Yippee, it’s March and the weeks and days are flying by. Graeme & I have just returned from a lovely long weekend break in a fabulous apartment in St Ives, Cornwall where we managed our longest training run yet – yes 18 miles in the bag folks – wohooo! Today we have looked back at our undulating route with amazement and we are feeling very proud of our achievement.
During the week I managed to fit in a hilly fartlek 5 miler with Stroud AC around the hills of Whiteshill, Ruscombe & Randwick. This was another great training run and dare I say this but I think we are beginning to take the hills for granted now!
Wednesday’s cycling session was unfortunately missed due to last minute packing and preparations for our Cornwall trip but I did manage to squeeze in a 5k treadmill run & 5k bike warm up and down prior to leaving on Thursday morning.
St Ives is a place we both hold very dear to our hearts. This was our third trip to this beautiful coastal harbour town and if you know us, we don’t like to go anywhere twice. So why do we keep going back? It’s simple, it seems to have everything we love including wonderful strenuous picturesque coastal walks along the South West Coastal Path to Zennor. The Sloop and Lifeboat Inn are very traditional Cornish pubs with a lovely ambience and cider, ale and lovely pub food. The town’s narrow arty shops and cobbled streets are fantastic to wander around and there are endless photo opportunities around every corner.
After a 3 ½ hour road trip we arrived around 3pm on Thursday. We usually stay in a B & B but this time, to give us more flexibility and privacy we opted for an apartment called Zennor at 3 Porthemeor Hill. It’s a very cosy modern tastefully decorated 2 bedroom residence on the hilltop above The Tate Gallery. Apart from the building work going on at The Tate we were very pleased with our choice.
Now let me tell you, our relaxing breaks away are usually far from a rest, there is always a walking, cycling or running adventure involved!! This occasion was no different, Graeme the training troll had this wonderful idea that by using the Viewranger app we should run from the North to the South of the tip of Cornwall to a lovely place called St Michael’s Mount and back. So on Friday morning after our porridge, that’s what we set off to do.
If any of you know St Ives you will know that in order to get out of the town, there is one way and that’s up hill for around 2 miles. Apart from having a brief stop half way up to remove my rain coat due to steam coming out of my collar, we managed to get to the top without too much moaning – the winter Stroud hill training is paying off folks!
We took the main road then joined the Sustrans route 3 cycling trail (which runs from Bristol to Lands End) out through Lelant and onwards across the A30 to St Erith where the route turned into undulating rural country lanes heading out towards the coast.
We knew from the start that this would be our longest run yet so we kept the pace steady, dodging a few tractors on our way. The final mile down to Marazion (Cornwall’s oldest town) and St Michael’s Mount at the coast is glorious. We could see right across the bay to Penzance, Lands End and out to sea beyond.
Now, it is unlike me but I had not been clock watching and had paused and not re-started my watch whilst crossing roads on a couple of occasions. So when at half way Graeme announced we had run 10 miles and suggested we may have over cooked our mileage for this long run I was quite surprised because I was actually feeling very relaxed and good at this point. I can only think my legs must be getting used to time on my feet. This is probably just as well because both of us realised we didn’t have any emergency bus/taxi money just in case of an injury!
After a quick selfie and some Cliff white chocolate macadamia nut bar on board, thanks once again to those lovely people at Healthy Food Brand, we set off on our return leg but as we glanced across into the distance we could see the darkest rain cloud heading it’s way straight towards us. Running against hail, wind and rain at 13 miles is not much fun but thankfully in the distance we spotted a road bridge where we sheltered for 5 minutes with a cyclist.
Fourteen to eighteen miles was just a case of cracking on and chewing up the miles and thankfully coming back into St Ives we had a 2 mile downhill stretch back down into town. Stiff legged we hobbled into the Cornish pasty shop for a well deserved lunchtime treat and very happy with our Cornish adventure – mission accomplished and what a great place to do our longest run to date!
Note: Graeme’s fitness band ran out of power again this week. Graeme downloaded the latest update from Microsoft and tested out the “GPS Power Saver” option. With GPS Power Saver enabled, Graeme’s band recorded nearly fourteen miles this week, which helped extend the battery life by an extra 4 miles compared to last weeks run, but not quite enough to capture our 18 miler this week.
