Keswick Mountain Festival Ultra

May 23, 2016 · 3 minute read · Comments

Being rudely awoken at 3:30 am on the first day of my holiday in the Lakes wasn’t exactly the best start to a holiday I’ve ever had but after nearly 8 hours of trundling wearily up and down the fells I’ve now managed to tick off 5 ultras in 2016.

I’m not sure if it was a combination of the early start or how exhausted I’ve been in the last few weeks with work and recovering from the Fellsman last month but I certainly wasn’t feeling all that great on the trip over from our cottage in Ambleside to Keswick for the race start. Unfortunately that tiredness and feeling sick followed me throughout, giving me stomach cramps for the first few hours and slowing me to a walk whenever I started to feel faint from the extertion.

All that said, I still managed to enjoy the day out thanks to a spectacular course and glorious weather.

Getting out early ended up actually being beneficial as we managed to get through a large chunk of the course before the day began to really heat up, catching some of the best weather the Lake District can offer and being up on the fells before 8 am with the sun still relatively low in the sky left us with some absolutely stunning views across Derwent water.

Feeling off the pace and being a bit further down the pack meant that I managed to not get completely put to shame by every runner around me as soon as we went up hill and even found myself making my way past people up most of the climbs which was certainly different to normal.

Unfortunately I was even more useless than normal when descending on anything remotely tricky and the final descent was atrocious. Coming off the top on Honiston Pass should have been pretty fast and relatively easy, even for a flatlander like myself, but every time I picked up the pace when going downhill I was acutely aware of how off I was feeling. Feeling dizzy as you descend down the side of a steep sided slate covered mountain isn’t exactly the best feeling ever. Of course, if you have to slow down on that type of descent then you end up having to put a lot more work in than if you just let your legs run.

Hitting the Cumbrian way where it levelled out after the drop from Sail towards Little Town should have then been easy running all the way into Keswick but picking my way slowly down had absolutely trashed my quads and calfs making even shuffling pretty painful. After about half an hour of suffering I decide to give in and took a bunch of paracetamol and ibuprofen and then carried on limping along until they finally kicked in. Unfortunately I got about 20 minutes of slightly faster shuffling before I went back to feeling faint and sick and ended up having to walk pretty much until the end.

Finally limping over the finish line I was greeted by a rowdy, excited festival atmosphere with thousands of people there to compete in or support the many events being ran across the day which was a nice end to it all. That and the victory cider I drank while lying on the grassy hill watching runners and swimmers finish their own events.

Now I just need to make sure my legs recover in time for Shires and Spires in just under 2 weeks time!