Monday night fell club

For me, one of the main reasons for choosing NYMAC was to take advantage of running over the North York Moors that I'm so lucky to live beside.  NYMAC offer steady fell runs on a Monday evening aimed at all levels, there are regular stops to allow slower runners to catch up, these runs are on most of the year and are great fun in the darker nights when the headtorches appear. Although some of the uphill parts are hard work the views at the top are worth the effort alone.
As part of my return to some sort of fitness I joined in this weeks run which started from Bank foot which also happens to be the start of a NYMAC race later in the year called the uphill mile. On this occasion we didn't follow the uphill route as direct as we do on race day instead choosing a steady climb. Before we had even reached the top of our first climb we had already caught glimpse of one of the many deer we tend to see on these hills.
There were only the six of us out on this weeks run, many probably put off by the warm temperatures which did slow us down later in the run. Mark Brown had arranged the location this week, as he does most weeks, but it was Bryan Saysell and his friend and rival Clem who soon took over the "discussions" of where we were heading so we had a good tour of the moor before heading down the "uphill mile"
Monday night fell runs are a great start to the week and I highly recommend all members to attend a few over the summer months before trying out a head torch run.

Tees barrage parkrun

Saturday mornings are most weeks all about Parkruns, my last attempt at a parkrun before my festival  trip resulted in arriving late at Fountains abbey and been refused entry into the grounds!
This week with a weather forecast of rather warm temperatures I decided to attend Tees barrage Parkrun with Chris hoping there may be a slight cooler air coming off the river? How wrong we were! When your sweating during the warm up you know it's going to be a warm one and that's how it ended up. Tees barrage for those that haven't took part yet includes three bridges to cross which also includes stairways and ramps, just leading up to the third of the bridges I managed to almost fall when my ankle gave way on the pathway, luckily I stayed upright but it slowed me down for the rest of the run. With the heat rising by the minute it was a relief to see the finish line and I was very jealous of the black Labrador in front of me which jumped straight into the river for a cool down swim!

Thursday back to NYMAC

With my annual road trip to the Isle of Wight festival coming up I decided it would be a good time to have 10 days rest from running which my legs were in need of. As any of you know that's been to any festival, you spend a lot of time on your feet and a lot of walking around is needed so it wasn't a full rest period but my I did feel rested on my return. 

Thursday nights at NYMAC are always my favourite so it was nice to restart back there, this weeks session was again to be held at Flatts lane so after a steady uphill warm up run to the meeting point it was good to be running again. The session was two laps of the large outer loop including a tough hill which although good hill training is pretty brutal. On the first lap I managed to run most of the way up until the legs decided against it. On the second lap with tiredness kicking in I struggled to run up it and had to walk up most of it, although I don't mind walking at times when needed, I intend to run up this hill in the near future when a lot fitter.

Flatts lane is a nice session to do and is a nice change of scenery from the cycle path we generally have to use in the winter.

One thing I did notice at the session was the number of new faces, good to see.