Borrowdale Fell Race

[alwaysinjured]

Thanks again guys, I'm absolutely lapping up this advice, and am going to spend a good bit of time route-planning those details. Very decent and generous of you to help me out by passing on these pearls of wisdom.

Pace-wise, after some early blow-ups, I pride myself these days on being super even-paced in a marathon -- but won't have a clue how to tackle the pace in this. Obviously any race feels beguilingly easy from the off, but I guess there's also the factor of the climbing muscles getting a bit of a rest on the downhills and vice versa, though they overlap of course. Will just have to run to feel I guess, and not forget that it's a serious endurance event...

We came down through the quarry on a family walk last year. Sounds positively suicidal racing down it, but hey, I'm in!

Downhill? Until allen crags, it feels like an energy sapping continuous uphill bog: After that it is just uphill!
If you are knackered by esk hause, you are in for a long day: If you are on a good one, it should feel fairly easy to steady until the climb from sty head, then dig in and overtake a line of dead men walking who overcooked it. Dalehead will have grown at least 2000 feet bigger than you remember it, by the time you get there..

Check out the bearings (eg from dalehead- good grassy run if you know where to look in an anticlockwise arc, green gable etc) before you do it, by that time you can be alone and in clag.

But the worst bit? I reckon the flat mile at the end.
Green with envy. Wish my knee would let me...

Mischevious note.
Someone I know once asked Billy B on the day of the race (must be well over ten years ago...) "is this a checkpoint race, or it is it a defined route".
Billy said "checkpoint race"...

OK said my mate, "then what stops me going backwards down this road, instead of over the bridge and that horrible stony track"

Billy scratched head said "well nothing I suppose, so long as you cross the start line first"

But despite several starts, I have never seen anyone actually do it!
Who wants to be guinea pig and test the wrath of a scoffer..invoking the magic words "well Billy said..."

PS same mate once did the (old defunct?) Rossendale AL race and ran down the road between two CP to avoid the deep tussocks coming back north, having asked the very same question (not me I hasten to add. And boy I hated those tussocks...).