Middle Pack

The Valley Striders managed for the second time in their history to field a team for the FRA relays. Hopefully the start of a few more regular appearances in these type of events.

My only experience of a fell relays previously is the Calderdale way. This is far better than that! Firstly all runners start and finish in the same spot, this means less time shivering on a windswept barren hillside waiting for the previous runner. Also the team runs were more mixed, with a pairs, two solo runs and a pairs navigation leg.

The event was being held west of Ennerdale, so as far away as possible whilst staying in England for our club and I have to admit mid-week I was thinking maybe I shouldn’t have pushed for us to get entry as I really wasn’t that fussed about driving 6 hours round trip for the race. The night before I had a bit of a ring round and made sure that everyone was set. I started picking people up at 6am for the long drive north west. It was cold and dark and very quiet apart from two cats fighting.

Soon everyone picked up and we were up the A1 and then across the A66 to arrive nice and early for leg 1. As I was leg 3 there was plenty of time for bacon sandwiches and cups of tea. Although it wasn’t long before Simon our leg 1 runner was coming in after a great run. We were top half! They handed over to our pairs runner of Matt and Eirik. The clag was starting to drop and we knew that Eirik could get lost in his own home despite claims that he can navigate. I was hoping he was right as they were handing over to us.

Any worries were totally unfounded as before long they were running into the change over field and time for the navigation leg. I was partnered with Steve Webb, a fast runner and keen orienteer and our fell captain. This meant that a) I had to keep up and b) as I was concentrating on keeping up my nav work was going to be limited to occasionally double checking nav whilst I gasped for air behind him. So with the first two teams managing the route well, the pressure was on arguably two of the better navigators to get round this leg without any mishaps.

First checkpoint we overshot slightly, but only by about 10m and soon got it, checkpoint 2 was no problem, 3 again no real problem although a bit of route choice of round or up and over made it interesting. We went for an up and over as we figured in the clag the safest option was the option to take.

3 to 4 was a long leg over some difficult terrain. We eventually reached a fenceline and spent a minute trying to work out where we were. Teams were running all over the place, left, right up the hill down the hill. We managed to resist the urge to follow and took a bearing of the fence to work out where we were and we were soon off again, slightly overshooting the right turn we maybe lost another minute but still were running at a fair pace. 4 to 5 was a short leg but the weather and clag was not great. A slight dip down the wrong side of a gulley but a clamber across and we hit the checkpoint. 5 to 6 easy life, long trod contouring the side of the hill. Quite a steep hill and you were just looking down into the murkiness. Not knowing what was beneath. We were meant to be in forestation but none were to be seen, were they below us?

The last checkpoint was dibbed then it was downhill all the way. After being dragged round by my faster partner it was time for me to do the dragging, literally jumping down the first descent and flying past about 3 or 4 teams on the way I was flying. Slowing down for partner, before flying down the next hill. Seems I am better going downhill, where he is better on flat and uphill. Shame the only really good descent was right at the end. Although that meant running into the final field I was ahead of him in front of all the spectators. This looked good but probably is quite deceiving about the whole run. Thankfully it was also caught on camera me leading the way on the way in

Despite our few little errors on the navigation, we had managed to claw back nearly 20 places up to around mid 40′s

Handing over to Aled Greenhalgh for the final leg we had nearly done it! We just needed one last good leg and Aled didn’t disappoint. He went flying round, took some great lines that he reccied that morning once we had arrived and before we knew it was storming into the final field with a great sprint on! He also took another number of places, moving us even higher up the table.

Team results, we were 35th out of nearly 150 teams. A great result that we are very happy with.

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