Intercounties Fell

[Travs]

Cheers Llani. Keep your ears open on the Backfoot podcast for a review of the weekends events from yours truly.

Uphill trial today. It seemed a different crowd to your usual fell race... the "elite" making a much higher proportion of the field.... and a large number of decent road/xc clubs in attendance.... I spotted Leeds, Bristol & West, Aldershot, amongst many others.

I'm usually the only one doing drills/strides prior to a fell race, but a whole car park full today.

The race is 4 miles and 3000ft, and can be divided into 4 approximately equal sections.

The first part is a roller coaster through the forestry of Dodd Wood. Then a tough pull first up onto the start of the ridge and eventually up to the first peak (Ullock Pike?)

Then ab undulating run across the ridge and over to Carl Side. Then the finale being a short drop off Carl Side, then a tortuous scree climb across the side of Skiddaw, and a few hundred metres along the summit ridge to Skiddaw trig point.

I believe the races were won by Joe Steward and Scout Adkin... hardly surprising as they are top names on the mountain running scene where uphill races are more common.

As to my own race.... I felt stronger than ever, but such was the quality of the race, once it had settled down, there wasn't much scope to make up places.... I picked a few off, first on the steep pull onto the ridge, when some couldn't keep running, and then at the change to faster running along the ridge top, when a couple of people blew up.

Think I finshed 60th or possibly just in the 50's, and i think there were about 80 starters... but that includes male and female.... I think there were somewhere between 6 and 10 guys behind me at absolute most.

I was just over 50mins, which is roughly what I expected. I'd imagine the leaders broke 40mins.

A great tough race.