Stolly's Running Adventures

[Stolly]

Race #12

27th September 2008 - Whernside Fell Race from Dent - 12.5 miles and 3000 ft of ascent

OS Explore Route

Getting my excuses in early I ran this race having run up and down Snowdon the day before so my "racing speed" was a smidge handicapped. It was also my comeback race, the first after Fairfield in May and the first after recovering from my 'knee of doom' injury. Quite a few forumites were in attendance - Ady, Emmi, Darth, Big Compass and Manhar that I saw. In fact Emmi and I managed a quick photo shoot before the off:



Emmi also managed to take a picture of me nervously milling about just before the starting hooter, with Big Compass in the foreground (seeing no ships ) and Manhar partially obscured behind him:



The race then started and we all whizzed out of the field and up the first long grassy slope towards Whernside on the horizon. I held my own on the lane that we followed for about a mile after that but, once we commenced the long but annoyingly all runnable slog up Whernside, it seemed like the whole field passed me by, with Manhar first and then later Big Compass almost skipping past and leaving me for toast. I called up the engine room and screamed at Scotty to increase the warp factor........... but the best he could come up with was warp factor 'slow loris'. After 62 minutes I reached the trig on Whernside (exactly the same time I had last weekend recceing with Ady ) before the fabulous descent into Kingsdale.

I finally had to walk in the energy leeching spongy grass on the final climb onto the ridge at Great Coum but, even here, it was surprising just how much was runnable, even though I was seemingly running on the spot for much of the time. Then it was a brilliant descent through a large trackless boggy field with racers taking all sorts of lines to begin with before picking up a quad bike track half way down, then down a farm track and finally dropping down steeply through a series of fields to the finish in Dent. I finished quite strongly, managing to overtake 3 or 4 runners all in the last mile and finished with a time of 2 hours 13. All in all I was pleased with that and especially pleased to be racing again.

Ady by the way was desperate for a post race pint and decided to sprint all the way round, finishing with a time of 1:50!

[wharfeego]

lemmee know which race you're goin to next...........................Emm!

[wheezing donkey]

Bit smitten, Wharfeego? Thighs tay die foor?

[wharfeego]

Bit smitten, Wharfeego? Thighs tay die foor?

Thighs? Nay WD...I wer lookin at that lovely rear-end...I'd love a ride in that...th'Astra of course

[Stolly]

Wharfeego, I'm reassured that you don't want to run with me (and prefer Emmi instead). I'm probably being a little bit unfair but, just guessing that you might be from the backwoods , do you look anything like this:



If so you can't have a ride in my Astra either.

[wharfeego]

Wharfeego, I'm reassured that you don't want to run with me (and prefer Emmi instead). I'm probably being a little bit unfair but, just guessing that you might be from the backwoods , do you look anything like this...

Aye Stolly...I used to look like that but I've lost a bit o' weight lately...'ardly recognise meesen these days

[emmilou]

Aye Stolly...I used to look like that but I've lost a bit o' weight lately...'ardly recognise meesen these days

You'll have to come on one of my recce's wharf, th'ars cake'll fattun ya oop!

[Darth domain]

nice meeting ya stolley, hope to see ya at a few more in the future.

[Al Fowler]

Nice car stolly, bet that shifts a bit! (It is your astra isnt it haha)

[Stolly]

4th October 2008 - Sharp Haw, Rough Haw and Bardon Moor Loop - 10.5 miles and about 1,850 ft of ascent

This is one of those runs where I've previously run much of the route but never put it all together into one circuit before. The Grassington road north out of Skipton is over looked by Sharp Haw and Rough Haw to the west and Bardon Moor and Embsay Crag to the east. Starting from Embsay Resevoir just below Embsay Crag my route skirts through farmland, crosses the road to go up and along the west ridge line before dropping down and climbing the ridge to the east and following that back to my starting point. What could be easier then?

Before the off I plotted my intended route but, given my willingness to take on the most stupid of short cuts as they present themselves, the route I ended up running was this one

The weather today was cold, windy and wet....... perfect fell running conditions then! And starting from Embsay Resevoir I followed the lane back towards Embsay village before taking the footpath across the fields to None-Go-Bye farm. Nice and easy going through fields in the main and, although the cows there pretty much left me alone, I did have a brief run in with three sheep that started chasing me, probably thinking I was the farmer with some sheepysnacks or something.

After reaching None-Go-Bye, I followed the road for 200 yards back in the direction of Skipton before scooting up Bog Lane towards the track up Sharp haw. Bog Lane er... wasn't boggy at all (it was tarmac) but the trek up to the top of Sharp Haw was, although you wouldn't know it from this picture - Sharp Haw in front to the left and Rough Haw to the right:



Once on top of Sharp Haw I dipped down into the little valley before climbing to the cairn on top of Rough Haw. The main path here passes by Rough Haw going on towards Flasby with nothing much more than a goat track going up Rough Haw but, as every regular runner up Sharp Haw knows, you have to run up Rough Haw too - its obligatory!

Mind you it didn't do me any favours. Once on top I spied a quad bike track heading plum in the direction of the Grassington Road down in the valley below me. Unfortunately there was no path down to it but, hey ho, I hacked through bracken, swamps, tussocks and boulder fields to get down only to find that this quad bike trail led me to.... more bracken, tussocks and swamps. All the same I took as best as I could guess an 'as the crow flies' line through it all and finally came through to the road - I did get a couple of nasty cuts to my lower left shin mind from what were tussocks of razor sharp grass (sedge grass?); in fact it was bleeding quite impressively, if I say so myself.

This part of the short cut so far though wasn't the problem, the road I now found myself on was. I was about a mile south of my path up to Barden Moor and the road here isn't that wide, has no paths alongside it but does have a shed load of traffic whizzing past in both directions at 60 plus miles per hour! My planned route would have been far, far more sensible than this 'short' cut. Fortunately I wasn't run over running up here and made it to the track that climbs up to Bardon Moor below Rylstone Cross:



Incidentally there were three cows in this field; a mummy cow, a calf and what may have been a bull (the bigger brown smudge in the middle of the picture). None of them batted an eye though as I ran past.

Once up on the ridge its a gloriously boggy and rocky run all the way back to Embsay Resevoir, all on a path I know well with nothing off piste and no more cows. The view of SH and RH and my route down from them (pretty much disecting the picture down the middle) taken from the Bardon Moor ridge:



A really enjoyable run all told with lots of exciting adventures and long short cuts thrown in . 1 hour and 53 minutes start to finish.