Race Report 2022

Number two done and dusted now. For the most part it went very well except for the potentially serious issue of misidentifying one of the runners by entering their number on the wrong row in the start sheet and being unlucy in that the person who did recieve the number was a no-show, so it was not picked up until someboy highlight it once the preliminary results were published. I will redesign the start sheet to make the fonts much bigger and more padding around each name to significanly the reduce the risk of a finger sliding onto the wrong row.

Last year I had just over 100 enter that involved a lot of emails flying about and visiting the banking website to confirm payments had been made. I decided to make things easier and opted to use Fabian, purely because a friend of mine uses it for the Downfall. I was expecting a flood of entries as the race day drew near but I have to admit I was dissapointed to only have 44 entries via Fabian when entries closed the night before the race. I was then very pleasantly surprised to have fifteen EOD, so with those and no-shows I had 53 on the start line. It was only the night before that I looked at the FRA races for that weekend to find that it was a particlarly busy weekend with the Bleaklow Blitz and "Peak Raid Mountain Marathon 1" both on the same weekend and very local, not to mention a host of other races slighly further afield. Lesson learned, I must be a bit more clever next year in selecting the date. I checked with the NT and they do not expect any problems with  playing around with the date a bit, so next year's race will probably be one of 9, 16, 23 September 2023.

Races the same weekend

As for the racing there was some excitment this year. In 2021 Joe Oldfield was just so stong he led from start to finish with a big lead. This year Toby Gill (U23 in 2:34:25) led for much of the race (and according to some of the marshalls he had a very healthy lead), in excellent running conditions only to be caught in the later stages by Mark Burley (2:24:05) and Stephen Edwards (2:34:10). There were only the four women running but that did not stop the top two in particular putting in excellent times with  Rachel Munday in 3:02:40 and Pennine's own Anna Wildman close behind in 3:05:25.

The marshalls took a few photos out on the course, here a  select few.

Launching down Sandy Heys

Mark Burley (1) takes the lead from Toby Gill(3)

Bottom of Sandy Heys Stephen Edwards in blue (2)

Mark Burley(1)

Toby Gill  takes the lead at the start

Rachel Munday (W1)

Anna Wildman (W2)

As per last year the NT have been excellent. In 2021 I donated £1 per entrant but with so few this year I bumped it up a bit myself.