Groovy (& Baby) Kinder Love done for another year. We had a few mishaps this year as there was a lot of marking by a gate for an ultra passing though the area which resulted in a number of people taking a very scenic route from broad clough (via Kinder Dam) to Benny’s Bridge at the bottom of Sandy Heys and missing the Sandy Heys CP(s) in the process. Also, the tried-and-tested navigation technique of following the runner in front proved to be flawed because of the above and plus when there are two races the runner in front may not be going the same way as was seen by a number of people having to back track after broad clough, where the races split. It was a pity as I have a very detailed route description of that section of the race on the race website. I believe even at the top end of both races places were being lost and gained because of site-seeing at various parts of the course. The “young ‘uns” and vets shared the top four in the GKL with U23, vet, U23 vet before we got a senior home. I have been disappointed in the number of women the have run the GKL to date, but while the “baby” had a small field it was evenly split with 11 men and 10 women. The women then did themselves proud with Pennine’s Anna Wildman coming home in 3rd overall to be followed by three more women in positions 4, 5 and 6.
I am really running my luck with the weather on this race as
this is the fourth year with good weather and this year being the best. It was especially
pleasing having seen the comments about the races in very poor conditions in
the lakes on the same day.
I get relatively small race numbers in this event (2021 90; 2022 50;
2023 74; 2024 61). I know an AL
is not for everyone, so I introduced the option of a “baby” version. Not sure if it was a success or not as I had
quite a few less this year than last year. With 21 in the baby and 40 in the
kinder. I noticed I had a few entries from Manchester YMCA so I had a look at
their club championship page and the writer described the baby as a “slightly
shorter” version of the GKL. I thought to myself the writer is correct. At
18Km/900m it is still a tough race thereby attracting the same calibre of
runner as the main race. So, in effect, the two races are in competition with
each other. I will try again next year with the two races but, for the baby,
I will remove the South Head CP (60 metres climb) and Jacob’s Ladder CP (2Km/170
metres).
So I will have:
Baby16 km/700m (approx.)
Kinder 24.5 km/1290
