Four Carnethies made it to Neil Burnett’s house for 6:30am on Saturday morning to be chauffeured down to the start of the Great Lakes Fell Race, the long counter in the British Championships this year. The race was a little over 21km, so fairly short as far as these things go, but it did include 2000+m of vertical indicating that the race may involve a decent amount of walking for some of us. The drizzle turned to rain as we registered so we beat a brisk retreat back to Neil’s car to ‘warm up’ and to discuss the navigation. Lee pointed out the first and last hills in the race and after I had initially proposed attempting a clockwise circuit of clag shrouded hills in the Lake District which were in no way related to the race route, Neil B helpfully explained that I should run over additional hills in an anti-clockwise direction. Thus prepared I made my way to the start line and after a brief “hello” to Andy F drifted a little way further back into the pack. Then everyone started to run so I assumed the race had started and followed suit.
The first hill climbed up for quite a while. There were various little route choices on the way up and as the clag was down it was hard to make an informed decision on which was the best choice. I seemed to have a 100% record in choosing the slower option. After dibbing in at the first checkpoint this pattern continued to the second checkpoint. Having overtaken the same Keswick vest about 10 times only for it to pop out from behind a rock ahead of me again 5 minutes later I eventually took the hint and just decided to follow it. Neil B took a similar approach but didn’t pick a winner losing a lot of time between checkpoint 3 and 4 following a group of runners searching for an imaginary checkpoint. I followed Mr Keswick to Scafell and then down to checkpoint 5 (taking a line to the right to pick up a ‘nice’ trod). I then lost my guide as I stopped for a water on the way up the gully to Scafell Pike. We emerged out of the clag as we headed to the next checkpoint. I could hear a runner just in front of me offering lots of advice to a friend on where not to go on the next descent. Assuming this meant he also knew where to go I followed him away from the pack and embarked on a bit of down scrambling. My muttered curses turned to a smug smile at the sound of falling rocks (and quite possibly a sliding Neil M) accompanied by curses from the main field as they attempted to descend an unpleasant gully. At this point we had been running for about 2 and a half hours and I was feeling a bit rubbish as we approached a long slog up to the last checkpoint. Everyone else also seemed to be feeling it more though and I managed to walked past 34 people on the next climb (woop woop!). The final descent had looked tricky from the start field so I was pleased to pick a good line. With the finish line in sight I embarked on a synchronised slip down the final steep section of the descent with the runner directly in front and behind me. My superior bum slide took me into a slight lead before my calves rebelled and locked up solid with cramp. Incapacitated within 30 snot rockets of the finish I watched in frustration as a stream of runners jogged by me before I finally managed to hobble down to the track and over the finish line.
Andy Fallas had long since finished in a strong 9th. Neil M, Neil B, Lee and Bryan all crossed the finish line shortly after. Everyone seemed to have enjoyed their day out and we happily piled back into Neil’s car for the return journey to Edinburgh.
John Busby