Round Hill Fell Race
After spending most of winter gallivanting round on an Iron horse and doing a long swim, bike, run thing it was about time to get muddy again.
Consulting the shiny 2008 race calendar and thinking ‘no chance’ to Pendle Cloughs….(lets face it letting me loose with nothing but a map, I’d frankly still be there!) Round Hill came in as favourite.
A 9 mile race with 1300ft (false advertising claimed it only to be 1100ft!) round a hill, how hard can that be?
I have no idea who ordered summer to start at approximately 10.55 on the 28th July but started it did. Registration is in the library of the picturesque village of Timble, the race start being some quarter of a mile away and no where near a pub! Thoughts of deciding against Pendle were clearly coming back to torment me.
The race itself is actually very pleasant! Nothing too horrible and no real surprises. The course starts off on a track and with only 91 polite fell runners running there was never an issue nor any of that road running argy bargee as the track narrowed to a gate.
The route is soon onto open moorland where given the weather in that the persistent rain of previous weeks have been the norm it could have been very muddy indeed. However the million degree heat that was blazing down had clearly evaporated the stagnant bog water in record time as it was rather pleasantly dry-ish….well only just above ankle deep so that’s positively sahara like right?
It was uphill for the first 4 miles albeit gradual and the kind of course I usually really like but this English rose was truly wilting in the sun. Everybody suffered and there wasn’t one person I don’t think who actually welcomed the furnace like conditions, the route was well marshalled and marked and a lovely lovely man was half way on the course handing out cups of water. At first the worry was he was just a mirage in the boggy wilderness but no he was larger than life and the pink pony vest was enough currency to warrant a full cup as opposed to half! In reality it was probably more to do with me being right at the back and he didn’t want to carry all the water back down again!
Rehydrated it was another 4.5 miles to go!
It did seem to go on for ever but again just due to the heat the course itself is a relatively fast one and one that is all runable. The finish is along a wide path of about a mile where you would normally be able to pick up the pace however I think someone has ‘borrowed’ my racing legs and failed to return them…..can I have them back now please?
All in all though a great little race, well run, organised and marshalled and the spot prize bottle of ale went down a treat!
(Words of Pony Emma)