Lesley Pymm reports: I have not run this event for a few years as it always clashes with my cycle club audax. As I have not got the miles in for the audax, I decided to run at Shobden as I remembered this as being a lovely run. It was a shame about the late spring as this meant that the finish through the bluebell woods would probably be lacking something this year! This was confirmed by the organiser who apologised during the briefing for the lack of bluebells.
It was a long jaunt uphill to get to the start, but that helped with the warm up. We all shuffled around up there keeping warm before the start. This seems to be the theme of my runs lately – cold and windy. It will be such a shock when we actually get some warm weather to run in!
The start continues uphill on forestry tracks before turning, again uphill, onto muddy little paths. Then it was back onto forestry tracks and downhill, so we could look good as we ran past the supporters who had walked the shorter route to that point. The organiser had said that the course is predominantly downhill. This may be the case, but there is a fair amount of uphill too. Every time I went down a hill I knew that there was another uphill to follow. There was a man running near me for a time who was really having problems with the downhills.
It was dry and I had studs on, so I was fine there. The worst hill, which seems never ending is from about 4 – 4 .5 miles. As I scrambled to the top of that, I was directed onto a track and then off into the woods for the lovely run in the woods. Shame about the lack of bluebells!
Then it continued downhill to the finish. There was coffee and doughnuts for all. I was surprised to have run this faster than previously – maybe because I wasn’t admiring the bluebells this year! I was 1st W60, which came as a surprise as I have never won anything there before as there are always a lot of really good fell runners. It turned out that I was the only one that old! Still there were a lot behind me and the women and most of the men were younger than me! Although this is billed as being 6 miles, my GPS thingy said it was just over 5.25 miles. I expect they had it as 6 miles before we got all these gadgets!
Congratulations Lesley on winning your age category and beating so many younger runners.There is a lot to be said for wearing studs/multi-terraines on the underfoot conditions which you described.When the going gets tough the tough get going (Sorry you missed out on the bluebells. I invariably have a good show of bluebells in my garden at home,but everything is so late this year – I will let you have some photos when they come out!).
Well done on this race too,im sure you must know all the races!I always enjoy reading your reports and finding out about all these races.You deserved the donught after all that up and down running.