Time for a change?

[Stagger]

As a serious sport, we can do better than this. The FRA needs to look into ways of ensuring that the championships (British as well as English) are openly available to all our best runners, and that they are worth entering in terms of both race quality and competition quality.

Maybe a our best runners need to take a look at them selves and learn how to use the postal service or online service as Edale was more effectively.

I was a lightweight as you put it, timed out by 37 seconds but would not have made 4 hours.

Should I be banned from all championship races? Shall I send my FRA calander and membership back? Should I only be allowed on the fells when the elite do not need them?

Ask the people at the presentation the mid race finishers, the lightweights and Dark Peak Club how many of the so called best runners did not have the decency to pick up their prize or ask a club college to pick it up?

Some times you have a point worth discussion but this time you have got my back up.

Stagger the LIGHTWEIGHT

[bigfella]

Didn't the old school (paper) entry forms for the skyline ask for relevant recent experience but the online entry system seemed to skip this.

[Mr1470]

Should I be banned from all championship races? Shall I send my FRA calander and membership back? Should I only be allowed on the fells when the elite do not need them?

Quite clearly Stagger....according to certain people's view of fellrunning.

How DARE you stand on the same ground as these gods!

Aha, that's it.....start asking for "previous experience" on the FRA membership form!!! Then we can keep all the Edale Funrunners out!!

[IainR]

That's better. I think for the Peris we just put down our NZ races as evidence, as we hadn't done a UK fell race, except Siabod for a good few years.

I also don't see why it should be fell racing experience only, I've done a few offroad ultras which are probably more relevant to Edale than say the Peris. Edale certainly has the feeling of a long trail run IMO. I use it as training for an ultra as it is so runnable and flat.

I think YT is making an issue where there isn't one here.

I'm suprised the skyline happened at all, it must have been a tough call and a nervous few hours for the organisers. Well done on them for having the guts to keep to the race, but its easy to say that with hindight no everyone is safe and well. But Edale is a race suited for bad weather, in high winds or snow sections of the Peris would be dangerous and so alternative sections would have to be ran.

[Fellhound]

Some valid points raised here (on both sides) but one which nobody has mentioned is why do no-elite runners WANT to do championship races? If you have no chance of scoring points all you have to look forward to is trouble getting an entry, nightmare car-parking, running in a crowd the whole way and a really bad position. For this reason I always try to avoid them. All these races can be done next year when they are not in the championship and can offer a 'proper' fellrunning experience.

Leave the championship to the elite? Fine by me....

[rocksteady]

with this so called boom in fellrunning more and more classic races are being swamped with early entries.take the ben race for example,it was full in feb.and snowdon this year is getting full ,fast.
why dont the orginisers open the entries later? for the ben ,say around jan - feb (and not oct) which would give you plenty of time to train and it would weed out the people who jus t enter it early just in case they fancy doing it while there up in scotland on a walking trip (i know of people who do it)

[Leeds Rhino]

Out of the 80 who 'couldn't hack it' quite a few top fell running names in there. Perhaps they should be excluded from Duddon the next champ.AL
I could only manage 4.42, I'm sorry, I will go back to road running immediately.
By the way were you actually there, what was your time ?

[bornagainfellrunner]

I entered Edale, did a reccie 4 weeks before felt dreadfull & decided not to do it. But I did email DPFR to give my entry away & I had a reply saying it was being passed on to someone one the waiting list.

[Yorkshire Thug]

Most long A races require you to have experience of long tough races, and they usually ask for position and time, as well as simply “did you finish”. This is quite correct. As has been said by several others on this thread, the Skyline is in the easier realms of long As – but I bet it surprised some of the folk who normally only run around Penistone or Lyme Park.

That’s what fell running is about. Getting your head round hard races ... and racing!

But we have over five hundred races for folk to get their experience on, and only six championship races. It would be lovely if everybody could enter the champs, but this would never be possible for many reasons which have been discussed at length on other threads.

No way do I want to detract from runners’ efforts last Sunday, and I would be the last person to deliberately annoy anybody on this Forum.

All I want is a Championship to be proud of, which does what it’s supposed to do and selects and reflects the absolute best in English fell running.

And what’s wrong with that?

[jackie]

Why not have a reserve list for people who enter after the race is full? Anyone who knows they can't run could contact the organiser and their place be given to one of the reserves. Works in mountain marathons...