A bad gel trip!

A good week all in all, though constrained by being on-call

• Monday : 4 * 500ft hill fort reps
• Tuesday : 2 * 500ft hill reps
• Wednesday : 4 miles and 1500ft on cliff route
• Thursday : 100ft * 10 behind house hard
• Friday : rest
• Saturday : Legs 1 & most of 2 of BGR overnight
• Sunday : missed it almost completely

Set off from Keswick about 7.45 on my own. Very nice evening indeed. Leg 1 went very well, though I tried the Doddick Fell descent and it just did not work for me at all. Each to their own and all that stuff, but it is Yiannis's Parachute Descent for me. I missed the feed at Threkeld, but even with a small rucksac and a slight Doddick delay was just about on the 23 hour schedule. What a difference having your own personal Yak's for the evening makes.

Clough Head went fine, a few minuites slower than usual maybe, but no surprise. Meet a chap at the top (remember it was 1am by this time, so not a casual walker out for a stroll) who had been pacing one of the 2 other groups ahead of me and found the pace a bit quick.

About 1/2 way up Great Dodd, I decided to try one of 2 Torq Caffinated Fruits of the Forest gels. It was very hard to consume, bitter, but I managed about half of it before my world started to spin and I spend 15 minutes throwing up (did not stop walking). A side effect was that just about all my water got consumed and regurgitated as part of dealing with this, so I was short of water from Great Dodd on. I did stop throwing up after about 15 minutes, but slowed a lot mainly due to a lack of water and a now empty stomach. I got as far as Helveyn and then took a straight line back to Dummail and my car getting back at 4am. Once I found some running water, put some Nuun in it, drunk it and eat 2 small boils spuds my energy levels recovered and I could happily run again. So a good training night with about 9000ft and 24 miles, but a duff gel did make it a bit more of an adventure than I expected. Still a fantastic night out.

So good thing I tried that Gel while training and not on the real thing and Torq were very keen to get hold of the wrapper and the one I did not consume for tests. I think for the big day No. 3 in just over 2 weeks time I am going to avoid gel until leg 4 and keep on spuds, sandwiches, sweets and rice pudding for the 1st 3 legs. Since the body can metabolize only about 250 calories an hour, we need to make sure we actually eat that much.