Scafell pike part 2

We had a good ride into ennerdale on the bikes. Gary had fixed my bike up the week before and having a proper well set up touring bike for the ride made a lot of difference. It is still a long way gently uphill towards ennerdale and is hence hard work. I was just trying to keep somewhere near the tail of Iain.

After the 5 minute enforced wait at ennerdale, we set off on the run.we ran nicely up to Black Sail youth hostel, keeping up a really good steady pace, getting to the youth hostel bang on our scheduled time. Going up black sail seemed like hard work as the sun was starting to get some power in it, but we had a nice run down the other side and trotted into was dale head bang on time again. We found out that we were about 15 minutes faster to wasdale than our rivals GFT and things were looking good.

We were surprised to pass Predator on the way up Scafell pike as we had heard on the radio that two people had been taken off yacht Predator via the VHF radio on the passage over from Caernarfon. I think they were pretty bemused by the question as they were alright. We think that there are probably two yacht Predators out here, only one of them in the race.

A sight we didn't want to see was GFT coming down the mountain before we had got anywhere near Brown Tongue. We initially thought that they had had a blistering run up the mountain. From talking to them, we found out that one of them was pretty debilitated with some virus and they had had to call it a day without getting to the top. It was sad for them.

We navigated really well up the mountain in the heat. It makes a real difference which side of the path you run on, knowing where the bad bits are etc. and which subpath to take when the main path bifurcates. The trouble we were having up to the top was the heat. It was just stinking hot and humid to boot. The climb to the top was a bit laborious, but we had an excellent run down, we seemed to be flying and got back to wasdale in the time we had told the marshals: 1h40m.

The best thing about the wasdale checkpoint is the drink and the orange slices. They are a al pick up before the climb back up Black Sail pass. Black sail was really hard work on the way up. The heat was pretty stifling. This didn't seem to affect Iain nearly as much as me. I knew things weren't quite right with me when I had both goosebumps and sweat was dripping off me. I think I had got quite hot. It was just a question of getting my head down and getting on with it.

We passed a few teams coming the other way. Some of them looked quite hot too. One of the guys from a team was sliding down the grass on his backside. Presumably this was due to knee trouble. It didn't look good, especially considering that he had a descent of Scafell Pike and of Black Sail ahead of him.

We ran really well along the track down from Black Sail. This is really hard work after the mountain, but we kept a steady pace and counted down the landmarks on the way back (that we had noted on the way out): the foxgloves, the log pile, the gate etc.

We weren't sure whether our return to ennerdale was accurately logged. We think we had been on the mountain for 4h19m. This was faster than when I had done it with Andy Rankin in 2008. At this stage I knew we were on for a good time. All we had to do was to cycle back well and we would be happy.

I dread the ride up out of ennerdale. There is a really steep hill up to the top near Lamplugh. The gears I had on the bike had been specially purchased for cycling around Cambridge and were hence not ideal for this. We plugged away at it steadily and it was a great feeling to be on top. We were a little worried about snapping a chain or something up here, but we had no bike problems at all on the ride in or out.

The ride down from Lamplugh back to Whitehaven is fantastic. It is gently downhill all the way and you can really fly. It was a great ride back: much quicker than previous years on my better bike. We called the crew up via our friend Ken Fitzpatrick so they were waiting for us when we got back. We clocked in to record a time of 6h35m. We think this is just 2 minutes shy of the stage record. Maybe we could have gone quicker if it hadn't been so hot, but in the conditions we were really pleased with our time.

The crew had found some other crew who were willing to take our bikes up to Corpach, so we dropped our bikes with them (gratefully: as it meant that we would have more living space on Tactix: the bikes had been in the main living area for some of the way up). W ran along the pontoon, got on board and then set off into the lock, trying to get out of the harbour before the tide receded. It was unlikely that we would get out, but it was worth a try. That's another story!