A Cautionary Tale

A cautionary tale for those of you who are out running on the hills in this wintery weather.

I waited for it to start snowing last Saturday afternoon and set out on a 10-12 miler up over Totley Moor, White Edge Moor, with the aim of eventually heading on to Burbage and Houndkirk. I love this weather for running in and it was fantastic having your face cleansed by tiny bits of snow blown on a strong wind.

I was following the footsteps of a walker over White Edge Moor until just before the White Edge Lodge.

White Edge Lodge

Normally I'm pretty good at judging what's underfoot but I suddenly hit a patch of snow-covered ice and went straight over. There was a loud crack from my left ankle as I went down. I won't tell you what I shouted out, but you certainly wouldn't say it polite company, and possibly not even in front of other fell runners!

Managed to get back on my feet, but it became clear after a couple of minutes that I wouldn't be running any further. Luckily there were some people staying in White Edge Lodge, so I disturbed them with my sorry tale and they kindly allowed me inside to put on an extra layer top and bottom in preparation for struggling back to the main road for my wife to pick me up. A quick call to Mrs W and I was hobbling along the track to the main road.

Now, I should say at this point that despite the blasting I was taking from the wind and snow over the moor, I was quite warm - wearing a thick top and my OMM jacket and a pair of Gore Windstopper tights. So what I layered up with in White Edge Lodge was a pair of windproof walking trousers, an extra fleece between the running shirt and OMM top and a pair of thick gloves. Sounds like I should be toasty in that.

Well, it turns out that in the 10 minutes it took me to curse my way the 400m to the entrance gate and then the extra 5 minutes standing waiting for Mrs W to turn up, the clothes I had on were not enough. My legs were actually warm, but the heat was soon sucked out of the 3 layers I had on top by the wind and I ended up rather cold by the time rescue arrived.

Anyway, enough of the waffling. The cautionary tale is not, as you might think, about being careful where you put your feet. We fell runners are almost always careful about that, but stuff happens. No, the cautionary tale is about carrying enough layers to keep you warm in the event of an incident like this. Normally I carry waterproof over-trousers and an extra top layer (fleece or similar), but yesterday for some reason I stuck my walking trousers and thick gloves in my pack as well as a slightly thicker fleece. That was good luck, as was falling right outside White Edge Lodge where I could get some shelter whilst I changed - and could probably have got a lift back to Sheffield if necessary.

Not everyone will be that lucky! I know that some of you run without packs or with small packs containing just the bare essentials on training runs. I'd like to present this slightly wandering tale to you as a reminder that in winter you *need* to carry extra layers - top, bottoms and gloves. I think most of you would be surprised - as I was - at how quickly your body temperature drops when you aren't running. I've always thought that if anything happened, I could slip the extra layers on quickly and then drag myself to a road. Firstly, you need thick or multiple layers, secondly you don't just "quickly" strip down in the middle of a snowstorm to add extra layers - especially with an injury and finally it takes much longer and is much more painful than you imagine getting even from a trail to the road, so imagine how long it would take, say, from the middle of a moor or top of a mountain.

Bear in mind also that even if you do get a phone signal and manage to call Mountain Rescue, you have to be able to keep warm whilst waiting for them to find you!



After a couple of days limping round the house, my wife persuaded me to go to casualty for a checkup. It turns out that rather than a bad sprain, I actually have a spiral fracture of the fibula and a small fracture at the bottom of the tibia. I am in a cast now for 6 weeks whilst it heals.

You Can't Win 'em All!

Last night's race was Blackamoor Chase - 6miles / 1450' of ascent. This is home territory for me as I regularly train on most parts of the route and know it inside-out.

Having managed to run up the two final hills of the race in training earlier in the year, I was pretty confident of easily beating my time of 54:30 set 2 years ago when I'd just started fell racing. I'd also had a week off training to recover from a bruised foot sustained in last week's Grindleford race, so should have been on peak form.

Before leaving the house for the jog to the venue at Totley, I mentioned to my wife that I didn't really feel like racing, but that I'd go anyway. Usually I'm really keen and enthusiastic, but yesterday: meh! After a gentle warmup around the cricket pitch, I still felt the same, but just put it down to not having run for a week.

I had a reasonably good start, getting away at a good pace near the front and up the short steep hill before catching my breath a little along Strawberry Lea Lane. Only a couple of people passed me, so it felt ok at this stage. Up the first climb, and I seemed to be running ok. A few people passed me, as is normal, but then a couple of club-mates came past. Not unsurprising, given that they're both on form at the moment, but I had hoped that my week off would have given me an edge over them. They both gradually edged away from me and I ended up having a mini-race with 3 or 4 other runners, changing places every few minutes.

