This event is organised by Ourea who put on a number of great events including the Dragon’s Back (DB). I decided to enter a few months ago as I thought it would be really helpful as a final training effort two weeks before my big race.
I have friends who have done it before and they all said how good it is. The basic idea is a 3 day event in the Lake District. There are three classes Cafe, Wainwright and expert so giving various options for all runners and walkers.
You are even able to swap and switch between the classes over the three days but if you want to get a result then you need to do the same class for all three days.
My plan is to do the expert class each day but I’m purposely not treating it as a race. I want to use it as three long days out to prepare for the DB. Here are some of the things I hope to practice on the event.
Pacing - my aim is to try and go at a similar pace to the DB. So if I can average 3 mph I’ll be very happy. I want to finish each day feeling good and knowing I could do more. The average distance for each day is around 27 miles so 8-15 miles shorter than DB days.
Gear - I will be using all the gear I plan to use for the DB from shoes (Altra Lone Peak 4) to shorts & top, waterproofs etc to rucksack (Inov-8 and Nathan waist pack).
Navigation - in this event you only get the map at registration so I haven’t been able to plan out the route beforehand. I think this will be really good a it will force me to rely more on map reading skills rather than my gps. The GL3D uses the same Harvey maps as the DB so that will help me.
Food - over the years I have sorted out my main food choices but for the DB I wanted to have something more substantial in my mid point drop back so I’m going to try out cold sausage and beans over this weekend and see how it works. I also have my Tailwind sorted and ready.
Camp Craft - I did a 3 day event (Ring of Fire) last year but we stayed in a sports hall one night and a village hall another. In this event you take your own small tent which is taken in your dry bag to the overnight camp. So I’m going to try out a few things to see what works in relation to recovering between days.
I’m planning to take some video clips over the weekend and put together a diary of the event so watch out for that!
Katrina has come down with me to be part of the event team.
Registration opens soon so I’ll sign off for now. I’m not sure if there will be live updates but check out the race website or Facebook.
