The Fell Racing Ethic

[Travs]

This popped up on my facebook this afternoon.

Not trying to have a pop at it.... but it means nothing to me...

Its racing to me....339655065_665881728880088_6276597947705450354_n.jpg

[Wheeze]

You've got no soul, mate!

It does ring true with me. There's such a...searching for the word...mystical? dimension to racing and running in the mountains. It sparks something primeval in me. You know, digs deep into primordial pleasure zones in your brain. Sorry, I know that sounds like pretentious boll*cks but its true. I find it hard to put into words. Maybe Julie has.

[Stanley]

You've got no soul, mate!

It does ring true with me. There's such a...searching for the word...mystical? dimension to racing and running in the mountains. It sparks something primeval in me. You know, digs deep into primordial pleasure zones in your brain. Sorry, I know that sounds like pretentious boll*cks but its true. I find it hard to put into words. Maybe Julie has.

Not pretentious at all, I often feel the same way, I think it’s great that as runners we often tread the same paths that little hairy folk with spears trod thousands of years ago albeit that their reasons for walking and running these paths were for different reasons to ours, one of my favourite local runs takes me past a Bronze Age settlement, now just the faint impression of 3 round houses in the grass, nothing better than standing in the centre in the late evening at high summer, there’s normally the smell of woodsmoke as the farmer is generally burning something and imagining the original owners doing the same thing. Having an enforced ‘rest’ these last few months due to illness has made running just because that’s what we’re supposed to do feel even more like a pre-programmed inbuilt need. I walked the dog last night, she started to pull and wanted to run so we did, just a couple of hundred metres on grass, the first since my operation, it was short but it was brill

[spidershankes]

It was some of my club-mates who put that Grasmere show on, shame I couldn't go to see it. Although the piece I originally posted was all about fell racing, and the reasons why I love racing, it would have been an entirely different article if I had set out to describe why I love fell running (racing aside). Seems as though they might have had some good reflections on that in the play, as Wheeze and Stanley have.