I figured I would do a race report from my first ever fell race and the first fell race on the club Fell champs this year. I wasn't going to enter it but I saw Sarah Clarke post about it in the facebook group and figured why not, I am off that Saturday I'll give it a go!
Flower Scar Fell Race is a 13km Fell Race starting from Todmorden Cricket Club with 660m of elevation and 6 checkpoints along the way. From CP1 through to CP3 you have to navigate your own route, the rest of the route is flagged. At each checkpoint you have to dib your dibber to prove that you have hit the checkpoint.
Seeing as there was Centre Vale parkrun right next to Todmorden Cricket Club I thought it would be a good idea if I did that beforehand. In for a penny, in for a pound! So I picked Hannah Dalby and Eve Hart up at 8am from Rammy and away we went to Todmorden. The weather was looking good, we were slightly concerned that we couldn't see Peel Tower due to the fog up on the hill but as we got closer to Todmorden the sky started to turn blue and there was this big ball of fire in the sky! The sun had made an appearance and the weather was perfect, especially for February!!
We bumped into James Brooks and his lovely wife Catherine (who was barcode scanning!) at Centre Vale parkrun which was great. Very nice parkrun, 3 laps of the park, couple of steep muddy hills, friendly marshalls. We jogged round in just over 30 minutes, great warm up for the fell race to come! Would I do the parkrun again? Probably not.
Before we knew it we were away! We started running across the park which was quite nice. Then we started going uphill. The running quickly turned into a walk. Eve was just in front of me and asked if I wanted to get past. Absolutey not I replied!! The hill kept going up, and up, and up. It was muddy. I looked at my watch, we had done 340m. It was at this point I knew, I'd ****ed up. There were steps on the hill that were about a foot and a half tall, they were tough on the quads. The hill kept going up (this will be a theme of this race), past sheep, past a couple of houses and then we were onto the moor proper.
We kept heading up towards Checkpoint 1. There were a couple of groups of runners taking different paths to get towards it. I could see the marshalls up on the crest of the hill but they didn't seem to be getting any closer. The closer I got to the checkpoint the steeper the hill got. Finally I made it up there and dibbed in, 41 minutes, 9 minutes ahead of the cutoff.
At this point I had lost sight of the runners ahead of me so headed straight ahead after CP1, along a track road. A car came up behind me and slowed as he went past "You doing Flower Scar race mate?" I am yes! "You're going the wrong way, you want to go over there to the left!" Ah. That's an issue. Luckily I could just cut across the moor and joined up with another runner. He also wasn't to sure where he was going and got his map out to check. We then spotted the bright yellow vests of the marshalls at CP2 far in the distance and headed towards them. Over to the left there were a couple of runners with high viz vests on, I thought it was great that they had come out fully prepared and very visible!
From CP3 onwards the course was flagged so I didn't have to worry about navigation. The terrain changed again, it became quite rocky and yet again there were more hills. Some of the hills we had to clamber up on our hands and knees they were that steep. I went knee deep into bogs several times. I managed to just about keep my shoes on my feet.
I don't really remember much about CP4/5. There were hills. There were some downhills too at this point though and even some lovely tarmac tracks that were a lot easier to run on than the moors. We passed through some forest that was so dense it was actually dark.
Between CP5 and CP6 there was a lovely downhill stretch that lasted for about a km. It was great to just run down the hill and make progress towards the finish. We dibbed in at the final CP and the marshall guided us to the right up the final hill. We were back down towards the road through Todmorden now so it was quite perplexing that there was a final hill. Why would there be a hill after 11km?! And my god what a hill it was. 101m of elevation in 1km. Halfway up the hill I ran out of vimto. It was proper moorland terrain, every step was muddy and slippy. Just as I thought we were getting to the top of the hill it continued to go up. This is what climbing Everest must feel like I thought. I didn't think I was going to make it. One foot in front of another, just keep moving, no matter how slowly. I looked up, the hill was SO steep but the summit was getting closer. Head down again, keep making progress. FINALLY we reached the summit of the hill and got onto a flat bit where we could run again.
Some tricky terrain to navigate at this point, rocks in the moors, ditches, reeds, bogs, mud. A bit of downhill and I managed to catch up to the runner in front of me, I even briefly overtook him. We made it back to the marshall who we had passed halfway up the first hill and she guided us off to the left and some lovely downhill that was runnable. We were then on the muddy hill that mercifully we were now going down instead of up like we were at the start and it was so muddy that it was hard to run properly. The runner who I had caught earlier overtook me again.
I finally crossed the finish line and dibbed in, desperate for a drink. There was some orange juice at the finish but only one cup! I shared a much needed cup of Orange Juice with the runner who finished with me and we trooped back to the car and with that my first ever fell race was over.
One word to describe my day: humbled. It was quite the adventure. The hills were bloody steep, the bogs quite deep, the mud very muddy and the rocks quite slippy. It was a great day out though, one of the hardest runs I've ever done. It would be even tougher in bad weather. I will never complain about Lumb Carr Road or Stubbins Hill ever again.
Big thanks to all the Rams that were there today for the encouragement and a huge well done to them all for some amazing times. Mark and Sue the back markers were great company for 2/3rds of the run and I'm not sure I would have made it if it wasn't for them!
1st Fell race of the club champs season done, the hardest and longest one, they can only get easier from here right?!
Andy Evans (RRC525)
