Hmmm, but wouldn't it still be a piece of tape sticking out like a sore thumb, regardless of its color?Originally Posted by Sam Harrison
Hmmm, but wouldn't it still be a piece of tape sticking out like a sore thumb, regardless of its color?
Pfff, engineers.
You'd think wouldn't you? Problem being tape tends to be put quite close to the ground, and being red/green colour blind effectively makes red things camouflaged against green surfaces... A few months back I had the job of clearing up markers after a Yorkshire 3 Peaks event and I really struggled to spot them all (whereas people I was with couldn't believe I hadn't spotted them).
So flags can be yellow & something else, or red & white.. discussion has now veered towards disability rights in reverse, as if one solution must work for everyone or else not be used at all, which is completely counter-productive.
This is a good point. Look at the handful of fatalities in the history of fellrunning and it's notable how many of the victims were off the race route when they met their demise. (think of Ted Pepper, John Rix, Bob English, Judith Taylor, and now Brian Bellfield)
In almost all cases you are better off being on the race route where you are massively more likely to receive early assistance, though I realise of you have inadvertently gone off-course the advice is not much use to you.
Last edited by Fellhound; 11-10-2013 at 10:20 AM.
What of the welsh 1991 one (forget name) mentioned by Wheeze? - was that off route too?
Was Brian the only one believed to have gone off route deliberately?
If that was true, he would perhaps have done better to reverse sail, not just in order to use the good trod that descends to the valley between sail and ard crags: but also because in back tracking the route he would likely have seen or met , some other runner or marshall to say that he was intending to find his own way down.
I doubt very much you could formulate that as advice " to backtrack and tell someone" because of the wide variety of situations and the presumption that you know where you are, and you are where you think you are. Sometimes dealing with cold is simply about getting out of the wind on the tops, in the most expedient way.
Last edited by alwaysinjured; 11-10-2013 at 10:43 AM.
Why does it always have to be somebodys fault, if its just an accident or an individuals missjudgement why can't it just be left at that. I doubt that there are any statistics to show the accident trends in fell running but surely it is only if there is a significant trend that action needs to be taken.
I am racked with shame.
Absolutely agree, and so do most fell runners. Trouble is, outsiders are not content to leave it at that. The world seems to have a crushing need to "blame someone", and they will look for any sign of impropriety to do that. So it is important not to make that any easier for them than we absolutely have to, the essential thrust of my previous comments.
Worse still, the media are very vocal with bad assumptions of what has happened, then silent on the truth. I well remember a rather wet and flooded karrimor, where the countries leading media lined up to tell us how 1000 people were lost and in trouble. Sorry we mean 100, sorry we mean 10. Then almost silent on the eventual truth - that these are hardened fellspeople who got back safely, with one exception I believe that one had slipped in a gully, and needed treatment for a leg injury, which could just as easily have happened to any walker on any day before or since.
The risk of mortality in a fell race is higher than cycling or driving to the race per hour, by perhaps an order of magnitude, (where is the surprise in that?) but since serious injury cycling per hour is 30 times higher than mortality - I am guessing a statistical case could be made that you are less likely to get serious injury running on fells, than riding to the race by road. (or driving by car, I read an analysis somewhere that said the stats are not that dissimilar per hour).
I would hazard a guess that the health benefits from regular training in respect of better weight management, diet, aerobic exercise and so on, result in less risk of such as coronary problems or weight related problems than the population as a whole, to the point where the actual mortality rate amongst fell runners is substantially lower than the average population, so are far less of a drain on the nations health resources. I doubt the same papers that print blame stories would ever print that, but it might be a useful stat to wield against the nay sayers.
Might just do some sums to see whether it is true... Lies, damn lies and statistics.
Last edited by alwaysinjured; 11-10-2013 at 12:44 PM.
Wow. 669 posts on this thread. You can jump if you think I'm reading through all that, I've got ladies knocking at my door wanting some action....would anybody care to summarise the above?
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