The Wrekin Dark Side with 9kg Weight Vest

sportstracklive.com

I was bristling with training gear on Sunday morning. First, the 9kg weighted vest. It's a while since I donned this for hill training. It's the kind of thing you start dreading if you leave it too long. The dark side of the Wrekin is about as steep as it gets, so truly running up it is a challenge even without extra ballast.

Second, I was strapped up with the heart rate monitor and had the GPS phone in my pocket.

Alas, however, I failed to properly start the bluetooth on the phone, so no heart rate. What I do have is this very cool widget from SportsTrackLive that allows you to replay the run to the top - click the small play button towards the top. Then it's better to zoom the map out a little with the usual Google map tool, and use the forward button under the graph to speed it up.

Allow me to summarise the heart rate for you in words. Slow (before I started), fast (as I started), like a train (the rest of the time), slower (after I had finished.)

Mrs M was around and about on the hill, so I spent another hour mooching around with her, which was still keeping my heart rate at about 150 (by now I had fixed the bluetooth) because of the extra weight I was carrying and the recovery from the savagery of the initial ascent.

Time to top: 22.25
Post run nutrition: A hog roast a couple of hours later at the farm we buy our meat.

Lightning and I have several tough, and increasingly long mountain races coming up this summer and autumn. There will be more of these cruel, weighted, steep hill sessions, interspersed with evil Tabatas and inhuman weights circuits. There is no choice but to get fit. ... Read more