So that's that.

Well it is done.  Trailtrekker 2013 has been and gone.  It has left me with a burden of disappointment that I can't get my head around.  I'm sure that makes me a moaning myrtle and annoys the hell out of people, but that is where I'm at, sorry.

I dropped out at checkpoint 3, 65km in, 25km to go.  Could I have carried on? Yes.  And I should have.  But I had a flip out mentally and was in tears and couldn't get mysef together in time to carry on with my team.  Stu asked me while I was sat in the car if I wanted to continue the answer was "yes but I haven't got time to get my shit together cos you're all ready to go now" I knew D&A wanted to press on cos it was a cold checkpoint and I just couldn't be assertive enough/selfish enough to hold them up.  Not after quite clearly having been holding back the pace for the last 10 miles or so.  I tried, I really did, but the constant pushing to try and hold onto the pace (which was actually quite steady but too fast for my capabilities) had really taken it's toll.  There was talk of the possibility of a massage at the checkpoint but it then became clear that actually getting through the checkpoint fast was a priority which fucked with my head, especially as the holding people up thing that had been budding for a while was in full bloom.  I think the fact I burst into tears at any opportunity makes it look like I'm more upset then I am a lot of the time and the assumption was that sobbing hysterically meant that I was done; so noone tried to persuade me otherwise.  Fair enough I suppose, I can't expect other people to cajole me through every challenge in life.  I know Stu feels he could have done more to get me going but what I needed was a bit of time and it just didn't feel like time was available although I'm sure if either of us had been a bit more assertive/actually asked something could have been done.  I was fighting with my usual shit in my head too, it happened to coincide with an opportunity to drop out, and just before the checkpoint I also got utterly freaked by the noise of walking poles approaching fast from behind as the fast folk from later waves of starters caught us up and then a section on the road where D had very kindly taken Hugo's lead but actually I couldn't cope with not being in control of the dog either.  It all contributed.   I am 100% disappointed in myself, MY lack of preparation and planning, MY lack of mental strength and MY inability to stand up and say what I need, not anyone else - just to be clear - this is just what was happening inside my head.  It probably bears no reflection on reality.

Stu dropped out sometime after because he was upset about leaving me behind I think - it was a do together kind of event for us and he was thinking that he wouldn't get any pleasure from finishing it without me anyway so his motivation went.  D&A went on to complete is a brilliant time and I am very pleased for them and their acheivement.

I've learned a lot, mostly about communication and goal setting and making contingency plans so that tired decisions don't rule.  I don't know how to stop myself freaking out though so maybe I'll never be any good at tough events, or team events.  I learned the value of a good support team - Beverley and Brian were simply wonderful, as were A's mum and dad who went out of their way to help out after I dropped out - which was very kind of them.  I got some things right, I was well-hydrated and reasonably well-fueled, physically I was basically fine, no blisters or chafing.

Prior to dropping out however it was a wonderful, wonderful event - well organised, fabulous support, amazing route and I desperately want to go back and try again next year.  But I'm not sure how likely that is to happen.  I can't imagine trying to find teammates knowing how high-maintenance I'm likely to be at some point - I'm not sure I can ask anybody to put themselves through that with a straight face.  To be honest though it wasn't like I was twining all the way round, I very much kept a lid on it but then it all burst forth at once.  We'll also have to meet our fundraising target, and soon, in order to be allowed to take part in any Oxfam events going forward.  And how the hell do you ask people to cough up money for an event you didn't even complete?  It'll put a substantial dent in our finances to stump up ourselves too, but I suppose it could be done. IF I do get to have another go I'll be approaching fundraising differently for sure.  I actually realised that that part of it is much more important to me than I was giving it credit for, but realised too late and actually I DO want to run some kind of fundraiser as part of doing something like this again.  Watch this space.  Well actually not this space because this blog is going into retirement.

Thanks for reading.

xxx

Well that was a longer break than anticipated...

It was all a bit one thing after another once I signed off last time.  We crashed the car for a start (all ok but was very shaken up by it!).  Then it was Christmas and New Year and my (30^th!) birthday.  And then I spent 2 weeks walking up various Wainwrights with the Chaos Collective and my friend to celebrate her escape from teaching... and mine I suppose, since I also managed to get a new job and don’t have to do bat calls anymore.  We managed something like 14 Wainwright tops over 2 weeks – not walking everyday either.  We had some spectacular days out there though and it was a lot of fun.  The plan is to try and collect them all eventually!

Myself and Stu have started doing a long run-walk out every weekend.  We’ve been aiming for a few hours on the hills, with the dogs too.  The dogs have been brilliant – so well behaved, well in a organised chaos kind of way!  And we’ve done well with the distance and time on feet... yesterday we even went out despite Stu’s burgeoning man-flu in some nasty weather and managed 7 miles round the Back o’ Skiddaw in the snow.  We’re a long way off from that 62 mile goal though!  But at least we have made a start.  My aim next is to get a couple of decent length runs/run-walks in during the week – I’ve been managing one run in amongst the dog walking but want to increase it.

