Bang bang bang

Today was a fairly easy 4 mile distance run at a 6.5mph pace. Fortunately the AC in the gym was fixed and I didn't feel like I was trying to run in a wetsuit.

Today I also roughly plotted the course of the 10k I'm doing in July - the Great North 10k - on walkjogrun.net. From what I can tell there are quite a few steep hills, but they're not very high. I'll walk it when I get the chance. Where I live if you're not going down a hill you're coming up one, so I'll work as many as humanly possible into my runs to try to get myself ready.

What other things would you recommend?

I mentioned I went to the Peak District over the weekend. We found a few walks from walkingenglishman.com and followed them since none of us knew the area at all. The site's brilliant - it has a great many walks from all over the UK and is very detailed as it has full routes mapped out on OS maps as well as information about potential hazards and where you can get refreshments (beers in our case!) and so on. Some websites just list the start and end points with a few directions where to turn left etc, so it's great to be able to plot them out on your own map. I can't recommend it enough.

We started with a walk along the Great Ridge to Mam Tor in the Hope Valley. We started near Castleton, not Hope, and curtailed the walk because we were hungry and the pub was beckoning. Rather than walk across the hill from Mam Tor to descend into Castleton between Peveril Castle and Peak Cavern we turned and followed the road/path to Mam Tor Farm and down into Castleton that way.

The walk was a beautiful introduction to the Peak District.

Looking back toward Lose Hill you can see the path we followed along the ridge with Edale to the left and the Hope Valley to the right.

Here you can see the edge of Mam Tor cliff looking back over Back Tor and Lose Hill in the distance. Ignore the date, we didn't travel back in time...

A perfect walk to blow the cobwebs away and get us ready to walk Kinder Scout the next day...