Originally Posted by
Fellbeast
I agree with all of that, although with so many more commercial mountain based ultra and "trail" races also available nowadays, the choice of fell and trail races is fantastic, all offering big challenges but perhaps in different ways. For example the Lakes in a Day ultra, which I guess you'd call a commercial race, is the only race I know that goes straight down Hall's Fell off of Blencathra, a serious challenge at the best of times let alone in a 50 mile race.
In some ways the purity of some of the older fell races has been lost because of better conservation principles, with landowners and/or national parks authorities asking fell races to stick to known tracks and trails. So fell races are becoming more trailsy anyway. The 3 peaks fell race (which I love) is a trail race almost in every respect (apart from perhaps one and a half miles of the ascent up Whernside). The Anniversary Waltz is a trail race excepting it offers two possible routes up the first part of Robinson and a fairly open choice on the descent from Dale Head. The High Cup Nick is a (fantastic) trail race that goes up a fell. In fact how many fell races don't follow trails nowadays? They all are really trail races but with perhaps the only distinction being that FRA races are usually run on a non-profit or local community profit basis.