Like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer...

An early start, getting wet, cold, aching, eating nothing but jelly babies... and that's just the training. Next week it's the OMM and we've signed up to run in the B class. A perfect example of 'seemed like a good idea at the time'.

Drive to Keswick through the Lakes, hoping that it'll be less wet over the other side of Dunmail Raise that it was in Kendal. It's not. Now, I know we should see this as excellent practice for next week's misery-fest, but actually, starting the day piss wet through really doesn't appeal somehow, so we have a poke around Lakeland Pedlar and then a sneaky coffee, as we're sure it'll stop raining soon.

It doesn't, and running out of excuses, we head through rain sodden Portinscale and Braithwaite, passing lots of walkers cowering under their waterproof hoods, and finally find somewhere to park beneath Catbells.

Catbells is my favourite hill in the Lakes* but all I could think on the way up*** is that training is a bit like purposely hitting yourself on the head with a hammer, and hoping it'll hurt less the next time you do it. This thought runs back and forward through my head as we stagger up Catbells and Maiden Moor past streams of suprised and soggy walkers, and then get assaulted by horizontal rain as the wind picks up as we run through bogs up to High Spy. By Dale Head round to Robinson, I'm getting sick tacking through the wind and of random asides from walkers (one concernedly tells Joanne to be wary of the rocky steps coming down from Robinson. We mock him, but later we mutter down them with sketching fell shoes failing to grip the sodden slimy rock).

The clouds start to lift and break, though, and we stagger down to the valley, past tiny Newland's Church, through Littletown**** and up and over the nose of Catbells down and up and down the road to the car, dry clothes, Ambleside, gear shopping and home.

Of course, next Saturday should be the same but more so, with dried pasta, cold, wet and a very long night in an overly small tent to 'look forward' to. As much as hitting oneself on the head with a hammer.

*Primarily because it was one of the first I ever walked up, but also because Mrs Tiggywinkle lived there**

**I have shared this fascinating fact with a number of other people who have strangely not found it as exciting as I do and in fact seem quite annoyed that I mentioned it. People can be so prickly sometimes.

***Other than 'why the hell did I grab that bracken stem on our inital off route scramble up? And when is the resulting cut on my finger going to stop bleeding?'

****Where Lucy, implicated somehow in the Mrs Tiggywinkle tale lived. Fascinating, no?