We crossed over the M6 and continued west to Keswick. It was around this point I realised that my Walshes were not sitting on the back seat but were in fact sitting next to the back door back in Durham where I’d cleverly placed them so that I couldn’t possibly forget them when we left the house. A quick detour via George Fisher was required, where I said I wanted a pair of Fell Shoes, size 43, and I needed to walk out the door in them in 10 minutes. This was becoming a habit. I tried on a nice pair of yellow La Sportiva Bushidos that felt just fine so I kept them on and made my way to the counter. “That’ll be £110 please”, she said nicely. My jaw clanged on the counter. This was about twice as much as I’ve ever paid for a running shoe. But they were a very nice yellow colour and I didn’t have any time to spare so I handed over the dosh.
The Borrowdale Show has had several years of bad luck with the weather and this entirely volunteer run event was now financially threatened. Roberta had signed us up for a couple of tickets earlier in the year via the Indiegogo website. This scheme along with some sponsorship appears to have saved the show and this year the weather was looking fantastic. As it turned out we had bags of time and I was standing staring absent mindedly at some carved sticks when the announcement came over the PA: “Would anyone wishing to enter the Fell Race please make their way to the cattle truck.”
Ah, fell racing! I’d missed this. It was good to be back! It’s not a proper race unless you’re filling in an FRA entry form in the back of a cattle truck. I found myself at the front of a queue of 1 and was given my number which was, oh excellent, 1! I’ve never been number 1 before. No pressure then. I had a look at the race details and noted it was an AS. Roberta noticing the worried frown that passed across my otherwise tranquil features asked, “What does AS mean?”. “Er, well basically, short and brutal. Usually.”. I paid some closer attention to where the race actually went and noticed that it marched right up to the top of the hill, the hill being Dale Head, then marched right down again. This wasn’t looking such a clever idea the week before the Loch Ness marathon.
The race briefing had an unusual twist that I hadn’t come across before. To check everyone who had registered was actually starting we all had to shout out our numbers in sequence. No. 26 having registered mere minutes earlier, must’ve decided not to bother, possibly having noted the lithe mass of sinew that was assembled for the race. I was having serious doubts myself – there were no tourists here. This was a serious bunch.
What’s to say about the race itself, apart from it was slate-shatteringly hard. It was hot and I struggled, feeling drained, weak and puzzled, much as I felt in last week’s LDMT. I should’ve been feeling fantastic as I approached the end of my marathon taper but I felt terrible. I stopped for a good drink both ways at the Dalehead Tarn beck (the ‘water stop’ in the Anniversary Waltz) and with some great encouragement from the marshalls managed to get round.
The weather was so warm that there was no need to fumble for post-race jerseys or shelter. I got a cup of tea and found a quiet patch of grass and we just sat quietly for a while soaking up the atmosphere of the show. It was a brutal little race and I should’ve treated it with far more respect than I did. I guess if you want to race well in a race that involves running up hills, then you need to train by running up hills rather than along railway lines. Clearly just buying expensive shoes and wearing the number 1 wasn’t going to cut the mustard.
