The Chevin Fell race June 2018

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This was the first time I took part in the race in 2013

The Chevin scowls down on Otley from a height of 925ft. Why anyone would think it would be a good idea to run up it from station road in Otley then immediately plummet back down, is anyone's guess, although I heavily suspect excessive beer consumption was involved. 

Amazingly, given my injury record, I lined up to compete in this race for the 6th year in succession on an overcast, yet warm Wednesday evening. Last year I had been the first Fellandaler home in 22:42 finishing in 34th position out of 136, this year I was in much better shape and had been doing some specific short hill sprints to try to improve the speed of my climbing. that said, I decided I had no chance of beating Paul, the current leader in our club's championship as I haven't beaten him in quite a while and he has been much better than me at climbing for probably a year. Because of this I hadn't bothered to taper and had done a fairly hard week of training figuring that I wouldn't beat Paul but would probably finish second Fellandaler and pick up the points to keep me second in the club champs.

For this one I chose to wear my Altra trainers (Zero-drop, foot-shaped, reasonably flexible, heavily cushioned). Every year the steep descent and especially the tarmac section, is very hard on the feet as you slam down hard and fast towards the end of the race. Most years I have ended up with soft tissue injuries to my plantar fascia. I thought that the Altra's huge cushioning might prevent this. 

As ever, lots of people chose to wear fell shoes, which is huge over kill on the very dry paths that this race is run on.

I'm on the extreme left performing the classic nursery rhyme "I'm a little teapot" Also- fair play to Hyde park Harriers for some excellent photobombing

A slightly disappointing 8 Fellandalers turned out. I say disappointing as there were 14 last year and we've had at least 10 for the last few years.

In 2017 a few of my team mates had set off fast and some over took me going up the hill, but as the climb went on I over took them all, only Patrick, a second claimer finished in front of me (By over a minute!)

An air horn signalled the start of the race and off we went up the steepish cobbles. A sharp left at the top, then 2 sharp rights and we were at Johnny Lane, a steep and painful section of tarmac where the suffering starts. I settled in to a reasonable running pace and began to over take the people that had clearly gone off too fast. I've learned that if I go off too fast at the start of races that start with tarmac and/or flat sections, I blow up as soon as I hit the climb, so I am careful to take it a little easy.

At the top of the tarmac the path sweeps right on to a rough path, then left and up past the White house and all the while I was overtaking people.

I hit the steps in good form still and continued to power past other runners. I was actually running up the steps rather than doing a jaunty walk which would be my norm in the past.
Around 3/4 of the way up, to my surprise, I caught Paul, who was walking at that time. I was doing ok so I kept going, and moved a few metres in front before walking for a short break. The top of steps soon loomed over me though and I had enough to sprint up to the top.
A quick right at the top of the steps and the surprising undulation along the track until the final climb is always difficult to deal with. You've just expended a lot of energy to get up the steps but you feel that you should be able to get up some speed along what seems like a flat piece of path, but it's deceptive and most people trudge along. I couldn't seem to get a great rhythm going, but I was going along quickly enough.
I soon came to the left turn to go up through the short, sharp, climb up through the bushes where there is usually a bottle neck and it can be frustrating if people are walking as there is no way to pass. This time I arrived with no one else around so I bounded up the path. At the top Martin was taking a video.
"Where's Paul?" I asked him. he didn't respond, so you can audibly hear my slightly manic second shout  of "WHERE'S PAUL?" on the video. "Can't see him" Martin answered. he wouldn't have been able to see too far through the bushes but I was satisfied that Paul wasn't right up behind me.
A little trot along a rocky path to where Debi had positioned herself at the bottom of the short, rocky final climb up to surprise view with her camera:

Along the summit at surprise view, then plunge the 900ft back to station road.

