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Like a bat out of Helvellyn. Anybody in?
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This one looks like it has a bit of spunk. We've had the "long and slow versus short and fast" debate and this one should allow me to throw "short and slow" into the equation.
http://www.trihard.co.uk/Helvellyn/Helvellynhome.htm
In the spirit of choosing races that I'm ill-equipped to perform in.... I've entered 
. Is anybody else doing it, or can anybody offer a bit of chumly advice? Looks like I ought to buy some fell running shoes and probably some liposuction while I'm at it.
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Comments
Looking at what you must take on the run with, I have no other option but recommend that Muffin Top gets you to see the men in the white coats
Enjoy and I look forward to reading the race report, done in your usual humour please
I'm doing it. After a DNF at Lanza I'm hoping to redeem myself. I expect to be last though!
You might have to shift your furry ass, Bungles. Given that we'll have to carry our own personal defibrillator, hang-glider, bivouac and a week's supply of Goblin meat puddings, those cut-offs look tasty!
Muffin Top has a thing for delirious, incoherent, incontinent men, Q. She's very fond of you, you know?
Muffin Top has a thing for delirious, incoherent, incontinent men, Q. She's very fond of you, you know?
Oh touche
Don't be daft SA, She's checked the life insurance and she's dreaming of a new Cervélo
Well she did give me a hug on my last run lap at IM Wales at which point I defintely was delirious and incoherent and quite probabley incontinet by that time
you know me too well matey
STIL - loving the races you've entered this year mate! I did enter hellvellyn in 2010 but had to pull out a week before when i started pissing blood for some reason
I'll be interested in how it goes as this is on my wish list for next year along with the Forestman Iron distance - ( can't afford Nice..much as I'd love to)
Cut off's you say..........
Looks good fun matey, unfortunately also looks full again......and last time I went up Kirkstone Pass I got a nose bleed so may have to pass this year
"Skull crushingly cold" - its not grabbing me, I have to admit
Brit this race has some very tasty hills on it. It's on my bucket list but not going to even consider it unless fireing on all cilinders. Go on you know you want to
Race well STIL
Looking forwards to the race report STIL
A friend of mine has done this race a couple of times and loves it. He was trying to persuade me this year but I have a swim event on the same day. Apparently there is a fairly difficult hill, locally known as 'The Struggle' which requires thighs of iron and steely determination - and a bike. Next year. Good luck.
Feeling a tad odd. STIL has gone and it will be the first time I haven't suppported him
Spending Saturday night sewing name tags - living the dream
Muffin
Get your hubby to send me a text when he has finished, just so I can laugh at the pain he will be in
Was camping over at Patterdale this weekend (didn't realise the tri was on) and spent some time this morning cheering people on. Saw a pirate coming towards the end of the bike between Patterdale and Glenridding, and they looked reasonably cheerful at that point. Obviously that was before attempting to run up Helvellyn though...
Always cheerful, my friend, especially when there are lovely people cheering us on
. Thanks for that! This is a very cool event and surprisingly Pirate friendly. My legs feel like they've been stamped up and down on now, so you can chuckle into your beer, Q, but I'm chuffed to have finished and enjoyed a bloody nice day out. Report tomorrow, when I've done my share of the name tags 
.
Stil no report, did you see what I did there?
William Wordsworth once described Ullswater as being, “perhaps, upon the whole, the happiest combination of beauty and grandeur, which any of the Lakes affords". Standing in a windswept field, with this most picturesque of waters laid out before me, and the forbidding pikes of Stony Cove Pike, Kidsty, Dollywagon and Helvellyn gathered like grandstands to witness the 10th Helvellyn Triathlon, I found myself thinking “I really cannot be arsed with this one bit”.
I so wanted to go and find a nice coffee shop and sit with a Macchiato and the Sunday papers and not drag my sorry arse up and down some hills. I’ve got nothing against this event. It’s a nice race. But it’s not the kind of gig that buffs your status in the eyes of your fellow man, or bestows a Badge of Honour upon the finisher. I mean, nobody was ever daft enough to get the organiser’s logo tattooed on their calf. But it doesn’t look like a fun event either. You can’t just pootle round the freezing lake, coast your way over the Kirkstone Pass and swan up the third highest mountain in England before swaggering jauntily off for Sunday lunch with the family. This race felt like such a bad idea, requiring a barrow-load of guts in return for very little glory. It was only the thought that my long-suffering wife had sanctioned the cost and weekend away from the family that stopped me legging it for the car.
