After a 5kish recovery run last night down the hill to the Lagos Marina (and back up the hill again through the old town!), we stuffed our faces with beef bourguignon, mash, beer and red wine and then headed to bed earlyish (10pm OMG!) so we could be up and ready for today. Monday was the Woodland Trail Endurance run. This is probably my favourite run of the weekend; 1-4 laps of a 5ish mile woodland trail under the soothing…
I’m out in Portugal on another Embrace Sports running holiday. I’ve been out here twice before, but never managed to really write about it beyond the odd mention in summary posts. Let’s see if I can do the holiday a bit of justice. Liz and I flew out yesterday (Saturday) after a pretty over crowded train journey to Manchester airport. Why can’t Virgin trains get their act together so getting to the airport with luggage isn’t a complete nightmare? The…
As Friday was our last day climbing before we had to go home, we decided to try and get out a little earlier than usual to maximise the climbing. We were original considering heading to l’Éléphant as that is a favourite of quite a few of us, but changed our minds as the easier circuit is set away from the main area meaning we’d be all separated. Instead, we decided to head to Rocher Guichot which suited me fine. I’ve…
Back to the climbing! After our ‘recovery day’ which left quite a few of us feeling quite tired, we decided on going to Cul de Chien. This tends to be one of the sites we go to when the weather doesn’t look quite as good as it’s basically a big sand pit with decent exposure to the wind. After the 20 minute or so walk in, we found the central area and walked pretty much straight into Lolly and Jim. …
Ah the rest day. Do you remember what happened last year? Well, Martin, Andy and Liz really fancied checking out the Circuit des 25 Bosses after my stories from last time, so that become the aim for the day. Something went a bit wrong in the planning though. I’d done it before and so I was expecting it to take is 3-4 hours for the 14km. Everyone else though was just looking at the distance and thinking it would be…
When in Font, we tend to follow the same pattern. This means day 4 is our last day before a rest day to give the fingers and toes some time to recover from the torture of climbing shoes. This means it’s usually an attempt to squeeze in as much quality climbing as possible. By now I’m usually really struggling with my feet, but a combination of being much more careful with taking my shoes off (well, pulling my heel out…
Woo, my toes hurt! Second day of climbing was a good one. Jim challenged me to climb blues at La Canche aux Merciers which was a great little bit of motivation for climbing hard. It was a bit of an warm and overcast day, so the rock was a little sweaty, not helped by our greasy fingers I guess, but after a bit of a warm up with Lolly on some yellows, we got cracking on with blues. Suddenly I…
Day 2, first day of climbing. We had a slow morning (like we kid ourselves any morning will be quicker) opened with fresh grapefruit, fried eggs on nice toast and lots of coffee before heading to our first climbing area of the holiday. Jim and Lolly suggested we all meet up at La Ségognole which turned out to be a few minutes up the road from our gite. I’d never been here before as it wasn’t in any of the…
Well, it’s been a long time since I’d found the brain power to write a post here. I’d started out with good intentions with my end of year/start of year, but just never found myself writing anything. I guess it happens! Liz gave me a nudge to write something while I’m here on holiday and I though, well, why not. Even if it’s just a brain dump of each day. Maybe it will get me back into the habit. So,…
Day 1 – Rocher Fin After a bit of a slow morning, but with the great traditional breakfast of fresh coffee, sugary grapefruit and fried eggs on marmity toast we set off to Rocher Fin. It’s down as one of the longer walk ins in the Trois Pignons but it really didn’t seem that long. It’s was mostly a long trek along the Chemin De La Mée and then a little bit of faff at the end where we found…