Since a few of us, including myself had earlier in the week entered for this years 3 Peaks Race, I decided it was time for me to up the mileage, and enter a longer fell race. This race is another of Allan Greenwood's races (check his website here) and a 12 mile category C race seemed ideal at this point in time. The fact that I haven't run anything more than 8 miles for over 3 years did give me a few doubts, but I figured that if I didn't go mad, it would be ok.
The race starts at the Summit Inn in Littleborough, and climbs for the first 2 miles to join the Pennine Bridleway heading out towards Stoodley Pike, before looping round, and re-tracing the first 2 miles in reverse.
I looked around at the start to see if there was anyone I knew, but guess what? no red & gold vests (anyone starting to see a pattern here?). There could be any one of a number of reasons for this of course, here are just some...
Since most of the race is on the skyline, it's relatively flat after the 1st two miles where the majority of the 1200ft climbing is done, and on the Pennine Bridleway, the surface is reasonable so the pace can be high. However, it was very boggy on the tops. A guy in front of me sunk up to his shorts in the mud, and I went in over my knees a couple of times, almost losing my shoe on one occasion which cost me some time since I was fumbling to get it on again with frozen hands. It was also very exposed on the tops, both cold and blowing a gale, and I was glad I decided to run with gloves and hat on.
As I suspected, the distance meant I was starting to fade a bit at the end, but not as bad as I thought, as I didn't lose any places, and in fact gained a couple on the final descent.
Unofficial time for me was 1:42:12 which was better than I expected all things considered.
Results link (I'm shown in the wrong age category, not that that helped at all)
The race starts at the Summit Inn in Littleborough, and climbs for the first 2 miles to join the Pennine Bridleway heading out towards Stoodley Pike, before looping round, and re-tracing the first 2 miles in reverse.
I looked around at the start to see if there was anyone I knew, but guess what? no red & gold vests (anyone starting to see a pattern here?). There could be any one of a number of reasons for this of course, here are just some...
- I have no friends (possible)
- General apathy (probable)
- Everyone was too busy (possible)
- Fear of me kicking their ass (highly unlikely)
- Afraid of embarrassing me by kicking my ass (possible)
Since most of the race is on the skyline, it's relatively flat after the 1st two miles where the majority of the 1200ft climbing is done, and on the Pennine Bridleway, the surface is reasonable so the pace can be high. However, it was very boggy on the tops. A guy in front of me sunk up to his shorts in the mud, and I went in over my knees a couple of times, almost losing my shoe on one occasion which cost me some time since I was fumbling to get it on again with frozen hands. It was also very exposed on the tops, both cold and blowing a gale, and I was glad I decided to run with gloves and hat on.
As I suspected, the distance meant I was starting to fade a bit at the end, but not as bad as I thought, as I didn't lose any places, and in fact gained a couple on the final descent.
Unofficial time for me was 1:42:12 which was better than I expected all things considered.
Results link (I'm shown in the wrong age category, not that that helped at all)
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