My first fell race today, The Dave Staff Memorial race, organised by the Darwen Dashers. Route basically from Sunnyhurst Wood in Darwen up to the tower a loop round moors and back down. Listed by the FRA as a BS at 5.1m/1200' it was hard. I thought I was fairly fit, a few Wednesdays out with the run club fell section and I was starting to get a bit cocky, thinking of myself as a fell runner. Bloody hell though, there is a difference between fell running and fell racing, the front of the pack were just off and gone. I settled in near the back and stayed there, finished about 5 from last, I forgot my Garmin but I did the course in about 50 minutes. It was pretty brutal, but it was fun, I've already had a quick glimpse at the fixture list to see when I can next race.Edit: Results are out.
11 comments:
Yes fell runners are odd! But all uber fit, it takes devotion to be out running up and down hills in this weather!
Er, we're not odd!
Totally!
I think I'm odd for biking in all weather! Better odd than boring!
Ha ha, maybe I just don't think of myself as odd. I know other people think I'm odd though, when I go in to Uni and tell them what I've been up to on a weekend I do get some funny looks.
good effort! you should be really pleased with that time for that amount of ascent
...my envelope went off today, using works franking machine ;)
My time was about 58 minutes when I looked on the results, I was still pretty pleased. It was really icy too I did a good slide on my arse down one bit. It was such fun though.
Cool that you sent your envelope off, also using stolen postage! Can I interest you in the Winter Hill Fell Race http://www.ukresults.net/09feb.html#winterhill Feb 8th. I have been promised a good recce of the course ahead of time so no getting lost!
"Better odd than boring" is a great motto! Really well done Jumbly! Glad you got out there and had such a good time racing.
does sound tempting but....we're coming back from the cairngorms that sat. however, we maybe be splitting the drive over fri and sat. so it's still a possibility as it would be on the way home :) a definitely maybe
so, is your busy day consisting of planning cultural excursions whilst surfing the net ;)
We're definitely on the way back from the Cairngorms, you could crash at ours, you've seen photos of our kitchen so you'd know not to expect luxury accommodation! The race start is 3 miles from my front door.
As for planning cultural excursions, I thought it'd take about 10 minutes to book some tickets for Rothko exhibt,find a hotel and book train tickets. How wrong I was!
Well done, racing is so hard and a bit of a shock to find out how fast some people really can run, hills don't seem to slow them down. I think fell races have some stupidly fit people in them too, much fitter and faster than the average field at a road event.
Well done on your first fell race.
The first one I did I came second from last.
So you're lots better than I was. ;)
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