41st vet today.... missed out on a champs point by a single place, and 11 seconds.

Despite that, was my best English Champs performance of the year by a long way, in terms of position.

Stuck to my pre-race plan of not gunning it on the uphill until i reached the open fell.... this seemed to work well as i felt very comfortable, and still went past John Hunt (who is a good marker for me that i'm climbing well) about 10mins in, whilst still on the long track up to the fell.

Pushed on once on the fell, and found myself pulling level with ba-ba (this didn't last long as he was much quicker than me once we hit the tussocks and groughs higher up).... it was generally hard to really push going up the fell as it was so poor underfoot... the above-mentioned tussocks, peat groughs, and the non-stop rain had made things very soft.

Had a decent descent by my standards, "only" losing 7 places.... unfortunately 5 or 6 of those places were to fellow vets... pushed hard where possible and only fell once... although descending was still comparatively poor compared to my climb.... compare to ba-ba who reached the summit less than a minute in front of me but reached the finish 4 minutes ahead.

Under pressure from behind all the way down the long track back to the village, negotiated the broken wall crossing, into the final field and held on to my position.

Hello to Charmian, ba-ba and GeoffB.

Pete