Troutbeck Tongue

Troutbeck Tongue

I can understand why Troutbeck Tongue is a Wainwright that is often left towards the end of the full set of 214.  It's out of the way.  Some people may pass it on the way to High Street.  Otherwise, the only thing to draw attention to it is that it's a Wainwright summit.  That's a shame because it is beautifully set.  There are lovely views over Windermere from the summit and the route we did tonight was a nice little 5 and a bit mile round trip.

5.2 miles

I got a bit technical on this run.  Jonathan's training plan called for 8 x 800m hard efforts with 200m recovery.  To convert that to fell running, I worked out that 800m is half a mile.  A fast mile time for us both would be 6-7 minute miles, so a fast half mile would be 3ish minutes.  Using my heart rate monitor and heart rate zones, we would run, hike, climb for three minutes in zone 5 and then recover to zone 2 before starting again.  This way we could maintain the required effort regardless of the terrain.  It seemed to work pretty well.  There was a quite technical downhill section from the summit and I struggled to get my heart rate up to zone 5 but otherwise we managed ok.

Heart rate zone intervals

There are two possible summit points on Troutbeck Tongue.  The one with the cairn is not the GPS point that I have recorded.  We visited both but I think it's fair to assume that the cairn marks the summit.

Jonathan heading down the farm road.  Troutbeck Tongue is above/behind the building in front of him

The farm road continues, passing through Troutbeck Park Farm, once home to Beatrix Potter.  After being rounded up by a couple of collies, we followed the left hand track around the fell, starting the climb just after passing the old slate bridge over Trout Beck.  A short climb through bracken and boggy sections, over a fence and we were soon on the summit ridge.  The run down to the wide track was technical and I struggled to get my heart rate up to zone 5.  From the track it was a quick run across the field and then back along the same track.

old slate bridge

 

Jonathan - man leg pose

the summit looking up towards Threshthwaite Mouth

GO!

action sequence