Thanks to Anne Akers for this excellent picture

Now it was time to see if my plan of wearing the hugely cushioned Altras would help on the descent.
A quick sprint across the top of surprise view, a sharp left-hand bend and soon on to the rocky path.
The altras were were doing a fine job, I came down quick and hard. I still had enough left to push all the way down. Last year I had been holding off at least 3 other Fellandalers, but this year with no one else in sight I probably didn't push quite as hard.
The blessed relief of station road appeared and in the absence of rivals to race, I ran in hard without really sprinting as I've done in the past whilst trying to beat other runners.
And now the good news: My fastest time in the 6 years of doing this race and by far my best climb.

Race review: Round Hill Fell race 10/8/2014

Bertha Be Damned

It's generally accepted that fell runners are mad, even by us fell runners ourselves, but when Bertha, formally known as hurricane, is staggering across the country like a Friday night drunk, it takes a special kind of mad to ignore it and set off to run 9 miles around the wild and exposed fells and bogs of Blubberhouses moor.

Nothing to worry about, just a bit of rain

So the weather forecast looked bad, in fact there was a weather warning out, but this didn't stop me from digging out all my waterproofs (That had been safely stored until winter- it's August the bloody 10th for crying out loud!) and heading off to Mike's (A fellow Fellandaler) with Debi "the camera" in tow.

We set off from my house in the rain. We arrived at Mike's in the rain. And it was raining when we got to race registration in the little hall in the tiny and very lovely village of Timble. Rain was the theme of the day. But hell, we'd known it would be all week. The little voice in my head put it very succinctly:

Suck it up, buttercup.

And so I did.

I paid the princely sum of 3 whole English pounds and received race number 114- I nearly gave it back and asked for 118, just for the craic. In the hall the Fellandalers were gathering in numbers; a very decent turnout of myself, Mike, Adrian, Simon, Phil S, Christine and Kathryn.
I was pleased to see that the race kit required was just a waterproof jacket- no need to carry all the rest then!

I'm sure you've guessed, but this is the race route and not your eyeball after a Friday night out.

On Monday evening we had reccied the race route in glorious weather and had taken time to enjoy the wonderful views of the Yorkshire countryside. What a contrast today was promising to be as the clouds and rain raced round the sky in a white-out. But buttercups don't mind the rain, so we set off from the hall for the start, a ten minute walk away. During the race I was very pleased to have been able to check out the race route before hand, as there's a couple of tricky places where it would have been easy to go wrong and indeed numerous people did on the day.

Well chaps, off you go then

As ever at a fell race, it got under way with a stark lack of to-do. Basically, the race director shouted "Go" And go we did.  I attempted to start strava on my phone but it refused due to wet fingers and I quickly stuffed it in to the "waterproof" pocket of my jacket (I pulled it out of the pocket at the end of the race, a proverbially drowned rat and it refused to work for hours afterwards to punish my neglect). My garmin GPS watch has sadly developed a terrible illness in that the battery contacts inside have corroded- annoying as it's supposed to be pretty waterproof, hence me trying to use my phone instead.

We trotted along a section of fairly hard track and this helped the field to string out as we passed through the woods, it being easy for each runner to adopt their fast pace.

A quick corner around High wood, through a fence and we were looking up at the first small hill. The race route has a total elevation of just over 1000ft, but spread over 9 miles, it's actually fairly gentle and the slope up to this "Summit" was quick and not really arduous, so it came as something of a surprise to suddenly be struggling as I descended. It felt like a weight had been attached to the bottom of my lungs making it difficult to suck air in. With my returning fitness I thought that my ability to recover on the easy sections in a race had returned, but it was now deserting me. My breathing was coming in double time. All that said, I managed to fly down the hill and over took several people and in the process took more out of myself than I really should have been doing.

At the bottom of the descent we hit the first, and certainly not the last, boggy section. The runner in front of me was small and slight and he lightly sprung over the bog. I wrongly assumed it must be very shallow mud, so I took off.....and when I landed my right leg disappeared up to the knee in mud. I quickly yanked myself out and carried on running, very grateful that my trainer had stayed on; I had thought before the race to tighten the knot on my shoelaces as much as I could.

