Misadventure Racing - Open5 Coniston

As you may have noticed from the lack of 'Misadventure Racing' blogs last year, I managed absolutely none of the Open5 races in the 2016-17 series. Unfortunately, every race clashed with something else I was booked up for and couldn't reschedule - annoying, but such is life sometimes. To try and avoid the same happening again this year, my series entry went in as soon as they opened for '17-18! I know full well that  I need something other than just kayaking to keep me motivated and out over the winter, so three races (one every other month) should definitely help. Handily, this season's races are all fairly easy for me to get to as well - Lakes, Peaks and Dales are all within a couple of hours drive so relatively close.

Coniston was first up this year, and I was looking forward to it despite having had a very odd summer season. Early on I'd been in fairly good shape, getting in plenty of time on the bike at least, with bigger cross/gravel rides at the Kielder Cross in Feb and while working on Peaks Pioneer in May, two good days of mixed-surface touring on the Sandstone Way in April, a road century on Ride to the Sun in June, then good fun sportive rides of 30 and 70 miles on Cycle the Solway in July and York 100 in August. After that, unfortunately, it went physically downhill. September and October were very booked up with event work - all good fun events, but not as much physical work as I might have liked - November with kayaking and  social weekends (though I did get a decent gravel loop in while in the Peaks) and then... oh look. First race of the season, too late to get any extra training in. Here we go again...

To keep me honest and give me some extra motivation/competition/abuse, Steve H - occasional team-mate, some time support crew and general partner in outdoors crime - had entered the series as a Solo as well, so we shared transport, drove up and kipped at Holly How YHA to be able to get a decent night's sleep and not have such an early start from Leeds. The 'decent night's sleep' part of that got kiboshed by an extremely loud snorer in the dorm unfortunately, but we got the not-so-early start and a decent breakfast, and race base was then just a short trot down the road at John Ruskin school. Registered, coffee'd, planned and chatted with caterer extraordinaire Nav4 Joe, The Heb (and other things) director Paul and a whole host of others,  it was time to get going.


Bike: 33.62km / 844m ascent / 3:37:51 
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2374464423

Pre-race deliberation - Steve and I  (pic: James Kirby)

I opted to bike first as usual, and headed out just behind Steve who opted to run first. I'd eyed up a loop that crossed a load of trails we rode in a past Man of Porage event, so I at least had some prior knowledge (albeit in reverse for a few of the sections). Roughly, looping north from Coniston via Hodge Close quarry and Little Langdale over to Elterwater, then back via Skelwith Bridge, Iron Keld and Hawkshead Hill, all went pretty well. I've rebuilt my Scandal 29er hardtail to race on and in general it rode really well despite a decent amount of ice on the ground. A couple of slips since I'm running a very much summer/dry conditions Crossmark on the rear, but in general pretty damn good. I could have maybe saved a little time by taking a slightly different CP order early on - removing a loop and picking up one of the CPs on the way back to transition wouldn't have made much difference in terms of distance would have avoided some climbing. Otherwise the only real notable mistake/regret was my route from CP 11 to CP10 - a steep narrow singletrack that turned out to be sheet ice in more than a few places. Pretty much unrideable as a climb, a pain in the backside to push up in carbon soled MTB shoes, but with no easier/more viable access without a lot of extra mileage, I took 23 minutes on a 1200m leg, the shortest of my route. With 20/20 hindsight, it may have been better to skip that and give myself more leeway on the run. At least from there I had a fairly simple and clear run back to Coniston for the changeover.

Run: 8.52 km / 102m ascent / 1:15:03 
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2374467879

No pics of me on the hill, so have a pic of just the hill  (pic: James Kirby)

Back at transition in around about 3:40 - a little longer than intended but in the right ballpark - and time to sort myself out for the run. I was through transition pretty quickly, a shade over 5 minutes, just time for a couple of shots of coffee from the tiny flask I'd filled before the start, a change of shoes, ditching the gloves and the helmet and having a quick pore over the map and descriptions. Again, I'd half made my mind up about a route before the start, but had to change a little since two of the closest checkpoints turned out to be dummies. I set off south along the lake shore path, picking up three CPs and keeping an eye on the time. The intention was to get those then loop west and climb up from Little Arrow to get one or two CPs near the old quarries, but the little bit of time overage (and a lack of running fitness on my part) meant the high CPs would have to wait and I was in for a 3km dash back along the main road. I beat myself up a bit, thinking I was going to be over and incur penalty points, which it's been one of my main aims to avoid. I pushed myself steadily along the road, cursing my legs, my back, my lack of training, my lack of fitness (etc etc) with increasing regularity, and dibbed in to finish still thinking I'd gone over the 5 hours. Steve arrived home not long behind me, having gone hard on the bike and very nearly blown, knowing he was over by about 10mins as he'd tracked the whole lot as one on his Suunto watch. I'd split mine across bike computer and watch so wasn't 100% sure. On the negatives side, I need to do more running over the winter, just to get the time in the legs so I don't feel quite so lousy. On the positives side, the new Saucony Peregrines were bang on for the conditions (grippy enough for the loose wet bits but with enough cushioning on the hardpacked frozen stuff) and it looks like I actually plodded a fairly-respectable-for-me distance at a fairly-respectable-for-me pace. With greater time in the legs hopefully the pace might increase a little and the levels of cursing might decrease...

Anyway. A quick change into warm dry clothes and in to download and grab soup and chilli from Joe, and it turned out I'd got back in 4:58:12, so just inside time. 325 points all told, not my highest ever but a solid enough score for me. As I've said up above, a few things I know I need to work on, but this was a pretty good check of where the fitness is right now - not brilliant, but not completely appalling either!. February's the next race on the calendar down in Edale, plus I've a couple of other event entries in the calendar for March and April as well as the final Open5 in the Dales. There will always be more to do, but at least this has been a solid start to the winter season.

Until next time!