This week marks the start of 'Proper' Training for the Red Harrows. A bit like the FA Cup for which earlier rounds don't really matter (given Liverpool are in the semi-finals after knocking out Man Utd some time ago) and while this would suggest that we've merely been playing at it for the weeks since January, this time has been used usefully to equip ourselves, test kit and get us to a point where we are comfortable walking 4-5 hours with out really stopping other than to briefly take photos and grab an energy bar.
Our training plan from here on in, is to walk for about 1.5 hours twice in the week on a Tuesday and Thursday evening and alternate this every other week with a 3 hour night walk on a Wednesday with our long walk at the weekend. The plan is to walk for 4-5 hours at the weekend on varying terrain (more on this later) for the first six weeks and gradually increase this to a couple of weeks before Trailwalker where we plan to walk the entire length of the Sandstone Trail non-stop (55km and 1200m of climb/descent) with our support team meeting us at checkpoints along the route as practice for the event.
On Tuesday night Mark and Lee kicked off the schedule and set off on a local flat walk of 8.5km completing this bang on the expected 1.5 hours. The route took us across level fields in the dark (getting spooked by a low flying military transport plane in the process) and onto the Trent & Mersey Canal before joining the Macclesfield Canal and then home. Most of this was completed in the dark though as we get lighter evenings this should be an enjoyable quick training walk. The stats for this one are here.
Tonight's walk was the hill training walk for which Mow Cop and its famed 'Killer Mile' is ideally suited. At 200m from bottom to top it is ideal for the worst elevation change Trailwalker can throw at us (see Stage 7). We were hoping to complete the estimated 7km in 1 hour 30 minutes but managed to shave off 10 minutes for what turned out to be 7.2km so we were pretty pleased with that albeit a bit breathless at the top. The stats are here.
The proposed training route for this weekend is a scenic walk around the hills of Beeston and Peckforton along a section of the Sandstone Trail which will give us 19km and about 480m of elevation change. The planned route is here. It will be Lee, Martin and Mark tackling this one, speaking of which......
A Man Down
Sadly we report that we have lost a team member. No, we didn't leave him behind somewhere and forget to go back for him, he didn't get abducted by aliens or fall off a cliff during a night walk and shuffle off to the great Trailwalker route in the sky. After long hard consideration, Julian has decided to stand down from the team as he felt he could not commit fully to the training programme that Trailwalker demands and felt this would not be fair on his teammates. We want to thank Julian for his contribution (and forthcoming donation!) to the team to date and no doubt his continued support.
So currently that leaves us with a gap in our foursome. We currently have a couple of options from people who are interested and we hope to announce soon who our new team member is so we can happily train as a full group once again but for the moment it's just the Good, the Bad and the Ugly (we'll leave you to work out who is who) in training.
 |
| Lee, Martin and Mark - not necessarily in that order. |
Mark being a bit of self-confessed spreadsheet geek has been assessing the team's performance, the Trailwalker stages and our training routes. The initial purpose of this was to replicate as far as possible the likely terrain on Trailwalker given that geographically we aren't exactly well located for a quick jaunt down the South Downs Way.
The simple way of doing this is to look at Trailwalker, the distance of 100km and the climb of 2500m divide the one by the other and get 25m of elevation change per km or what we're calling 'elevation change rate'. Taking each stage separately gives us anything between 19m/km and 35m/km so quite some variance along the trail. This has led us to a form of classification for our training routes:
Green - any route less than 10m/km - single climbs no bigger than 50m
Yellow - any route between 10m/km and 20m/km - single climbs between 50m and 150m
Red - any route above 20m/km - single climbs above 150m (Trailwalker-esque)
Using this as a tool has given us some idea of ranking the difficulty of Trailwalker Stages:
Stage
|
Ascent
|
Descent
|
Distance
|
Ave m/km
|
Biggest
|
7
|
330
|
-130
|
9.4
|
35.11
|
200
|
10
|
136
|
-80
|
4
|
34.00
|
125
|
1
|
300
|
-210
|
9.6
|
31.25
|
93
|
6
|
210
|
-270
|
10
|
21.00
|
170
|
5
|
280
|
-220
|
12.5
|
22.40
|
140
|
3
|
190
|
-175
|
8.3
|
22.89
|
120
|
11
|
130
|
-90
|
5.8
|
22.41
|
105
|
8
|
190
|
-230
|
6.9
|
27.54
|
85
|
2
|
290
|
-390
|
10.4
|
27.88
|
75
|
4
|
180
|
-300
|
9.3
|
19.35
|
105
|
9
|
264
|
-325
|
13.8
|
19.13
|
50
|
It's easy to see why stages 5,6 and 7 claim most victims and force people out of Trailwalker. These three stages are beyond where most teams will have walked in training so you'll be fatigued, will more than likely get tackled during the night when your body wants to sleep and they rank highly in terms of difficulty. This where teams will need their teammates support the most.
To add to this, we've also been comparing our average speed with 'elevation change rate'. This is a measure of how well the team is improving through training. It stands to reason that on flat level terrain where the elevation change rate is near zero, you can really go for it in terms of speed but when you hit an incline this will be tempered somewhat.
So, comparing speed with elevation change rate, we get this relationship:
... and there was me thinking it was just a bloody long walk!
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