FRA British Championship Relays

Last weekend it was time again for the FRA Relays and this year Pendle hill would be the setting for the annual event to find out which is the fastest Fell running club in Britain. Pre race there had been some controversey regarding entries with the usual 200 teams having to be cut to 150 as Barley could not handle more than 900 people and vehicles. This meant Knavesmire had only one team entered in the Open Male category as our Ladies team was unsuccessful in securing a place.

On the 1st leg was Giles Hawking, hoping he had recovered well enough from his Yorkshire Marathon exploits the weekend before. The start was on a narrow road and after some jostling Giles was hemmed in further down the pack than he would have liked. Once the race made it onto open land Giles set about moving up the field. After some hard climbing up the ‘Big End’ of Pendle hill Giles headed towards the finish handing over to Chris Roberts and Harry Holmes for Leg 2.

The second leg was a long pairs leg around 8.5 miles in length with a serious amount of climbing involved. We were down in 80th place at the hand over with a lots of teams just in front of us. Harry’s eyes lit up at the sight of so many teams to overtake that he set off like it was a 100m race leaving me struggling to keep up. What followed was a torturous couple of miles of trying to hang on as we passed team after team on the long climb up to CP3. Finally there was a chance to breath as we headed downward for a short while. Once we hit the edge of the ridge I knew from my recce that the fastest route to CP4 was straight off the side rather than the longer route on the path so we plummeted off the edge. My X-Talon 212s vs Harrys Trail shoes was a no contest as I was now pulling away from Harry on the steep descent. The biggest climb of the leg was to follow and Harry was full of beans again, chatting to other teams as he surged ahead of me. Some more fast descending and steep climbing passed by as we continued to make good progress. Once we hit the fast flat path we were working well together overtaking teams all the time and soon made it to the peak of Pendle hill. All that was left was an eyeballs out descent back to the marquee and hand over point in the distance. We came storming into the end of the leg to finish in 25th place for the leg and 38th overall, having overtaken 42 teams of 2 along the way.

Next up on the lottery that is the pairs navigation leg were Barry Atkinson and Andy Holiday. The navigation leg is around 8 miles of running where you only get your map a few 100ms into the leg and have to visit 7-8 checkpoints in order in the fastest time possible. Andy was assigned the map reading duties due to the fact that Baz didnt have his glasses! Luckily the clag was not down and they set off well and were maintaining our position. Aa the leg went on Andy was beginning to struggle but he dug in and with some encouragement from Baz fought on to the end of the leg where they finished 64th on the leg and left us 54th overall.

On the last short leg was Neil Stabbs, Neil has been recovering from a IT Band problem over the summer but has been back to something like his best over the last few weeks so we were confident of getting a few places back. Leg 4 was something of a reversal of leg 1 with Neil having to plummet off the side of ‘Big End’ before a steadier climb back up. Neil managed to pick up a couple of places on the climb and ran the 41st fastest leg.

We just failed to get inside the top 50 with us finishing 52nd overall but it was an improvement on our 57th last year. Hopefully next year the venue will be able to accomodate more teams and we can enter a Ladies team as well.

Full Results

Photos courtesey of Neils Stabbs, WoodenTops and somebody else who I have forgotton, sorry.

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