Ennerdale Trail 50K : It's all in your head. Except when it’s in your legs.
I'd said from the outset that this one was a training run. In all honesty, this was me giving myself a bit of an out if things went horribly wrong. I'm not competitive insofar as I want to beat other people (that would be a case of ambition outstripping ability), but I do always want to be the best that I can; or at least feel as though I'm improving. I'd been pleased to come away from the Lakeland 50 more or less unscathed (apart from some quite spectacular toenail damage) and had eased myself back into training in the hope that I could avoid a recurrence of the injuries which had plagued me for the best part of 18 months. So I hadn’t done any very specific training, just upped my miles gradually, reintroduced speedwork for the first time in over a year, and switched back to road running for some of my longer outings - the logic behind this being that Ennerdale is very runnable and you're not allowed to walk the hills on tarmac. It's the law. Fortunately, th