Things started to go a bit wrong on the long descent from Piper House Gate to Blackamoor Stepping Stones. I had quite a bit of pain from the heel of the foot I bruised last week. It felt like a blister, but I never get blisters, so I just attributed it to banging down on the bruised area of the foot. This slowed me on the descent. Not by a lot, but enough for me to notice and allow one of the guys I'd been racing with earlier to get away. Then we're onto the last 2 hills. By my reckoning, I should have been up there like a whippet. In the end, though, I gave up and walked the steepest part of the first hill. I think this was a mental issue - I had decided that walking would be almost as fast as running it, so I might as well save some energy for the last hill. It's only 100m or so anyway, so not much time to lose. I managed to run again up the next part of the hill and caught the guy who'd left me on the descent, encouraging him to run when he started walking. After a short downhill stretch, we're into the final hill. I've run this several times this year, after never being able to run up it before, so it should have been easy. I ended up walking most of it. Again, I think it was mental: it was easier to walk and I wouldn't lose much time! I disappointed myself here.

Finally we're over the summit of the hill and it's downhill all the way. By this time, my heel was exceptionally painful, so I was trying to land on the forefoot rather than heel striking. This is very difficult when going downhill! I guess I lost a few seconds and a couple of places here, but managed an ok pace.

Time at the finish was 54:34. I hadn't felt that I'd been particularly slow, but was very disappointed not to have knocked at least a minute off my time from 2 years ago. That should have been easily achieved given that I've done it in the preceding two races.

So, what went wrong?

Well, I think I knew that I wasn't 100% yesterday. As I mentioned, I'm usually bursting with enthusiasm for races, but last night I wasn't. So there's a mental hurdle I created for myself as well as the possible physical problem that created it. I do have a bit of a sniffle and have been a bit grouchy, so maybe that's a bug I've picked up after the stressful 27+ miles of Baslow Bootbash a couple of weeks ago. Other than that, I don't know what else could be wrong. I had the same preparation and pre-race nourishment as last week, and if anything should have been stronger because of the lack of training.

I'm not going to get downhearted about it though. It's just one race and lots of different factors affect performance, so I'll look forward to getting it back together at next week's race.

Oh, and the cause of the heel pain: a blister the size of a 2p piece. This was wearing SmartWool socks and Inov8 Mudclaw 272's. I don't normally wear these shoes for summer racing and I think my heel was moving around in the heel cup of the shoe causing the rubbing. Note made to alter sock choice and/or stick to the X-Talons or Bare Grip 200s for summer.

Dude, Where's My Car?

Our cat and next-door's cat woke me at 5am today fighting. They also woke my wife and son.
We think our cat is being bullied by next-door's, so my son snuck off downstairs to attempt to separate them, then with the sounds of a herd of elephants, rushed back upstairs and charged into our bedroom to tell us that my pride and joy had been stolen off the driveway. I can't begin to tell you what a rude awakening that was!

Thieving scum had broken the locks on the patio doors, nipped into the kitchen, grabbed both sets of car keys from the kitchen drawer and then left - apparently without me even noticing, and I'm supposedly the light sleeper in the family :(

Luckily, no-one was hurt and that's the most important thing. Even my wife is more stoic than last time someone attempted to break in a few years ago. However, that might be the end of performance cars for a while, which is somewhat disappointing, but if it helps my wife to feel more comfortable in our own home, then that's the price we have to pay.

I don't hold out much hope of the Police recovering it really. In one respect it would be good to get it back, but in another, you don't know what the thieves did in/with it, so maybe it's better gone. Hopefully if it doesn't come back, the insurers will settle quickly and we can get back to normal.

I used to have a blog but I'm alright now

I used to blog about running and other nonsensical stuff through my work blog, but a change of company policy means that those days are long-gone, so after a couple of years of being an idle blogger, I thought I'd get back on that horse.

Why "Studded Flip Flops"? Well, I'm a fell and trail runner and "Studded Shoes" was already taken. So, with the current trend towards minimalist running, flip-flops with studs are obviously the next big thing. Does that mean that this blog be the next big thing? Errr...

Anyway, I hope you'll forgive the rambling, this is as much for me to read when I'm old(er) and grey(er) as it is for anyone vaguely interested to read now.