Now the race became a battle to just keep moving with my misfiring lungs failing to provide me with adequate oxygen. All the while the rain gently, and not so gently continued to persistently precipitate like a frigging hose pipe. I was very glad to be running in my excellent, and expensive, Innov8 raceshell 220 jacket with a baseball cap to stop the rain from dripping in to my eyes. But it was only really cold comfort in the conditions.

I feared the turn around point at Round Hill itself would feel like a trek to the north pole, but it actually seemed to come fairly quickly, albeit it with some more bogs in between, but this time I managed to avoid any more impromptu mud baths.

Oddly, this graph makes it look harder than it was!

Now we were heading downwards along reasonably stable trods. I could see a pack of runners maybe 100 metres in front of me and I did my best to keep them in sight; it would save me from getting horribly lost- especially as I wasn't totally sure that our reccy had finished the race correctly. Anyways, I often run in a weird sort of runner's Bermuda triangle whereby I end up almost entirely on my own- no one in front or behind of me for a long way. In fact, it happens so often I am beginning to get paranoid about it. Maybe I'll change my deodorant.

Runner's Nipple is no Laughing Matter.

Sometime on this down hill section I realised that the carefully cut and stuck plaster over my right nipple, wasn't as carefully cut and stuck as I'd thought and now my soaking wet clothing was attempting to file the end of said nipple right off. Ah well, we're tough us fell runners you know. I could cry about it later.

Soon we came to the climb up to the hunting lodge but just before we arrived at the turn, I came across Adrian who was stopped at the side of the path. I shouted out to ask him if he was alright, "Yeah, just thrown up a few times" he said, casually. Adrian has steel running through his veins and no matter what has befallen him, he doesn't ever complain, he may, however, state it as a matter of fact, thusly: "I've broken my legs, but it's ok, I'll just carry on a bit slower"
As I made my way up to the hunting lodge I passed one runner who was clearly struggling with the climb and another runner who clearly wasn't, flew past me. By this point, there was very little jockeying for position.

Down another small valley, across some very slippery wooden "bridges" then up the final ascent; quite a viscous little one and we hit the last track to take us to the finish.

I was moving so fast at this point that Debi only just got me in the shot. Not

And finally, in I trotted in 42nd position out of 112 runners with screaming calves and a bleeding nipple.
It's probably all worth it though, right?

I managed to cheer in a few of the other Fellandalers and asked Adrian how he was (He swapped his usual 1st Fellandaler position for a 4th due to his illness then headed off for an afternoon at Tropical world!!) before I got too cold and had to head back to the car. Adrian was soon fine, by the way.

By the time I headed back to see Debi, who had spent two hours in the cold taking photographs of the runners, she was absolutely freezing, so for once we didn't stick around for the prize giving.

So all in all, I was annoyed that with my current fitness, I could have finished a few minutes quicker had I prepared better (Or in fact, prepared at all) and with last September's fitness I might even have sneaked in to the top 20. I also very much learned not to eat a 12" pizza at 10pm the night before a race and that I am slowly, slowly returning to form and also, that Bertha, is my bitch.

Race review: The Otley Chevin Fell Race. 5/6/13

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Last week I finished reading Richard Askwith's, required-reading-for-all-fell-runners-book, Feet in the Clouds. This week, I felt like I stepped straight in to the pages as I entered my first ever fell race on the Otley Chevin. The course is simple; start from Station road in Otley, run up the huge hill that is The Chevin, a small loop at the top, then straight back down again. And what a wonderful, exhausting, terrible, punishing, joyous, fun-but-not-fun, experience it was.

I picked up my Saloman trail runners, selected a pair of shorts, donned my Manchester marathon t-shirt (probably a faux-pas at a fell race) and headed out. Half an hour later I arrived in Otley, a lovely little market town just north of Leeds and I was about an hour early. It's only a small place so I expected to see a little marquee set up and a few people milling around; I didn't. Hmmmm, best check to see where it actually starts.....

