Thursday 12 February 2015

Rombalds Stride Winter Challenge 07/02/2015

The Rombalds Stride is a 23 mile race following a loop from Guiseley taking in Yorkshire's finest scenery.  It goes up the Airedale Valley, over Rombalds Moor to Ilkley and across Otley Chevin.  The event has a great reputation locally for being a tough challenge given the distance, ascent and wintry conditions it is often run in.

It is an LDWA event however there were certainly more runners than walkers on this occasion.

Yes I did look this tired before I set off

The route is tough and beautiful with a nasty sting in the tail where you have to climb the Chevin (where I had my arse handed to me by two guys giving away at least 20 years) before the final descent back to Guiseley.  The conditions on the day went from freezing cold skating on ice and snow up on the Moor to squelching through the mud in Spring sunshine on the Chevin.

Up on the Chevin
If all that doesn't sound tough enough, I'm now going to take a few words to offer some top tips for making it a little harder for yourself...
  • Go out drinking all afternoon the day before at the Ilkley beer festival so that you are really dehydrated and you get horrendous cramp after 17 miles.
  • Go to bed late and struggle to get to sleep until 3.30 am the night before the race.
  • Pack your gloves away out of reach so that your hands freeze up like blocks of wood up on the freezing moor.
  • Tie your shoelaces like a three year old so that you have to stop TWICE! to tie them which takes ages because your hands are now made of wood.
  • Fall over, batter your knee and squeal like a big jessie so that the guy in front of you (thanks again fella) has to turn around and run back to you to check you're okay.
  • Don't bother having a proper recce of the route so you take a wrong turning and end up on a shiny housing estate where you get gawped at (understandably) by the locals out washing their cars.
  • Run with a rucksack which contains 3 times more kit (and weight) than you need where the water bottles are strategically placed just out of reach.
Just a flesh wound
The main problem was complacency.  I had done okay in my two races at the end of last year and presumed I could just turn up, run well and basically get away with it.  Some of the things were unavoidable (for example, all of that kit was a test carry for the Hardmoors 55 next month) some were just schoolboy errors.  I still ended up with an okay time of 3.41 but it felt like a poor run and it is pants when you are hobbling along with cramp as other racers stream past you.
Finishing in one piece - just!

On the plus side, after being recommended LDWA events by so many people I now know why.  The route was stunning with plenty of aid stations where there was ample drinks, fig rolls and even a bacon sarnie if you fancied one!  Thanks to all involved at the LDWA and the 15th Airedale Scouts who organise this cracking event, I promise to do it justice next time!  To top it all there was a full on gravy dinner waiting for the finishers back at St Oswalds Junior school at the end.

As I write this my calves have just about recovered and I reflect on lessons learned, particularly around the kit carry and pack for the Hardmoors.  It seems I needed a kick up the backside and this one is timely given there's only a month or so to go until the next big one.