Saturday run

The usual Saturday morning off road/moorland run was dropped in favour of a long road run as brother Ed had but two weeks to go to his Madrid Marathon. He has been learning some essential Spanish phrases, well he needs to keep hydrated the night before, but has not yet learned the most important race request "How far to the next Portaloo".

Julie joined us for the road outing which started early for me with a 5-mile warm up around the Anglezarke area before meeting up with the others. The basis for our squad road training centres on the former Bolton 40 course. This is a race that is sadly no longer organised and one that Ed and myself did several times. It started outside the Parish Church in Horwich and circuited Winter Hill by road in an anti clockwise direction to Rivington and than via the Millstone back to the starting line. Three laps made up the 40-mile race distance.

Being a hilly route it has always been an ideal training course for such races as the Snowdonia Marathon and the Langdale Marathon. Are there any big hills in Madrid?

And so the three of us set out at a steady pace until we reached Belmont where the route took us past the Blue Lagoon and up to the top at Horden Stoop. This 1.3 miles climb has become (mostly at my insistence) a time trial and Saturday was no exception, with the much improving Julie leading the way with 12mins 34secs, yours truly next in 12mins 55 secs and Ed in third place.

We dropped down to Rivington Green where Julie left us to return to the lower barn and the remaining two added another lap of Anglezarke reservoir where the climbs were beginning to take their toll.

My total time for 23.48 miles was 4hrs 22mins 18 secs, a pace of 11mins 10 secs per mile, not particularly fast but a worthwhile training run considering the total climb of 2,900ft.