Planning….

Just a quick update for anyone interested as I haven’t posted anything for a few weeks.

Am I bored with the Spine Race by now? Far from it! The last few weeks have been spent testing a new pack and planning some recce runs which will doubtless become the subject of future blog entries (you have been warned…)

For the 2021 Spine Race I chose the Ultimate Direction Adventure Vest 5.0. It didn’t rub, held all my kit and would have been perfect if I had been anywhere near as good as I thought I was going to be.

So why am I planning on using a different pack – especially a bigger and heavier one – surely if I failed before the last thing I want to do is to carry more stuff? Well, its not that simple…

Along with the pack I used a UD Ultra belt with the Adventure Pocket to hold all my food and some additional water, so although the pack I’m planning on using is heavier, I will save some weight as I won’t need the extra belt as all my food and water will fit easily (I hope) into the one pack.

The other issue with the Ultra Vest is access. It has very stretchy fabric and not overly generous access zips. This keeps the pack light and everything secure but isn’t so good if you need to get stuff in and out of it. For a properly sorted racer this would be less of an issue but I would like easier access and a bit more room. More room is important because if I’m honest I wasn’t really carrying enough clothing. A couple of mornings it was chilly with a cool breeze as the sun came up and I was a bit cold. Next time I will pack an extra fleece in my pack. Obviously we will then have the hottest Spine Race on record and I will wish I’d packed swimming trunks instead of a fleece…

Anyway the net result of all this excessive thinking is that I’ve bought a UD Fastpack 20l and so far am loving it! I holds two bottles at the front and a couple of 750ml bottles securely in side pockets so easily allows me to meet the requirement to be able to carry two litres of water. It will also take a bladder if I decide that is preferable. I won’t detail all of the pack’s features – this isn’t a review and all that can be found on the website anyway – but I will mention a very positive aspect of the pack in that all the front pockets can be fully utilised at the same time. Quite often you find that if you fill one pocket on a race vest another one becomes less usable, but not with this pack.

Anyway I’ve been increasing the load in the pack and gradually adding more kit. I’m currently running with it loaded up to about five kilos and its all going very well.

Next week we are going up to Newcastle for the Great North Run. It will be my 22nd time running the race, it was the first event I ever entered in 1998. I missed 1999 due to food poisoning from an unwise fish barbeque in Zanzibar but have run every year from 2000 onwards – apart from last year of course when it was cancelled.

We are going up to Glasgow to see Sharon’s Dad afterwards. This will take us perilously close to the bog that is Blenkinsopp Common and so I will use the opportunity to remind myself just what a wet and god-forsaken mess it truly is – or it might be really nice, although somehow I doubt it.

Sharon is seriously considering entering the Spine Sprint Race, which is the first leg of the full Spine Race. In order to help her decide and also so I can try and complete it without dislocating anything or falling in a bog, we are going to spend three days recceing it. The planning for this is so complicated I had to write it all down on a spreadsheet (true story – I really do have a spreadsheet). We are running each section from South to North like the event but doing the Northernmost section first. Each section will involve taking a train from the North end to the South, running back to the North end, and then driving to the next B&B in the place we started that day’s run at. If you have read that more than once and are still thinking ‘no, don’t get it’ then you will understand why I had to put it into a spreadsheet.

Will I lose the will to live on Blenkinsopp Common? Will we actually have B&Bs booked in the right towns on the right days? Will I suddenly realise what as terrible idea entering the Spine Race again was? All these questions and even more you aren’t really interested in the answers to will almost certainly be answered in my future blog entries…