I parked very close to the start on Station Road where a small hand full of runners were milling around next to the ricketiest folding table you have ever seen, oddly it was never used and a good thing too as I nearly knocked it over when I grazed it slightly later on.
Station road is a cobbled street with beautiful Victorian stone houses on either side. If you created a street in a studio to scream "Yorkshire" you really couldn't do any better unless you included ferrets, pigeons and a small boy with bread in the basket of his bike. A battered sign, leaning against a wall, marked the start of the race. Having never been to a race like this before, I wasn't quite sure what to do; even the other club races I had been to before I had signed up for on line. Luckily I over-heard someone giving directions to registration, which turned out to be in a small shop front of a plumber's merchant. At least I think that's what it was. I filled out my details, signed the bit that promised I wasn't likely to keel over and die half way up (a blatant lie on my part) paid my £4 and picked up my number.

Looking around the assorted runners as they arrived was a scary experience. I have never seen so many incredibly fit-looking, sinewy people in all my life. Almost every one of them looked like they could sprint up Everest, wrestle a wild boar at the top, then carry it back down and make every one a bacon butty before the sun was over the yard arm.

I got talking to a friendly guy from Otley AC. He told me a little about the race and we idly chatted about our running history. He mentioned that the worse part of the race was a tarmac section that was really punishing. I misunderstood him entirely and said that it would probably be the only section I'd enjoy. I found out just how right he was later on and just how much I'd misunderstood him.
I was trying not to notice the way the Chevin looked down on us all with a black scowl from so high up. I have run around the Chevin enough times now to know that it can be a tough place to run, but I had never stared up at it from the very bottom. From this angle, if it was a person, it would be a socio-path with serial killer tendencies.

Yes, that's definitely a noose

I soon spotted some of the guys from Horsforth Fellendale and said hello to Simon, who, impressively, recently ran the Fellsman. You can read about his epic run here:

Simon has run the race before and gave me a few welcome tips, "Don't get frustrated on the steps, it'll be congested and you won't be able to over take"  As it turns out, by the time I got to the steps, running was out of the question, I was so tired. I think more than one person told me that I had picked a tough race for my first ever fell outing.

The starter stood on a wall with an air horn and everyone lined up at the imaginary start line. He counted us all down and caused a large laugh as he failed to get the air horn to work; the field set off running anyway, then laughed again as the horn finally went off 5 seconds later while everyone sprinted up the cobbles.

Judging the pace of this race was going to be impossible for me as I didn't know the course and had no idea exactly how to run to the top of a 925ft peak and remain alive at the end. I decided to tuck in behind Simon and use his pace.
The first section isn't very steep up Station road, then the route turns along a very brief flat section. I couldn't decided on whether to use the flat section to get in some quick running while I could and unsure as to what I should do, I adopted a moderate pace. Tentatively I moved passed Simon, also unsure if that would be a wise move. Another turn, some tarmac, then the route turned past a white building  that appears an intimidating height up the hill when viewed from the bottom.

I started to walk long before I saw anyone else start. Luckily my challenge walking experience meant my walk was pretty much as fast as the people running around me. I tried to adopt a run 10 metres-walk 10 metres strategy. Not long after the steps started, I abandoned the strategy and just walked. I was trying to keep the speed up as much as possible, but with sweat dripping from every pore and failing to gasp in anywhere close to the amount of air I required, it was, literally, an uphill struggle.

Mercifully the the path turned right at the top of the steps and levelled out somewhat. I tried to cruise to regather some breath. I wasn't able to.

Once again, Steve Prefontaine spoke to me, asking me how much guts I had, in his strange Yorkshire accent (I've never actually heard his voice, so naturally, to me, his accent is pure Dales)
 "Does thee have the guts, lad?"

After 2.8 BILLION steps. (I counted them all) the relief at seeing surprise view car park was muted. Although I was pleased to reach that point as I knew it to be the very top of the Chevin and it would all be down hill after that, I was still blowing incredibly hard. Too hard. Here I am, reaching the top in around 13 gruelling minutes:

 Many thanks to Woodentops for this fantastic picture. Now, why do I run with my thumbs up?

