To summarise my Borrowdale; I got round, I'm pleased with that after the failure on the TwA. It wasn't without it's frustrations as I faded quickly on Gable with the tibial stress problem playing up quite badly, still, I plodded/limped/ran when I could and made the Honister cutoff with 15 mins to spare and then frankly, sauntered up Dale Head and tip-toed down to a 5:35 finish. I stuck it out though, thats the main thing!
Other highlights included not arguing with Billy Bland over my shirt size, I asked for a small, he said I looked like a medium, I came away with a medium… Saw the great man again at the first gate and was told to "Get up there, lad!" which was a great bit of encouragement! There were also plenty of friendly faces out and I met a few new ones during the day.
I saw a few of those faces along with some of last years OCT outing at Cracken Edge last night. TF and I surprised each other at the start as we both had no idea the other would be there. Thankfully for having forgotten the map I'd printed and finding no spares going, I took some mental notes from TF's description of the course and once a horse and rider had headed in the other direction through the crowd, we were off!
It's a great undulating route with a couple of decent climbs in there too, I'd prefer a little less road but even so, a fun course and well staff by MRT as it's a fundraiser for the Kinder Team.
I started off slowly, the leg still isn't 100% and the left calf was aching post-Borrowdale. Once the first climb from the start was out of the way and there were some fields it was a case of seeing how quickly I could pick people off until we got to a wall and a queue to get over it, though I did find myself behind Clare Griffin who I've been in contact with the OCT retirement. I stuck with her round part of the course, she'd leave me on the climbs and I'd career past on the descents and we finished around the same time,
not sure how close though, the results aren't out at time of writing. EDIT: as I hit publish on here, I saw
this.
The highlight of this race though has to be the run over moorland after the last climb, the weather was perfect and the sun just setting so on the way in the sky was turning in to a myriad of reds, pinks and oranges. A good way to head in, until the lack of light in the forrest before the last fields made for a descent of great concentration on the footwork to avoid tripping.
Just to tie up the names/faces/people connections; at the end I got talking to Darren (didn't get his surname) and Nick Ham, who were the team who reported KLM and I in at Angle Tarn on the OCT and found Clare talking to a fellow Macc runner called Phil, who I'd run in with from Dalehead Tarn on Saturday, having no idea he ran for Macc or was a friend of Clare's. Finally, I discovered that TF and Roger Ashby knew each other - I'd met Roger in Tebay services while grabbing a coffee on the way up on Saturday. It's a small world this fell running stuff, but a very good one! I did see a few more faces from Borrowdale on the evening but didn't get chance to talk to them.
As I departed for the car TF said she'd leave me to write this one up, I said yes, but secretly thought "Oh dear, I'll end up making everyone suffer my prolix nonsense again." and at the same time knew I wouldn't be able to control it!
Oh, I'm going back round that way for Eccles Pike next Wednesday, did it last year and think I may be able to better it. Slightly longer and higher than the Pike race but there's not much in it, see
here.
