Pictures of Michael Fish during his events in the Lake District near Ullswater and Helvellyn on 5 & 6 November.
Dirty Double Weekend
I like to run ‘unconventional’ races and when I heard about the Lakeland Trails ‘Dirty Double’ I thought it was just my thing!
The ‘Dirty Double’ consists of back to back races near Ullswater in the Lake District.
On Saturday 5 November I ran the Helvellyn Trail Race (a 15km loop) in 1:15:25 (116th/370) and on Sunday 6 November I ran the Ullswater Trail Race in 1:20:04 (64th/162) – a 30 minute steamer boat ride from Glenridding to the start at Howtown on Lake Ullswater and then a 14km race back – Perfect.
Both routes were virtually all off-road and challenging in places with spectacular views of Lake Ullswater and the surrounding hills. Having trained in (flat) Norfolk I was very happy with my performance on the fairly hilly courses.
I was not disappointed and had a fantastic time in the Lakes, the weather and event organisers were great.
The race caterers, Falafalicious were perfect, hummus, falafel, veg chilli, pittas, soup, salad…..
I stayed in the Best Western Glenridding Hotel (mainly because it has a sauna and swimming pool!) and the restaurant catered well for my Vegan requirements, making porridge with water, veganising pizzas (extra vegetables in place of cheese) and serving an enormous jacket potato with beans and salad even though it wasn’t on the menu!
These were my first organised races in my Vegan Runners vest and I got some nice comments ranging from ‘Go Vegan’ to ‘and you’re a Veganhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif too’ (when I was overtaking someone up a hill).
One big surprise was the group of 15 runners I met from my home town running club who had also made the journey up from Norfolk to the lakes!
All in all a great long weekend away in a beautiful part of the world and I look forward to running other races in the series next year:
(I was lucky enough to win spot prizes for free entry to some of next year’s races).