24 hour Adventure Racing Training Session in the Lakes

Adventure Races are usually team events.  Teams tend to want to train together.  So when my newly found team decided to conduct a 24 hour training session in the Lakes District, it actually sounded like a good idea.  In theory.  In reality, my schedule had me flying in from the USA the day before the training, then working all the next day, and then finally driving up to the Lakes and starting the 24 hours of training.   So a bit jet-lagged already, I was totally scared out of my mind a bit nervous about whether or not I would survive the day.

Adventure racing can have many potential events combined into a race, but mostly races consist of mountain biking, trekking, and kayaking.  So guess what was on our menu?  We started off with a long trek through the night, at first sticking to the low ground, but then making our way up and over a few hills, which I’m sure would have been beautiful in daylight.  



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As it was, I can really only tell where we went from the tracklog of my GPS now that I have downloaded it into my computer.   But as we climbed up to Dow Crag, the wind, which had been calm in the valley, picked up enough that we had to stop to add a windproof top.   And although the temperature didn’t drop much below 10C/50F, it felt cool enough up there that I almost wished for even another layer, which is the opposite of being back at the car wondering if I needed to bring anything!  I guess even on a nice night here it can still be pretty eventful.  We were all a bit chilled on the top, but decided to keep moving rather than put on our waterproof pants, limiting what a particularly witty member of our group called “boiling in a bag” on the uphill sections. 

From there, our route followed a knife-edged ridge over The Old Man of Coniston, Swirl How, and Wetherlam.   Missed views or not, as I picked my way over slippery rocks on hands and knees, I was somewhat grateful that my headlamp couldn’t reach the bottoms of the black cliffs looming under us.

I wasn't much of an aid to navigation, as the group was quite familiar with the area and I had yet to see it in daylight (notice recurring blog theme).  The almost full moon was mostly obscurred by clouds (another recuring theme), but on the hills we could at least see shadowy outlines of other hills, and so get a sense of our location beyond the map and compass and the light of our headlamps.  Luckily the fog was minimal and so was the wind, and the walking was relaxing and enjoyable even if it was through the wee hours of the morning.   I must say our navigators did a good job, although we did get off route once or twice actually for all I knew we could have been walking in circles. 

In one tricky section, to find the trail we wanted, we just took a compass bearing and started heading in that direction.   The end result was us picking our way down a steep rocky incline, skirting the occasional impassable cliff, and then following a boggy creek to a rock wall, where a ladder stile was miraculously located.  Both navigators claimed the credit for leading us to that one!



Photo courtesy of Sarah

 9 hours of trekking later, we were back at our cars and took an absurdly long time leisurely transitioned into the biking phase.    On a rented mountain bike, with little technical experience, I was left behind too many times to count once in a while.  Luckily everyone waited for me at each intersection like the good team they are.  Thanks, guys!  But it was fun to bump over the rocks with the shocks on my bike, and after a while I almost got the hang of it.  About then, we arrived at the ferry at Lake Windermere, and rode across to get to the kayak rental place.  After another transition, and a bit of a struggle to get into kayak and attach my sprayskirt, we were off and paddling on the glass calm water.   I get the feeling that it’s not this nice on the lake very often, but we took advantage of it by having a relaxed paddle near the shoreline to see the beautiful green leaves appearing on the trees.   The biggest trick was to keep from falling asleep while paddling, as we had all been awake for at least 24 hours by then.  I wasn’t in any danger of that, really, as the guys in the other kayak told jokes and kept me laughing so hysterically that I couldn’t hardly paddle at times.



Photo courtesy of Sarah



The sprayskirt and calm day meant that in the kayak I finally felt warm and dry for the first time since sweating my way up the hills last night.  I think adventure racing tends to be a sport where you are uncomfortable most of the time, but for some reason still sounds fun.  Anyway, the kayak portion was over way too fast, and soon we were again on our bicycles peddling our way back to the cars.  It was only early afternoon by that time, but as we were all feeling a bit tired (gee, I wonder why?), we decided to cut the planned training short by a few hours.   Which got extended a bit when we were having so much fun on the mountain bike, that our route kept getting longer and longer.  On a nice sunny day in the Lakes it’s hard to leave them behind.  After about 19 hours, we were back at the cars for good, and packing up to head home for some well-earned sleep.