Another new development; for the first time ever I am calorie counting and dieting properly – anything to lighten the load on my joints during training and on the big day itself.  I don’t really want to be hauling 2 unnecessary stone around for 2 and a half marathons!  I had lost a bit before Christmas but the inevitable half stone piled back on due to chocolate consumption and a developing biscuit habit.  So far so good with the counting though, lost a few pounds over the last week – but the way my weight fluctuates anyway it’ll take a few weeks for a clear downwards trend to emerge (all being well!).

I’m mulling over fundraising ideas too.  If anyone would just like to plain, ol’ boring ol’ sponsor us here’s a linky: http://www.justgiving.com/themonochromechaoscollective  Given that we’re going to be covering 100km in less than 30 hours I think it’s worth a donation or two!  All pennies appreciated – I’ve been looking at some of the things that Oxfam are involved in.  It is easy to forget the difficulties other people in the world face just to go about the daily process of living.  You know, I’m feeling pretty epic for running 7 miles in tough conditions the other day, but at the end of the day I have the luxury of doing that for fun!  There’s people who have to do that and further every day in worse conditions just to get water, or food, or work, or an education...  I don’t usually give it much thought but when I do I realise all over again that I am a very lucky girl indeed...

Ok Houston, we've had a problem here...

Hmmm.  I’m having a few days of being a head case it seems.  Since I’m away this weekend and need to concentrate my energies on trying to enjoy that rather than finding it difficult I’m going to give the blog a few (more – sorry!) days' rest.

I think the pressure to pick up the training has got to me a bit.  That and some other things.  Shite.  Not good.

Hoping I can overcome this one.

Back soon.

X

PS.  Here’s a picture of Hugo using his collie mindwaves to get toast to cheer up the blog a bit...

Up the airy mountain.

 Up the airy mountain...

...Down the rushy glen, we daren’t go a-hunting for fear of little men...

Well we actually did dare to go geo-cache hunting today, despite the promise of the fair folk at our second cache-site.  (Yes I am thoroughly addicted already!).  I wanted to make a bigger walk of it but it took us so long to get going today that it turned out to be 4 miles (I was looking for it to be more like 6-7 but never mind).  We also got a bit spatially confused (lost-ish) so we took an unexpected shortcut.

We parked near the intended cache number 2 but since we’d need to keep the doggies on leads while looking for that one as it is close to the road we headed off up through the woods to go and find cache number 1 on the open fell beyond.  It looked quite a simple walk up through the woods, round a couple of switch backs then follow the forestry track round the hill until it popped out onto the fell.  Ta-da.  Nope.  Twice we managed to convince ourselves that the track had gone far too far round the hill and we were in fact heading through the woods towards the fells further down the lake, twice we retraced a lot of our steps... on both these occasions we were heading in the right direction!

After rather longer than we had planned mooching around in the forest (the dogs enjoyed it mind!) we crossed a wall and popped out onto the fell much nearer to the cache site than expected.  I could already see that we wouldn’t have time to find the cache and bag the fell as well before it got dark.  I wasn’t too disappointed, I knew that we’d have struggled to do that with the time we set off anyway.

We found the cache which was a really cool one (I’m such a geek) and had a gorgeous view.  As we could sense dusk encroaching we decided to head back to the car via the road, the dogs had had a good run by this point and could do with on-lead practice anyway.

 They were both really good – I was pleased as when we went on our Buttermere walk Hugo was a bit of a nightmare even though Oscar did well.  And Oscar was clearly more distracted today than he had been at Buttermere but he still managed to do some nice bit of walking with a loose lead.  Hugo was trying out some competition style heel-work for size at points!

We got back to the car and decided that we had enough light to go for a quick look for the second cache in a place called “fairy glen”.  The dogs went mental and were pulling madly on the leads as soon as we got off the road.  We couldn’t let them off lead as we were too near a busy road on one side, we should have anticipated the madness and left them in the car for a bit.  The path up the hill was steep and slippery but that’s ok when you’re going up isn’t it?  My GPS beeped that we had reached the cache spot before the very top of the hill but Stu had gone ahead so I went up to the top to get him.  We hunted all over the spot but couldn’t see anything of the cache.  We eventually gave up as the light faded rapidly.  Heading back down the hill we were slipping all over the place and Stu fell over completely.  Just at that moment a sudden violet hail storm hit!  I don’t think the fairies wanted us up there today!