So the expected relief that came with the down hill bit never arrived. I may not have the iron will of an Olympian, but I do have enough desire that cruising down the hill after the immense effort of getting up there just wasn't going to happen. I kept pushing as hard as my burning muscles and lungs would allow.

We plunged back in to the forest and I accelerated. I started to reel in the runners in front. The forest seemed to flash by and we rounded the white building very soon (I really must find out what it is!) telling me there wasn't much further to go.

Through the small yard and I was staring down the steep tarmac hill that the Otley runner had mentioned. We had run up it, but it hadn't registered with me. Free speed! I thought. This was a chance to really open up, the only question was how fast did I dare to go?

I passed a mountain goat who was complaining about this stupid hill

Otley runner's words soon started to hammer home. My feet were beginning to burn within seconds of hitting the tarmac and I was reaching what felt like a dangerous speed. Did I engage my quads and cause those to burn and also slow me down, or did I just go for it? I settled for a half measure. It was still enough to reel in and pass 2 runners including a young man in his early 20s who I would encounter a little later. Unfortunately, slamming that hard in to tarmac injured my left heel. Thankfully it was only a bruise to the soft tissue which was better inside 4 days and during the race, I didn't feel it.

A trot back through the tiny industrial section as the young runner behind me caught me with every step, and we were back looking down the cobbles of Station road. As usual, my brain informed me I had absolutely nothing left and a sprint would not be possible. In fact, you should give up and walk, nay crawl, to the finish. Actually no, hot-wire a car and drive down.

Back in the real world and the young runner behind audibly upped his pace, I could tell from his breathing and foot fall. I idly wondered if I would be able to out-sprint him. I tried to up my pace and managed a tiny amount. I heard the young runner respond. I pushed a little harder and actually found something there. There was less than 100 metres of steep downhill cobbles to go. I always tell myself with 100 metres to go, no matter what, you can manage a sprint. After all, what does it matter if you collapse over the line? Everyone would be impressed, I am sure!

The relentless downward progress continued with everything on fire, it was taking all my will power not to just give up and walk; then wonderfully, I heard the young runner give up. He wasn't going to catch me. I was way happier than that should have made me. But still, I had heard the challenge, responded, and won my own little race. Perhaps a little bit of Dom's heightened determination was beginning to sink in. There is no logic in thrashing yourself to finish one place higher when you are nowhere near a podium finish, but it's that very attitude which slows you down, and it's rejecting those thoughts, believing in racing whomever you are up against, regardless of your position, that spurs you on to greater things. Honestly, it felt like a small break-through in that I was able to force myself to "beat" that young runner....

Who had the most guts, Steve?....Me, lad, me!

There was no finish line as such, just a small funnel created by ribbon and some traffic cones and I was confused as to where the race finished (other runners coming in behind me had the same trouble and many ran way past the official finish) Then I heard the time keeper call out a place, which sadly, I was too tired to commit to memory, but I realised I could stop running.

My time of a little over 22 minutes (I forgot to turn off my GPS at the end, so ignore the last split and overall time) would have placed me around 20th last year when just under 100 people raced. This year's field was something like 120, so we shall see what happens when the official results are published. 

After the race my legs continued to shake for quite some time and it took me far longer to recover from any road race I have ever done, including much longer races. I continued to gasp for air for far longer too.

Soon I had the unexpected pleasure of cheering in the other Horsforth Fellandale runners. Having never been part of a running club before, it really was a great feeling to stand at the end talking  to the other runners about their races. Simon felt he could have gone harder, but his only real aim for the race was just to get up and down in one piece, probably due to his training for the brutal 10 mountain challenge he is undertaking soon. 

Race Summary:

I had to be pleased with my run in my first ever fell race. I finished in a respectable time, in a respectable position. Although I walked much of the uphill sections I doubt I could have paced it much better as I don't think I am capable, yet, of running very far up a hill so steep. So, small injury aside, I couldn't have hoped for much better. Bring on the next one!

Update:

I finished in a slightly disappointing 42nd, although the official time I was given is a good 30 seconds more than I estimated it to be! Ah well, next year!