Rise of the Phoenix

[anthonykay]

This race in Beacon Hill Country Park looked like it would have everything any self-respecting fell-runner would despise: £23 entry fee (for 5 miles), pretentious name for the race, ostentatious medal for all finishers, and a route entirely on well made tracks. But it was only 35 minutes' walk from my home. And it was actually quite enjoyable; I suppose it was rather like an extended parkrun. The two main ascents (there was a total of about 650 feet of climbing) were long, gentle grinds rather than the steeper stuff that I prefer; and I did lose a lot of places on the first descent. But I was quite pleased with a time of about 43 minutes (I haven't seen any results yet). Oh, and there was a sports massage tent near the finish.

The race information had a list of five names of the organising team: they were all female. Nice to see that the ladies have graduated from making the tea to organising the race. A nice touch in the prize giving: going through the veteran categories, the RO came to W70, and announced that the winner was "My Mum".

[anthonykay]

The results have come out now: I just failed to get into the top quarter of the results list (66th out of 256, but note that nearly 50% of the runners were female), whereas I have been in the bottom quarter in my last two fell races. My time was just over 150% of the winner's time. There was a discussion on the "fell racing ethic" on this Forum recently; well, the ethic in a race like this is much closer to the parkrun ethic than the fell racing ethic.

I was 4th M60 and, since the results list has the age of each runner, I was able to ascertain that no-one older than me was ahead of me, which is quite satisfying.