WEEKEND FELL ROUND UP by Josie
On Saturday, the penultimate race on our Fell Calendar was none other than Tour of Pendle. For a hill that covers a relatively small area, it manages to pack in a distance of 16.8 miles and 4833ft of climb making it a tough category A-Long race.
Starting at the Barley Village Hall, the race begins with a mile of uphill road leading to the fell where it continues to climb steadily to the summit trig of Pendle Hill at 1,831ft. Not content with one summit of the hill, the route crosses the plateau to descend and climb a total of 6 times from different areas of the hill, each time becoming longer, steeper and more arduous.
Myself and Rob Sharkey were the Lostock AC representation on Saturday putting ourselves at the mercy of Pendle Hill. Rob & I have completed the race numerous times and experience has taught us that this race does not begin at the start! We set off at a leisurely pace to conserve our legs for later stages of the race. Rob’s natural gait took him ahead early on whilst I continued cautiously as I’d picked up a niggle midweek.
Following the steep, sharp descent to Ogden Clough commonly known as ‘Geronimo’, the race began to take hold and we were both working our way up the field. Unfortunately, Rob began to suffer from cramp allowing me to close the gap. However, with only a couple of more climbs left, Rob dug deep and pushed through the pain to finish jubilant as first Lostocker in a fantastic time of 3:31:45 followed by me in 3:34.08 and 3rd in my age category.
Not content with just racing on Saturday, on Sunday I travelled to North Wales with Tony Marlow to compete in the Kong Mini Mountain Marathon. This is a competition for both orienteers and fellrunners to test their navigation and mountain skills.
Starting from Dolgellau, runners had 4 hours to visit as many control points as possible that were marked on the map. The running area was the hills of the beautiful Cadair Idris National Nature Reserve. Unfortunately, the poor weather on arrival meant a very wet, cold and windy outing.
Starting in full waterproof gear, Tony headed out on a clockwise route with plenty of controls, points and elevation. Given the severity of the weather and terrain, the ability to move at any kind of pace was hampered massively. Tony was battered by strong gusts as he summited Cadair Idris before making the treacherous rocky descent. On planning his return route, Tony was forced to cross a swollen river in spate then descend some steep ground covered in tussocks, gorse and heather. Unfortunately, the unforgiving terrain lost Tony some time and points but his efforts still earned him 6th in his age category.
I wasn’t so fortunate and was unable to complete my course when I came across a fast flowing stream that I considered unsafe to cross whilst alone. The crossing prevented me from accessing any further controls on my route so I returned to race HQ. Better to fail & live to run another day!
Big well done from me to my Lostock team mates Rob & Tony! 
