Peak performance

A few weeks ago, I took part in the annual Three Peaks Race (spring version). In contrast to the autumn version that jules and I helped to marshall, participants in the spring event do not have to carry a bicycle but may walk or jog unencumbered bar a waterproof layer and bar of chocolate. Not too much walking though, as the time cut-offs are fairly severe. A 4 week gap from Manchester Marathon was plenty of recovery time, at least that was the theory. As the date approached I realised I wasn't really that motivated to aim for an optimal performance, and just set myself the target of getting round without too much of a struggle.

The race, as you might have guessed, takes in the famous three peaks in the Yorkshire Dales, which are conveniently located just a few miles up the road from us. So I had no excuse for not knowing what I had let myself in for, and had done a couple of "2 peaks" training runs, though never yet covered the full race distance. Recent weather had been dry making for very fast and easy conditions, with few of the usual bogs. But it's still 38km and 1600m of climb and descent. 

There were several other club members entered, including one who was probably going to be a bit quicker than me. I set off steadily and as expected he gradually pulled away over the first hill, eventually disappearing out of sight. Very much to my surprise, I caught him up around half way, he had a bad day and finished rather slowly.

Jules came to support and hand me my water bottle at the pit-stops where the course crosses roads, for which I was grateful on an unusually hot day for April.  She also took a couple of photos of course:

Runners heading towards Ingleborough

What do you mean "that's not much of a peak"?

I had a reasonably successful day, finishing comfortably under 4 hours though really I think most people would hope to take less than an hour more than their marathon time, especially with such good conditions. The women's record was well broken by Victoria Wilkinson, the men's record was not after the leader managed to head off the wrong way down Pen-y-Ghent. I think one or two veteran records went too.

In honour of the event, I have composed a haiku:

Ah Pen-y-Ghent ah
Ah ah ah Whernside ah ah
Ah Ingleboraaargh...

With apologies to Basho, although interestingly it seem that one of his most famous poems was not actually written by him.

Mr Potter had an ice axe tied to his rucksack

But presumably a broomstick in one hand and wand in the other.

This is a fun little story in the British press about someone who fell down a mountain in Scotland recently (though after a decade in Japan, I'm tempted to refer to it as a hill). When I heard the news, just about my first thought was that his ice-axe was probably tied to his rucksack (and I said as much to jules, I'm not making it up after the event). Bingo. I had it drummed into me from an early age that they aren't much use back there!

More mountains

Forgot to mention it, but I put some more pics of our recent mountain trip up on a web page. So if anyone wants to see what our weekends look like, click here.

The day after we returned, a typhoon came through and the temperature never bounced back. So that wasn't much of a summer. Not that it's unpleasant, or anything like that - quite the reverse, we are having some comfortable shorts and t-shirt weather for a week or two as we start the precipitous descent into what passes for winter here.

Bath

I know it's been some time since I blogged anything. I'm a bit bored of it, to be honest. But last weekend we had a bath, so I thought I would share a picture or two. We do have a bath at home, but it doesn't look (or smell) like this open-air sulphurous pit at Azohara Onsen:


Actually we had several baths in the three days we were up in the mountains - that was the most spectacularly sited one though, high up in the Kurobe Gorge 5h walk from the nearest access (a little narrow-gauge rattling train). The autumn leaves were perhaps just a little short of their peak colour, but the mountain huts are about to close for the winter (in fact one of them will be completely dismantled to avoid snow damage) so we thought we had better take advantage of the good weather while it lasted.


It was pretty spectacular but a little difficult to photograph with the high contrast. And in a month or two we'll get to enjoy a second dose of the autumn colors down here in Kamakura...

Ratty New Year

As I've mentioned before, the Japanese New Year is centred on mochi roulette with a spot of kamikaze mountaineering.

This year was no exception, sadly.

Actually, most people laze around for a week eating and drinking too much, but that is too mundane to blog about.

Much of the motivation for the winter mountaineering seems to be the desire to see the first sunrise of the year from a summit (and best of all, from the top of Fuji) but we don't have the necessary genetic inheritance for that particular foible and settled on visiting a mountain called Hinode (sunrise). It's the thought that counts, after all. We didn't even go on the first, but waited until yesterday. We did get up before sunrise if that helps.


Behind jules, the neighbouring mountain of Mitake-san has a little village on top. It has a shrine, hotels, shops and restaurants, some roads and even a fire station. Curious thing is...the road does not connect down to the bottom of the valley, so presumably all the vehicles are carried up and down on the cable car! Needless to say, we walked, and earned our reward of a soak in the onsen near the train station at the end.

Curiously, just like two years ago when we met a dog right at the start of the year of the dog, we saw some rats at the start of the year of the rat. I'd better leave before the year of the dragon!

Holiday

Another summer, another week of walking along amazing mountain ridges...

Unlike Stoat I don't have any pictures of naked men to show for my time away. Just flowers and mountain views:

A fuller set of pictures will appear in due course on my web site (update: here). Please excuse me if I have a distant look in my eyes for the next week or two...