So having decided to race, I applied my mind to the morning’s priority, and can report that TriHard’s chemical toilets are the best I have ever had the good fortune to crap in. As a gnarled veteran of triathlons, I’d brought a pocket full of my own soft loo roll, but so clean and well-fettled was the dunny that I didn’t have to use it. And on leaving the little green Tardis, I was spared the usual shame-faced ritual of muttering to the next person in the queue that “it was like that before I went in, mate”.
Other than nearly doing a runner, and finding the facilities surprisingly to my liking, nothing else happened that was especially different from every other race, I’m afraid.
The organisers had helpfully split the 700 swimmers into three waves, separated by 5 minutes each. I’d self-seeded myself into the middle wave, with the other guys whose egos exceeded their technical capability. Bobbing in the chilly water, I realised when I heard the starter announce “I’ll be sending you off in just 30 seconds”, that I was stupidly near the front of a pack of 250 belligerent freestylers. So I thrashed away from the line with my atrocious technique offset by pure terror. The swim was “competitive”, and I managed to engage in battle for most of the leg, being particularly impressed to cop for an elbow in the chops in the last 100 metres. A 29-minute mile saw me out of the water in a thoroughly mediocre 280th place.
I expend more energy grumbling about Pirate kit threads than I do swimming. But with the wind blowing a chilly hooley through T1, I minced out resplendent in Pirate Monaco, Gilet, Arm Warmers and socks. I like cycling. It’s the only bit I’m not crap at. But I’d spannered my chances of a good bike split by not checking my saddle after the journey up in the car. My knackers were soon separated by the obscenely up-thrust nose of my Selle San Marco and screaming for relief like a pair of banshees. Problem was, I was on the good bit of the route, hammering down the A66 at 35mph, sneeringly breezing past hairy fell runners on their hefty, alloy bikes and loving myself. I couldn’t last though, and fumbling in the gutter for my Allen Keys, I had to endure 50, hairy, fell runners sneeringly breezing past me as I tried to fix my castrating perch. I attempted to make back time by weeing from the saddle without stopping, but it definitely cost me 4-5 minutes.
There had been much talk about “The Struggle”; a rearing, snorting, brute of a hill that leads out of cutesy Ambleside and over the Kirkstone Pass at 25%. I don’t think I’m out of order to say that this race attracts more natural runners than riders, and they seemed more worried about The Struggle than the ascent of Helvellyn. It’s an undoubtedly tough hill, and I saw plenty of folks pushing their tread-irons, but you only have to do it once before a thrillingly mad plunge down the other side and back to the lake. I’m glad not to have put a foot down, but my attempt at a Peter Sagan style wheelie near the top was probably ill-judged.
I’m a miserably bad runner and my lack of talent is made worse by the fact that I bloody hate running. So you might be surprised to read that this run, with 800 metres of vertical ascent over rocks and boulders and through the teeth of a gale, was the most enjoyable I’ve ever completed. You see, the first few miles are so steep, rocky and difficult that hardly any bugger runs them. I only saw one guy genuinely run past, and that was a bloke called Pete Brook from Chester who came second overall last year, so I’ve no idea what he was doing behind me. With hardly anybody able to actually run the route up, it just turns into a nice walk in the countryside until you top-out at 3,188 feet or so. And then the rest of the run is downhill, which any fat bastard can manage. I even managed to have a wee whilst running, which was my “try something you’ve never done before” moment. I don’t mind admitting that it was borderline scary scrambling up the last bit of Swirral Edge in 40mph gusts, and thundering down for 6 miles has completely shredded my poor quads, but the whole thing was bloody great fun and heartily recommended.
My two objectives had been to ride The Struggle without a foot down and to finish the run strongly. And I almost managed it until, trundling back into the village of Glenridding, not 400 metres from the finish, I leapt gazelle-like from a kerb and landed with cramp in both quads and my right Achilles, leaving me with the fluidity of movement of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. The ignominy of it! I’ll admit that I find the spectacle of other people’s cramp fairly amusing, so I hope I at least provided somebody else with a cheap grin.
So I finished in 5 hours 10 minutes, putting me in 333rd out of 633 starters, which is pretty bloody ordinary. But I’d not really trained for it and I it was a great day out, for which I rewarded myself with sausage rolls. It’s a cracking event, really well organised, and if anybody fancies making a weekend of it next year, I’ll probably be up for that.
STIL - great report, love it!
Brilliant report. Thinking of giving this one a go next year
Great report. I was thinking of it, but the thought of swimming in Ullswater (brrr) and descending from Kirkham (yes I manage to be slower downhill than up on the bike) puts me off a bit. I guess I should just do the fell race round there....
Or Kirkstone even!
The ususal brilliant report STIL.
In equal measures you have made me laugh and didn't make me want to do it, a perfect ending really.