(Partial) Excalibur Half Recce – aka Running Up Those Hills And Down Again

There is something to be said for grabbing air like a fish out of water while you’re trying to run/walk/stagger up some beautiful countryside. And then for having palpitations when you realise that the brake pads have not been serviced for this kind of drop.

I really do want to get better at fell running, or at least to be able to do it at all. I find the idea of scampering about nimbly on hills and mountains so appealing, and when I’ve seen it done properly it looks balletic and, for me, it’s the epitome of what running is.

When I try, I look like I’m crawling and blowing my cheeks out like out-of-tune bagpipes. There is nothing balletic about my appearance on the hills, which is why I’ve avoided most of the fell races that have been offered up by the club. 

Today, however, was a ‘recce’. Not a race. The race is in a few weeks’ time. The speed at which I go on these hills doesn’t change because my best is extremely pedestrian, but the difference is that other people stay with me and stop me getting lost – another reason why I’ve avoided those races. 

Plus, the weather was stunning. 

I’ve walked on the paths around Moel Famau (roughly translated as ‘mother’s hill’) a few times, and it is a beautiful part of North Wales. Today, when we began driving along from the Wirral to explore the route of an annual race, the sky was a motley grey, but by the time we reached the carpark, the clouds had been squashed into fluff balls by the azure expanse above. 

The wind was still a bit brisk though, and I wondered if my thin jacket would keep me warm, not to mention the fact that me and Neil were the only ones in shorts. There were six in our group to begin with, including two women who’d run the London Marathon only the Sunday before (we do have some Amazons in our club). The path begins at the back of the carpark, and the ascent (the first of several) was almost immediate, so the potential efficacy of my jacket was soon forgotten as my lungs let me know just how small they were.

I told the gang that running with me could be an extra work out if they wanted. They could do hill repeats while I slogged up the hill once, but only two of them, Wendy and Neil, took me up on that suggestion. It meant that I didn’t feel too bad for keeping the pace snaily, and Cath, who was feeling her London legs to begin with, could relax a bit as well.

Surprisingly, given the weather, we didn’t come across all that many people on our run. The lambs were frolicking in the fields with their mums, and we spotted, thanks to Neil’s eagle eyes, a skylark flying by. I made a point of stopping and taking in the scenery every now and then, to get a little pleasure from the pain.

What I did try to do was to keep my stride length small, like using the smallest gear on a bike, and for some of the lesser gradients that did work. There was still an awful lot of walking though. I also used this day as a practice for my trail shoes. I’ll be wearing them in my ultra and they’re a bit heavier and less cushiony than my normal road shoes so it was good to check that they would be up for the challenge. They seemed to be fine for the two and a half hours we trotted around. Fingers crossed they keep going for the other seven on the big day.

You can’t do small strides on the downhills, but I did try to keep them as small as is manageable and increased my leg turnover by as much as possible. I knew that it would be better for me if I tried to relax, stick my arms out wide and just concentrate on where my feet landed, but when they landed on lumpy rocks that nearly twisted my ankles and kept moving underneath me, the relaxing went out the window. 

Which do I prefer: going up or going down?

Always the one that I’m not doing at the time. 

At some point, around the seven-mile mark, Alex and Jayne veered off to do the loop that would give them the extra four miles. Then they came back and followed the right path for this loop. It’s good to know that I’m not the only one who can’t work out my bearings. 

Neil loped along effortlessly and often tailed back like a sheepdog herding us straggling sheep at the back. Wendy, despite the fact that she had to stop and apply a fresh blister plaster along the way, did the nimble ballet moves around me as I huffed and puffed up the nth incline. Cath, who’d started off with slow London legs, seemed to warm up and get stronger with each passing hill. Claudia who sometimes kindly bimbled in the rear with me, suggested I should breathe through my nose to grab more oxygen, but my nose was a constantly full snot gun. I compromised, by breathing in through my nose every other breath, and that at least made me sound less windbaggy. 

When I compare myself to these guys, it’s inevitable that I feel like I can’t do this fell running business. But when I passed the occasional hikers, I was, slightly, assured that I was a wee bit faster than a walker, so that was something. My time was around 2.5 hours for nine miles and, given that I do that distance in just under two hours on the roads, it wasn’t all that bad. And the only way I’m going to improve is to keep on doing those hills.

But only for a recce, not yet for a race.