22/03/2012 - Proper Training, A Man Down and Lies, Damn Lies and Statisitics

Proper Training

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.

 Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

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:

The points are added from our table as a scatter graph and Excel kindly drops in a linear 'line of best fit'. The intention is add each new training walk and hopefully the points will fall above the line to show we are infact improving. It is interesting to see that the points below the line are earlier training walks so the expectation is that the line will move gradually upwards as we improve and ultimately we'll remove the earlier walks to give us a more accurate prediction of how long the Trailwaker stages should take us given distance and elevation - at least that's the theory!

10/03/2012 - Training Walk #7 - Electric Stiles, Udderless Cows and a Frog Chorus

For this training walk, Mark was trying out a touch of lemon juice in his Camelbak. Camelbak suggest its use to give more of a refreshing taste, remove the plastic taste and for anti-bacterial reasons.

Lee arrived at Mark's house for 8.30am and was on time for a change (there you go Red Leader - I said I would let everyone know). For this training walk, Mark was trying out a touch of lemon juice in his Camelbak. Camelbak suggest its use to give more of a refreshing taste, remove the plastic taste and for anti-bacterial reasons. The MapMyHike app was also being given another try as we were in a good mobile reception area.

Shocking.

We set off on our usual route to Mow Cop at a decent pace. The 3.6km, 200m ascent to the Folly at the top was managed in 46minutes which is about as fast as we did it with the full team. Having got our passports stamped to cross the border into Staffordshire, we then descended into unknown territory, weaving our way down streets and across fields. There was a bit of confusion where the public footpath left a street and all evidence of said footpath through a farm had been removed. We carried on regardless and soon found that there were stiles present albeit we got the impression we weren't wanted there given they had been electrified with a cattle fencing wire!

Biddulph.

Once through the electric fence and across "No Mans Land" which had been badly churned by livestock, the town of Biddulph came into view. Crossing further fields, we came to a another farmyard where the footpath went through it, though the marker was pointing across the field. Realising the marker had been removed and replaced with a single nail allowing it to be spun, we carried on to the farmyard. We were greeted by a friendly farmer who told us we were just in time as they were about to let the cows back out and often they divert people around the farm into the field (hence the marker). Directing us through the farmyard, we hastily made our exit as the thought of charging cows didn't appeal.

An old platform on the BVW. We apologise for the delay....

A short distance later we joined the Biddulph Valley Way (BVW). The BVW is a former railtrack which was once used to carry coal from The Potteries to Congleton and sand on the return journey back (more info can be found here). The route is now part of Cycle Route 55 and is heavily used by local walkers and cyclists young and old. The section we were on is a gradual descent towards Congleton so we set a good pace along it. 

As we got further down, we approached a group of people who were looking at something at the side of the track. The surface of the water seemed to be alive and it turned out to be a myriad of frogs who were spawning. A local lady explained that they return to this same spot to spawn every year. If you listen carefully in the video, you can just about hear them.

This stile has seen better days.

A short distance later we veered off the BVW onto a seldom walked public footpath. The stiles were in poor condition and livestock had turned the field into something more reminiscent of The Somme making it heavy going. We then realised we could have stayed on the BVW a bit longer adnd descended onto out intended route which probably explains why it is seldom used and the look of puzzlement on a lady's face who saw us on it (D'oh!). Well, we'll know better for next time. A quick delve into the backpack for an energy bar and a check of the watch suggested we were well ahead of schedule and making good time.

From this point, it was uphill through fields and woodland towards Congleton Edge. This turned out to be a very pleasant route through woodland though again boggy in places and eventually we emerged at a familiar junction at the top of the ridge. Once on the ridge we headed towards the mast at Mow Cop at which point Mark realised his Camelbak was empty, the full 2litres had gone in 3hrs which was either down to the lemon juice or the fact it was a warmer day. Instead of going straight on, we headed down the South Cheshire Way across the fields and through woodland. Again the woodland conditions weren't great with Mark narrowly managing to keep his footing on two occasions.

We ended up entering a field full of cows, at least we thought they were all cows until we approached to find one had a ring through his nose and a quick glance clarified he didn't have an udder. Hastily we edged along the field with half an eye on our curious friend and exited onto the road which took us towards the Start Line for the infamous Mow Cop Killer Mile.

Following the road back, another glance at the watch suggested we might manage our route in under 4hours so with that in mind we cracked on reaching the finish in 3hrs 50minutes having covered 18.5km with 383m of climb and descent a good 40minutes faster than we expected at an average speed of 4.8km/h. The stats for this walk are here.

The MapMyHike info is here (though I forgot to turn it off after the walk had finished!) Not a bad test for it though the elevation data is questionable.

10 Things we learned on this walk:

1. Adding lemon juice to your Camelbak improves the taste and drinkabilty

2. Warmer weather will make you drink more - today was about 650ml/hour

3. Ibuprofen is a surprising performance enhancer

4. Be wary of electrified stiles

5. Cows who don't have udders might not be too friendly

6. Walking through fields full of cows leaves something undesirable on your boots

7. Walking poles may double usefully as cattle prods

8. Walking poles may conduct electricity

9. Thanks to his new knee support, Lee's dodgy knee didn't kick in after 10 miles

10. Setting a target time and beating it is a great training motivation

09/03/2012 - Preparation for Training Walk #7 - Mow Cop to Biddulph and back

Well, Mark is officially no longer a "thirty-something" and given that Saturday might turn into a messy affair later on, we've decided this week to go for a shorter more local walk with a bit of a variation.

As Martin, Simon and Julian are elsewhere, Mark will be joined by Lee (another soon-to-be-no-longer-thirty-something) for a walk which takes us to the Folly at Mow Cop but this time down the other side towards Biddulph. We will pick up the Biddulph Way a former railtrack now local walking and cycling route and descend gradually towards Congleton where we will pick up the Staffordshire Way and head back upwards along the Congleton Edge back towards Mow Cop. We will drop off the route for a change and head down the South Cheshire Way before heading back towards Scholar Green.

Estimated distance is about 18km with 380m of elevation change. We're looking to complete it under 4.5 hours. The proposed route is here.

Given that whisky is likely to form part of the evenings requirements, it will probably be Sunday before the blog update gets posted.