Four Days in the Lakes

20th to 23rd May. Four days in the Lakes, four hikes, 17 Wainwrights.

The Manchester Marathon was a month behind me and the parkrun PB a couple of weeks after that. For the first time in months there was nothing in the calendar to train for. No block, no taper, no number at the top of a page. So I drove up to the Lakes.

I stayed at my mate Will's place in Cartmel for the first half of the trip. Michaela came up partway through and we moved north to the Coledale Inn at Braithwaite for the last couple of nights. The plan was an easy run before breakfast and a fell in the afternoon.

The shape of the days

I got out for 8 to 10km most mornings, down the lanes around wherever we were staying. Around 5:30/km, heart rate wherever it wanted to be, no session to hit. After eighteen weeks where every run had a job to do, that was the most relaxed I've felt about running in a long time.

Then breakfast, then the actual point of the trip.

Langdale Pikes

Day one, and a big one to start with. 14km and just over 1,000m of climbing with Will. Pike of Stickle, Loft Crag, Harrison Stickle, Pavey Ark, plus Martcrag Moor and Thorn Crag on the way round. Four Wainwrights before the trip had properly got going.

The legs were fine. A month past the marathon and a couple of weeks past the parkrun, there was nothing left to be careful about, which was half the reason for going.

Fairfield Horseshoe

The one I'll remember. 18km, around 1,200m of ascent, and the full horseshoe: Nab Scar, Heron Pike, Great Rigg, Fairfield, Hart Crag, Dove Crag, High Pike, Low Pike. Eight Wainwrights in a day, and the best haul of the trip.

The weather on most of them was awful. Wind, rain, nothing to see in any direction. We nearly got lost up there. When you can't see the next cairn and the path is more of a suggestion, it stops being a walk and turns into navigation.

We got round. It's the sort of day that's miserable while you're in it and fine the moment you're back in the car with the heaters on. Type 2 fun.

Sallows and Sour Howes

We'd earned a gentler one. Michaela had arrived by then, so the three of us did Sallows and Sour Howes, with Capple Howe on the way. Just under 12km and less than 500m of climbing, quiet the whole way round. After two big days the legs were glad of it.

Helvellyn

We saved the big one for last and the weather finally played along. 16km and another 1,000m up, with Michaela and my mum, who'd come to join us for it.

We went up the long way over Dollywaggon Pike and Nethermost Pike, clear in every direction the whole way. No Striding Edge. We came off over Browncove Crags instead and I didn't feel like I'd missed out.

The descent was the hard part. My mum struggled on the way down so we took it slowly, which is the right way to come off Helvellyn anyway.

By the bottom my legs knew they'd done four days on the fells. It's a good tired, not the flat, hollow one you get after a hard session.

Back to flat ground

Four days, 17 Wainwrights, about 60km on foot and something like 3,500m of climbing, plus the easy miles before breakfast.

None of it was training and I wasn't counting it as anything. It was four days outside with people I don't see enough of, and the right kind of reset after months of running to a plan.

For four days it was just the hills.