OK, for those of you who don’t know the Keswick to Barrow is a yearly 40+ mile walk held in May. The walk, as the name suggests, goes from the town of Keswick in the heart of the UK Lake district to the town of Barrow on the north west coast. The route takes the participants through some of the most the breath taking and beautiful landscapes in the UK.
The walk originated in 1966 as a challenge between the American crew of Polaris Submarine, under construction at the Barrow in Furness ship yard, and the workers building the vessel. You can read the full history from 1966 to the presend day on the official Keswick to Barrow website here.
Now you may think that walking 40 miles is a bit crazy, but then again it is for charity! But what about running 40 miles? Even more crazy? Impossible? Well, there are a growing number of walkers who have turned to running the event. Although I have lived in the Furness area all my life I had never seriously attempted the walk until 2009 when I was 38 years old, and then I ran it, and completed it in 7 hours 47 minutes. I did it again in 2010 and made it in 7 hours 19 minutes. This year (2011) I want to beat my seven hour barrier.
During training I use the excellent iPhone App runkeeper to track my process and stats. This helps keep me motivated and shows where I need to make improvements in my running. There is also a growing community on the Runkeeper web site that help with motivation and encouragement. I will be blogging more on Runkeeper in the coming weeks, as its a brilliant product and FREE!
During the 2010 K to B I used RunKeeper to track my process, you can see this here.
I’ll continue to blog with my progress, thoughts, fears, etc while I train for this years Keswick to Barrow. Simply visit the “Keswick to Barrow” category on this blog.
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