Pos No Name CAT CAT Pos Time
206/235 171 Andrew Shirres M 59/64 67.30
I've been very lazy posting the report up, but a while ago I was invited to take part in my first Fell race (The Sheperds Skyline FR) by Kevin from work! Fell running for those not in the know is mainly off road running, particularly up rugged hills. There are many categories of fell races made up of two letters, this one was a BM. Whilst on paper the distance of 6.25 miles shouldn't have worried me, I was all the same very cautious of how I'd perform as I'm a big believe that conditions affect you more than distance, and hills are a bit of a weakness for me.
Unlike other races I've taken part in, Fell races seem to be very relaxed affairs, just turn up on the day, register (only £4, what excellent value!), stick the race number on your shirt, and off you go.
The start was quiet a challenge as the "path" (more of a deep worn out groove in the earth) was very narrow, was rammed with the 200 or so other runners. It was quiet a steep climb, and of course the off road nature ment that it wasn't smooth and stopped me getting into any comfortable pattern. It was good to get to the top of the hill and hit a "flat" stretch, but even this was uneven which slowed me down as will as sap my strength.
Getting round the top of Stoodley Pike marked the half way point, and I'd held my own for a mid packer at this point but a small trickle of people had been overtaking me. What was now revealed in front of me though was a really sharp decent. Some people just flew down it seemingly throwing caution to the wind, I just struggled desperately trying to stop myself from falling over from going too fast. I lost a fair few places and started to notice that a few times I was coming close to going over on my ankle.
At the bottom was a longish flat stretch which I tried to recover on, but what followed was hellish! We now had one really steep slopes, everyone I could see was reduced to walking and by the end of it my back was really hurting from being stooped over for so long.
By now my ankles were well and truely knackered, and whilst my heart and lungs were OK (after a brief recovery section), the muscles that supported my ankles and stopped them from going over on the rough and uneven terrain were worn out, meaning my speed dropped dramatically.The rest of the course was downhill and towards the end I could hear the footsteps of a person trying to overtake me, and given that the race had flattened I used my road legs to great effect to stop them from overtaking. In the grand scheme of things though my placing was well down the rankings, but my aim had been just to complete this, and the weather had been brilliant, and I'd really enjoyed the experience. Clearly more training in this extreme off road environment was needed though!
What was really impressive though was the chap who finished first who got round in 39:25 which is quicker then I've managed to do the exceedingly flat Manchester 10K, no idea how he did it!