Back in the car, slightly grumpy at having a rough time trying to find the second cache but nothing a chocolate orange couldn’t fix.  And happy with the overall walk.  Stu is back at work tomorrow so, assuming that I don’t get called out to work, I will take the boys for individual walks and or maybe a bit of running and try and get a few more miles in.  Mind you I’m not sure the boys will be too enthused by the idea, they are both fast asleep on the sofa next to me.  (The picture is actually of Hugo last night but he’s much the same now!)

More than we bargained for.

So I decided to add a bit of extra interest to my walking by starting Geocaching!  It gives me good reason to explore some new places and it is fun – I like getting in touch with my inner child!  I went and found one last night as soon as I have joined up and had a bit of an investigate as to what was involved.  Impatient? Me?  Never!

HURRY UP MUM!

Today we decided to extend our usual dog walk to seek out another one.  So in our usual woods and our usual route but an extra bit of hill.  On the way up we passed a couple with about 9 dogs, 3 or 4 spaniels, 2 terriers, a lab and 1 or 2 bull lurchers.  I was glad when we came out the other side with just our two, it was quite a collection!

We found the cache and got the giggles for a bit cos there was quite a geeky thrill to finding something someone else hid 6 years ago, and knowing that 80 other people have also found it since.  It was a gorgeous frosty day and the boys were enjoying themselves... After a stressful couple of days it was nice to just be out and relaxed.

WHAT a poser!

Just ten minutes before the end of the walks at an open bit of the woods we saw a dog stood by the fence looking very intently at us and the boys. Called the boys in expecting the owner to appear but they didn't and as we got closer saw that it was a spaniel and she looked very scared and was shivering.

Despite being scared she was clearly interested in us and came slinking up ever so carefully. No owner in sight or appearing so we got the boys on leads and Stu took some treats and went to have a look at her. No collar, docked tail - could be a pet but most likely a working dog.  We wondered if she’d been with the couple we’d seen earlier but those dogs hadn’t looked like they strayed very far from there owner or each other.  We decided that we'd take her and get her back to the car at least so she was safe, she was obviously cold and hungry enough to take treats off us even though she was very nervous.  It was just beginning to get dark too so we couldn’t just leave her and had limited options in terms of searching the woods – we couldn’t hear anyone calling her or anything.

We took off Oscar's collar and put that on her with one of the leads. Let Oscar off lead (because holding them both on one double ended lead is a nightmare, and Hugo would have to stay on lead because he would be more likely to pester her than Oscar and of course we have no idea whether she’d appreciate Hugo attention or not).   Oscar went off lead but can be easily kept away from other dogs. I was worried that we were then going to lose Oscar while he had no blimmin collar and tag on. But no he behaved as usual - it would be extremely out of character for him to go out of sight at all so it was silly to worry really!

Stu walked about 200m behind us with spaniel girlie on lead.  We managed to persuade her with treats to get into the crate in the back of the car,  and put the boys on the back seat. She had a small cut on her front leg but it had stopped bleeding and she wasn’t limping as she walked along – she walked very nicely on the lead so being a spaniel that probably meant she was quite tired. She was lovely and friendly with us and knew sit, which she did with much wagging and spaniel earnestness when asked.  Totally gorgeous dog and was clearly in good nick so we were pretty sure someone would be looking for her.

We asked at the local farm in case she'd run off from there (she looked like she had not long had a litter, so we thought maybe she’d pretty much weaned them and had done a bunk cos she was fed up of looking after them!) - nope and not locally known, got a rather grumpy response that she's probably a poachers dog!  So we took her home and put her in the crate which she seemed perfectly comfortable with – she was knackered enough to mostly sleep while she was in there. She had a handful or two of kibble which she troughed down. So she was hungry but clearly not starving or been stray for too long. We phoned the police and the dog warden and to log that we'd found her but said we could look after her overnight at least.  We were planning to take her to our vets in the morning to look for a microchip (being docked there will have been one, assuming it was a legal dock) and to see if they knew her.  A lot of people round here go to our vets so it was likely they would know her.

She spent the whole time she was with us either sleeping in the crate, growling at Oscar when her sniffed around her for too long or looking at Stu and wagging and grinning like he was her new found hero.

It wasn’t long though until her worried owners phoned and came to pick her up.  She promptly weed on the carpet in excitement when she saw them, much to their embarrassment!  Ooops.  And it turns out she had been in the big group of dogs that we passed!  She was 2 years old and called Echo and was just so pretty.  She had us both completely falling in love with her despite the growling at Oscar part!  We couldn’t have kept her though so I’m glad we found her owner (and that the system works in the police and council, even on a Sunday) – it would have been really hard to hand her over to a rescue!

Hugo and Oscar are very disappointed that the pretty girl didn’t get to have a sleep-over.  I’m sure they’ll get over it eventually!

I’m slightly concerned that this is what happens every time you visit a geocache!  I shall have to try another expedition and see...