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British Hill Relays, Kettlewell
15th October 2011
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Fantastic weather for this year's British Hill Relays down in Kettlewell, Yorkshire.
Despite taking no map or road atlas, all 6 Westies eventually found the venue on Saturday. On the Friday night, we picked up Sam Alexander from Skipton, meeting at the strangely named Rhubarb bar/restaurant, before retiring to Malham Youth Hostel. Owen stumbled in around 1am having got waylaid with his Glasgow departure.
Anyhow, at 10am on Saturday morning the event kicked off with wall-to-wall sunshine and around 180 teams taking part. Sam got us off to a good start in 32nd position, and handing over to Niall and Brian for the longest stage on Leg 2. Niall and Brian worked well to gain several places, and handed over to Cameron and Owen in around 25th place with teams arriving thick and fast.
Dark Peak ran the fastest times on Legs 1, 2 and 3, and sent Lloyd Taggart off on Leg 4 with a comfortable lead. Mercia had been right on the heels of Dark Peak for the first 2 changeovers, but somehow blew it on Leg 3, and in fact Shettleston came in 2nd for the Leg 4 handover with Oleg Chepelin heading out just ahead of Morgan Donnelly of Borrowdale. HBT were also well-placed and sent Murray Strain off on the final leg to run the fastest Leg 4 on the day. Edinburgh Uni Hares & Hounds were the 3rd-placed Scottish Team, a good bit ahead of us.
I eventually caught glimpses of Cameron and Owen hurtling down the finishing fields, in the mix with Bowland vets Chris Reade and Quentin Harding. All 4 of them arrived at the dibber almost simultaneously, but while Cameron was trying to dib the lady steward pushed him back to let Bowland dib first, so as soon as we tagged as I was immediately chasing Mike Johnson plus a Rossendale guy. I possibly shouldn't have chased Mike so hard since I pretty much ran out of steam on the climb, and got caught by Wharfedale, then just before the summit of Great Whernside I was caught by Pennine, and then on the descent I was passed by Pudsey vets, so I dropped 3 places in total. But overall it was by far the best Westies performance we've had at one of the British relays during my time in the club. Thanks guys for all your hard work!
Posted by Chris Upson on Mon 17 Oct 2011 | 3 comments
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Comments
Johnston said...
A great result, and considering that we had fast runners at other events in Killin and Helensburgh on the same weekend, very encouraging for the club.
Monday 17th October 2011 10.34am
BB2 said...
Yes, a great team effort, lads ... and especially well done to Capt'n Chris for pulling off the near impossible feat of a. picking a well-matched team, and, b. getting said team of Westies to Yorkshire without any last minute call-offs or (major) mishaps. Not only that, but the team actually ran in the pre-arranged order (!!) and no one got injured, separated or lost (at least during the race). That said, we do have our reputation to consider, so lets not start making a habit of this kind of thing and make sure we're back to our shambolic norm for the Burdens in January ...
Monday 17th October 2011 9.04pm
Niall McAlinden said...
Well done to Chris for organising a great team. Sam put us in the perfect position with several teams to battle with from start to finish of the 9 mile leg. At the start Brian took the pace making responsibilities and powered us up the first hill. We passed several teams as if there were standing still and I was starting to feel the early pace. Thankfully we eased off a bit after the steepest section and settled into a more reasonable but still hard pace. We could see other teams were starting to suffer with one member dropping the other on the climb but we were sticking together well.
Just at the top of the first climb we got passed by HBT which gave us somebody to pace off for the next while. Off the first climb we started descending on a land rover track before cutting across some fields. Overall the decent was fast and not very technical, but had 2 or 3 steep steps down. Brian had managed to gain a small amount on me but only 10-15s... meanwhile other teams had completely split up and it was great to fly past the leader waiting at the first control point.
Onto the 2nd climb and I took the pace making. I was trying to keep the pace steady and hard and Brian seemed to have no trouble staying on my shoulder (Chatting to Brian at the end he said he was feeling the effort of the first climb but just used me as a pacer to keep motivated). We passed a few more teams and I for one was still feeling strong. Again many of the teams around us had split up with the leader well over 100m ahead of his teammate.
At the next checkpoint we again passed some people just standing around waiting for a teammate. Then followed the fun section with about 2 miles of fairly flat bog... we were running with another team, passing and getting overtaken depending on which route each team chose.
Onto the last decent and Brian took the lead, I was pushing as hard as I could down the rocky path, trying to follow Brian's line, I was really starting to hurt at this stage. We got caught by one or two people but I don't think any teams passed us. At the bottom of the hill there was a bit of a sting in the tail with a loop up a short climb before flying down a field to the changeover location. Coming down the field we were neck in neck with the team we had battled with through the bog, I took a look back at Brian who took my sign and sprinted past... I quickly followed and we managed to just beat them to the SI box.
It was great to run with somebody so evenly matched (Well done Chris on the team selection), I had a great day in the hills. Boy did I feel it on Sunday though!
Wednesday 19th October 2011 10.15am