I really enjoyed CaniX last season. The original plan was for me to work on my fitness over the summer and make a strong comeback this season. Well that didn’t happen. After falling over at Bagshot CaniX I managed a repeat performance on my next training run resulting in a very sore ankle and a huge graze on my arm. I had a family wedding to go to at the beginning of June so I stopped CaniX training before I added any more scars to my collection…and somehow I just never got back around to doing any runs. Oops! Thankfully despite my lack of fitness, the dogs are fitter than ever at the moment…although I’m not sure that’s always a plus ;-)
I was ridiculously excited about the CaniX Kielder night run as I haven’t done one before. We were all kitted out with high vis jackets, head torches and light up dog collars. It wasn’t perhaps quite as dark as I’d hoped but given the terrain, mozzies, mud and rain I was actually rather thankful. It was a 3km course with a mass start and I opted to run Rex and Pip – “the safe option” – and I was so glad I did.
The Sunday and Monday course was a 6km run with hills, mud, muddy hills and more mud. The start was done in 30 second waves split into 3 or 4 categories. It was certainly the most challenging CaniX course I’ve done, but also the most fun. I loved dodging the trees, squelching through the mud and clambering over fallen trees. It definitely felt more of an adventure than the usual open trails we usually follow. That said, I ended up spending as much effort slowing and steadying the dogs as I did running. I ran Rex and Blaze on both the 6km days and if Blaze had his way we’d have run the whole thing at 500mph. I certainly felt we ran the Monday run better but we did have serious issues getting tangled. We had only just set off before getting ourselves right in a muddle and I ended up stopping on the first corner (whilst everyone else vanished into the distance) and sorting out the spanners…easier said than done when they’re bouncing about like lunatics, lol.
Still, great start to the season and both me and the dogs enjoyed every minute of it. We’re off to Mugdock near Glasgow next weekend. This season is definitely going to be “the tale of Vickis fitness” ;-)
Crazy Spanners at the start on the Sunday 6km race - if only I was as enthusastic about running lol
Read to go at the start on Monday
Blaze attracts some unwanted attention during the mass start
Rex drops back
..and tries to bail by leaping over Blaze
which only ends up in us all getting rather tangled
so I had to stop right at the start to sort them out...typical!
But we got round in the end =)
1 comments:
Looks like fun :-)
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