much more preferable to the car park.

Along the way we also saw two or three other groups possibly training for the TrailWalker - groups of four.  We need some kind of flag to say we're training so we can recognise each other.  One team looked way to keen though, wandering past at a fair old speed with nothing but camel paks whilst we trundled along with rucksacks, sticks and packed lunches!

Upon reaching the halfway stage we checked our time and saw we had completed it around 10/11 minutes quicker than last time - good to know we had improved, though the exact same time wouldn't have been a problem.

Heading back we stopped again at the log for lunch part two, then began feeling the effort as we struggled up a couple of the slopey bits - especially the evil hill/field before Beacon Hill which strained our tired bodies.  But the return leg took abut 15 minutes less than before, so even more good news, and I also felt a lot better after it all with my "for goodness shakes" shake refuelling me and my green insoles making the whole walk more comfortable.

So another 14 odd miles completed, 25 minutes quicker than last time.  Next couple of weeks will be drabs of the team again, or individual efforts, then hopefully as a team we can tackle checkpoint 2 to checkpoint 3 early April - another stage that starts with a hill!!

Date:		11 Mar 2012 10:36 am
Distance:		13.9 miles
Elapsed Time:		5:35:56 (5:59:12 before)
Avg Speed:		2.5 mph (2.3 before)

Walking in a winter wonderland

Snow and a gate

The original plan was three of us to do a walk this weekend whilst John resurrected his football "career" (think all those middle aged ex-players playing in Legends games, spending most of their energy sucking their guts in for 90 minutes).  Then with Paul called to "soccer dad" duty it was down to two.  Overnight rain + prospect of it raining all day Tony took the sensible solution of going to the gym rather than risking his knee on the slippy upslopes and downslopes of the South Downs Way.  So it was just me then.

Snow (honest!)

After a detailed weather analysis out my window, yep it was pissing down, I decided to head to QE Country Park to take the opportunity to check out my water proofs ( I believe it rained throughout the trailwalker last year!), try out the MapMyHike iPhone app and generally have an opportunity to build my fitness as last week showed it was pretty bad.

On arriving as QE CP it was good to see I wasn't the only mad person as cyclists covered from head to toe in mud loaded their bikes into vans, more set off, and dog walkers were scurrying around under umbrellas.  There didn't seem to be too many hikers around though.

Once kitted up I decided to head to check point 1, the plan being to walk quickly up hills and then slow down/recover on down slopes in an effort to build up my fitness.  On my own it meant I wasn't speeding up/slowing down the rest of the team.  I planned on heading towards CP 1 for an hour and a half before turning round and coming back.

After the usual groan from calfs of "what are you doing?" up the slope out of the park my legs settled down as I nodded to other people out and about enjoying the rain, walking their dogs and fiddling with their umbrellas.  Checking my average speed I was going around 3.1 mph which was good, over the past few weeks we've averaged 2.7 and 2.3 so it's good I can up the pace - the section isn't particularly daunting but it is up/down/up/down, just no evil hills like Beacon Hill to navigate.

About 2/3rd of the way along the temperature dropped and sleet started to fall so I decided to turn back as the clouds were looking a bit ominous.  Within about 10 minutes of turning back snow began to fall, quite heavy at time, but no threat of it settling and snowing me in on the Downs for the night!  When I eventually got back to my car the temperature had dropped from 8 degrees to 2 degrees.

In general though it was a good walk - near enough 7 miles in around 2hr 14 mins.  I also got to try out my new "for goodness shakes" recovery drink.  I'm a wreck and generally feel rubbish the day after training - in the past I have used protein bars and they've worked - so I'll see tomorrow if the shake is any good.

The MapMyHike app was a bit disappointing though - it tried to save my route, failed, I then pressed "re-try" and the app crashed - so my route is not saved, but details were saved in a "workout" section.  Think I'll stick with the Motion-X GPS app we've used up until now.

Details:

Distance: 6.95 miles
Time: 2h 13min 33 sec
Avg speed: 3.1mph