A Humbling Haworth Hobble.

Since my BG attempt my mileage has been much lower then the 40ish a week that I'd been doing pre BG.

A couple of weeks of near total rest to allow my ITB to settle down, followed by a few weeks of 20-30 miles.  No runs of any real length ie all under 8 miles. This I knew would not aggravate my knee, and indeed it has worked so far.

I have entered the 36 mile and 10,000' Old County Tops with a mate which is in just over two months time. So, I knew that sooner or later that I'd have to test out the knee.

So, a last minute entry looking for a home via a mate for the 32 mile 4400' Haworth Hobble this weekend gone was taken.

I could see from the map and a fair bit of previous over that way, that the Hobble was going to be a very different proposition to the BG or OCT. Lots of tracks, road and little to no off piste stuff.

Not my usual, but an easy way of getting 30 miles under the belt or so I thought.

So Saturday 8am, and steady away out of Haworth I go. By mile 15 my GPS is showing an average speed of 5.5 miles an hour. That's nowt spectacular for most maybe, but loads faster than I'd normally run for ~3 hours. Sure enough payback was soon to follow as my pace slowed little by little. The most painful bits from there on being the flat tracks and road.

Thoughts of getting round in under 6 hours, moved to getting round in under 7, and eventually to just finishing (in 7:18).

I ate enough and drank plenty, so it wasn't a fuel issue. Not enough recent miles in the legs probably, plus no fast miles at all.

The most important thing I take away from the day is that my knee didn't give me any trouble.

So with a few more miles in the legs over the next couple of months, the Old County Tops should be an enjoyable day out.