Walk no. 7 with Katie and Claire; 09-03-08

Another Leatherhead walk, again 12.5 miles, this time with Katie and Claire.

I was keen to try out my new "North Face" softshell jacket that i bought for £10 off Ebay. I use the quotation marks as I'm still not 100% sure if it is the real deal or not as it came from China! Either way, this walk was its first outing and turned out to be a pretty good test.

First off Jo bunked off, something about her boiler breaking and her having to stay in to wait for the repairman. Nothing to do with the forecast Jo?! :) Then Anne cried off, suddenly remembering that he had to go to her Godson's birthday party or something like that.... must remember that one!! :)

Sasha also couldn't make it, she has a cold and didn't want to aggravate it the week before her half marathon in Bath on Sunday. So it was just Katie and Claire and me.

The route we took is above and it's elevation profile is below.

The weather forecast didn't look great, but we headed out from Leatherhead railway station car park in fairly warm sunshine. It was reasonably windy, but the windstopper material in my jacket seemed to be doing its stuff. Certainly with just the jacket and a Helly Hansen Lifa t-shirt on I didn't feel remotely cold at any point on the walk. However as we walked along the banks of the river Mole towards the Mickleham Bends we could see we were heading into dark clouds, and so weren't too surprised that after a few miles we felt the first drops of rain. Typically it started just as I was placing a cache (Trailwalker Training cache 5 I think). I stuck a cap on and pulled the rainproof cover over my rucksack and wondered how the jacket would stand up to a good soaking. It only rained for about 20 minutes but the jacket held up fine in its first test. I know its hardly scientific, but it was good enough to give me confidence that it would do the trick for a passing shower or two, and only possibly be an issue in a big downpour.

On the other hand my legs got wet, and a little cold, but nothing serious. I've got some lightweight trousers which dried out pretty quickly once it stopped, but for a while the combination of driving wind and rain made them a little cold. But the biggest annoyance was water getting down my neck. I need to have a plan for that I think, as it was just plain irritating. maybe a scarf or a better hat? Dunno.

I didn't use my poles this time. I will try them again I think just to be sure, but I think whilst they made me walk faster for sure, they did get in the way of me playing with my iPod, GPS, food etc. I think I just like to fiddle too much to justify poles. Interesting, as from everything I had read I was pretty sure i would use poles on the walk. I guess I still might, but it's put a big question mark in my mind.

I haven't yet bought my new rucksack, (thinking about the Inov-8 RacePro 12 but likely to go for the Raidlight Endurance) but to be honest given there is no support team on the training walks, it's quite useful having a larger sack for waterproofs, gloves, food, hats etc. I know I carry more than I should, it's just in my nature to be over-prepared for something like this, but for now, and over these distances the larger 25l sack is fine and the weight hasn't been an issue. It's got an airflow back so isn't uncomfortable either.

The walk itself was pretty uneventful aside from the weather, although the rainbow was a nice sight, and the scenery throughout, even in the wet, is lovely. We had good views over Dorking, Westhumble, Ranmore and Box Hill at points, as well as over the Denbies vinyard estate. We ever walked conveniently straight past Katie's 2 ponies, so we had a small breather whilst she went in to give them some hay for the day.

I think we kept up a decent pace. The GPSr said a moving average of 3.2mph. We stopped for about 10 mins towards the end, at a gap in the hedge overlooking Bocketts Farm to watch a pig race, but apart from that we only stopped for breath a couple of times. Even so, it was enough to knock the overall average down to 2.7 mph - which thinking about it would have us home in a touch over 23 hours - that would more than do me! Although it is very sobering to realise that having spent over 4 hours marching through the Surrey countryside we'd have to do it another 4 more times to get to the race distance!

This walk means I have now done, in total training, just over the course distance. Total so far 70.8 miles walked.