Quote Originally Posted by Fellbeast View Post
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.
I'm inclined to disagree. Most people might follow the same route most of the time, but that's not compulsory except in a few limited instances - usually for a good reason such as minimising erosion or keeping landowners onside. To take the AW as an example - I know four ways up Robinson after leaving the road and at least three different lines off it. I can think of any number of variations on the descent from Dalehead and quite a few different options in the last third of the race as well, until the final flagged descent from Catbells. Yes there is a well defined path for almost the entire route but I frequently find myself on lines quite a bit off it. If you bring in the teenager this adds a lot more sections off paths with route choice involved. So I don't think these can legitimately be described as trail type races, especially if visibility is poor and navigation off path is required. I think they are better described as fell races but with a possibility of following tracks or paths for much of the route if you choose to do so (and don't mind some extra distance/climb maybe)