Geographical area, or personality critique?

Caesar's Camp.

This could mean either: "An encampment belonging to Caesar" or "Caesar is known to pose in an exaggerated fashion"

I'm fairly sure it's the first, but the second makes me smile. Tonight's run made the most of this geographical area, and some excellent work by an event planner by the name of Henk Van Der Beek, who is known for NOT posing in an exaggerated fashion.



Map showing Caesar posing in an exaggerated fashion

 A few years back, Henk, local endurance runner and general Dutch hardcase, created a set of events called the Caesar's Camp Endurance Runs. Held each October, with entry options of Thirty, Fifty or a Hundred miles, each race uses a ten mile lap, around which the distances are achieved. After year one, the route was tweaked to make it more brutish, and now includes over 1500ft of ascent per revolution. Both the Hundred and Fifty start at midday and go into/through/beyond the night, whereas the "Midnight Thirty" starts at.... wait for it..... midnight. Each year it attracts more and more runners, of an increasingly high calibre.

I've had a couple of stabs at these events myself as they're so close to home. In between, I'll occasionally run the route, which remains permanently scored into my memory for three reasons:

1. Because running laps at night with only your mortality for company will do that to you.

2. Because the route is a work of genius, as within just a couple of square miles, it manages to extract over ten miles of everything, including crippling ups and terrifying downs, flat slogs and fast blasts, and generally, some amazing, demanding running on a mix of surfaces. If you don't believe me, check out my GPS track on RunningFree.

3. Other than running up and down the same hill for the sake of it, this is undoubtedly the most engaging, and most challengeing  long-distance short-hill training route I know within a fifty miles.

My most regular running buddy, James, has accompanied, and led, me on runs through this area for years, but he's never actually run THE route. So this evening, we did.

What a night to pick. I had sat in my office all day watching rain, and then sleet fall heavily outside, knowing that the trails would be thick in mud, and the pebbly ascents loose and slick. Briliant any other day, but not in the testing depths of Janathon.

The temperature hovered around a balmy two/three degrees as we ran, but other than the occasional spot of rain, and clouds of mist in the beams of our headtorches, from the ankles up it was a mostly dry run. To be honest, I was partly grateful for the squelchiness underfoot, my knees felt better tonight than they did a week ago!

Average pace for the outing was exactly ten minutes per mile, markedly slower than most of my recent running, but then this route is significantly more demanding than a regular trail run. James was also finding it hard going, but then I've put in a bit more training than him this year (ho ho!). Having contemplated avoiding this route until February, I'm glad we did it.

We tried to take couple of pictures, but the air was so misty as soon as we stopped for more than a second we were surrounded by fog. I have half a dozen action shots of "grey" on my phone, which you can probably live without, and our fingers were getting numb trying to work the tiny buttons.

My turn to cook the chilli this evening, which wasn't as good as James's, but went very well with a litre of banana flavoured For Goodness Shake. Classy.


Summary:
Today: 12.1 miles, 2:00 hrs, 1664 cals
January: 84.1 miles, 11:58 hrs, 11486 cals