After a mad week of work and frantic packing ready for Poland, I finally made it to Treyarnon Bay (near Padstow, Cornwall) for a few days holiday with the family.
With hills being the focus of training at the moment, the Cornish Coast is perfect with a seemingly never ending series of 120m climbs from the bays up to the headlands. A 2 hour ride down to Newquay and back over to the campsite via the airport according to the GPS was 1600 metres of climb in 50km. This seems fairly unbelievable, but the way my legs felt afterwards perhaps it might be right.
Sunday brought a little foot orienteering with a day of the ‘Tamar Triple’, a
bi-annual event, this year being held just south of Newquay, at Penhale Sands. The area is a huge area of rolling, intricate sand dunes, and one of my favourite areas. Not wanting to over-do the running, I just entered Day 2 on the brown course (black being the hardest, and slightly longer).
I started steadily and other than losing touch with the map for a couple of minutes on a long leg had a clean run navigationally and was winning by about 5 minutes when I left for a warm down ride home. I did, however, make the cardinal mistake of s
and dune orienteering on one leg by being tempted down to run along the beach rather than contouring though the spiky marram grass, a nightmare running through the soft sand and the climb back up the dunes was even worse.
It was nice to see a few faces I had not seen for a while at the event which had the very laid back sort of organisation I like. There were lots of SPLOTS mooching about, Anne Donnell, my old junior coach from Bristol stopped for a chat, and ex-Challenger World Colleague, Clem, was in the queue for the bratty wagon. I even over heard someone I didn’t know saying “is that the chap whose blog I read !”
I got a bit carried away on the warm down ride back to the excellent cafe at Bedruthan Steps where I was to meet Cath. Whilst I was stopped to check the map to avoid the centre of Newquay, a tri / roadie-type came past on a carbon-everything road bike. I realised after the next climb that I was actually riding quicker on my mountain bike so, red rag to a bull, I decided to take him on the next hill…..I regretted it later on the climb out of Watergate bay, but it was fun at the tim!
I finished the day with a couple of hours body boarding with the family in Treyarnon bay in some of the best surf I’ve been in for ages.
Results available at http://www.tamartriple.org.uk/