Getting out the car on a hillside with polls

Interesting, I tried my sticks out at 110cm advice seems to be in the 120cm range, the biggest problem I have is getting the straps fitting correctly. Hopefully I can borrow some from N, they are posh and light not like the Decathlon specials I have.

I felt like a right twat yesterday. Getting out the car on a hillside with polls (on a hill I run up, Mt July) But I knew there is a 5 meter section of steep like the KMV so that is where I wanted to test the polls out. I tried to walk up the hill, 150m elevation over 1.5km with the sticks but was scared that somebody would see me! - Of course I don't actually know anybody here and if I did who would care anyway? But I kept breaking out into a run anyway.

Odds for upcoming KMV

What are the odds?

K:- Probably the fittest of all, but to my knowledge never ran 1 kmv. Also suffering from running the Utra Trail des Aiguilles Rouges the weekend before with jet-lag and a dickey tummy.

G :- The only professional mountain person - walks up mountains for a living. Has a new pair of trainers and been training on the course. Avid ski mountaineer. Done the route in 1:09 in training. With competition and good shoes, he has to be up for a sub 1 hour.

L :-  Outsider, started getting fit at the beginning of summer  but has lapsed a little recently. Heaviest of the bunch at 90kg. With competition could easily drop 20 minutes of best training time so far. Putting him down in the 1 hour time frame.

C (me) :- 4 months after hospitalization, is getting back fitness but probably not there yet. A slow 1:08 and 6th from last the previous year. The extra competition and a better start position might help maintain that time. (Although some kind of muscular hip stretch from last weekend could cause a slow down)

Trail des 3 Monts

I have done the Course Des 3 Monts about 3 times in the past and was happy to be fit enough to attempt it this year too. But when I decided I would try it, I had not realized it had changed its name (course->trail) and increased the distance 13km -> 21km and just to make things difficult, change the form of the course to about 70% trail (from about 30%)

J needed a new violin and had a birthday party to go to (Kurt, her ex) so we stayed at the inlaws the night before. It is not great preparation sleeping at the inlaws, lack of sleep and a bit of brioche for breakfast. I tried making up for the breakfast with a few compotes and some terrible gels from Decathlon.

 I had a great race, the longest run I have done this year, the ups where tough but runnable (I did not run them all, but they could be ran) and the downs where mostly fast. I swapped places with the second girl about 5 times until I ran out of energy at about 16km. Afterwards she or her mate mentioned that the course was a bit to easy for her, she would have liked a bit more technical. For me, it was at the limit of my technical ability in places, I was slowing down on some of the downs. - Although on some of the others I was cruising nicely.

I started losing real places from about 17km and the last 2km I must have lost 10 places and that was down hill (easy).... Definatly went out too quick even though I thought I was keeping it slow.

60th from 200 

Squashed

I decided I would increase my leg turnover and run down the hill of Mt July today. It was a kind-of speed workout (well in my mind anyway)

On the road down, a car very nearly squashed me. How could he have missed me in a luminous red T-shirt. He pushed me onto the verge, and I lost precious seconds giving him a hard stare. Otherwise I would have gotten down to a 4 minute kilometer (how slow is that running down hill? But still my fastest.. actual kilometer was 4.02)

Confit de Canard

In the last month or so I have noticed a slight improvement to my overall fitness and was wandering on my run today if this has anything to do with a diet consisting of Confit De Canard. A couple of weeks ago after holidaying in Sarlet and enjoying confit, I did better than expected at the Monsta.

Today after confit yesterday and some leftovers at lunch, I managed to Mount July without stopping:

I had been thinking since arriving here in July that it was runnable. Today I managed it.

Another indication that the fitness has improved is that I was able to keep up with Karl at Dave's wedding. This was a great run in the South Downs. 16km along down and up the scarp slope near Ditchling Beakon

La Ronde des Grangeons

I stumbled upon the La Ronde des Grangeons by accident on Friday and thought I would give it a shot as it was only 30 minutes from the house. I was surprised at the size of the event when I turned up there where 3 events taking place, a walk, the race I did and a 44km race (won by the winner of the Marathon du Mont Blanc)

There was a great atmosphere and the organizers seemed to pull it all off without a hitch. There was a live band playing at the start/finish.

The run was hard,the Garmin says 661m in 16km, the down hills where lovely, but I did struggle on the ups in places. I need to work on the climbing a bit. There where people around me groaning about the downs but with my new found ability for the downhill all was fine for me and I did not blow out my legs at all. 

At the end I was unable to find my result in the posted times. I found another guy with a surname the same as my first name and assumed they had confused the result - Unfortunately when I when back to the board after notifying the organizers, I found my name just a bit lower down. Hopefully they don't correct based on my complaint!