Jon Morgan sends:- “I was seriously impressed with Borrowdale at Arrochar. Yes they have a lot of strong runners and yes they all live closer to Scotland than we do. But they had done a serious amount of reccying and had shared their extensive knowledge amongst their team mates. So as a result Ben Bardsley, who was a minute or so behind Joe Symonds took a completely different line off the final summit, totally avoiding the hideous endless slithery stony descent we all did, deservedly winning albeit 40 seconds ahead of Rob, but by several minutes in front of arguably Britains most in-form mountain runner, Joe Symonds, who will be British Champ this year. Rob Jebb had also reccied it, as had Mark Roberts and Paul Cornforth and others. I was a minute or so ahead of Corny at the final summit and yes he too, luckily taking John Hunt with him, finished a long way ahead of me taking that quick grassy line.
So how can we get these extra free minutes? Yes we need to recce and many of us do already. But how about for these distant big important medium/long Champs races a bit of club help? What about the club paying for a minibus/petrol and we can have a weekend away with say 15 of us having a couple of days running to do exactly what some of us do individually. We could all compare recce notes in the pub on the Sat night and iron it out on the Sunday?
I would be happy to organise a minibus for next Champs AL race and we could make a weekend of it. Too late for Borrowdale and not needed for Edale next year, but the other English AL and the British one next year could do with some Borrowdale style attention. We have as many good runners as they do but until we take it as seriously they do will continue to beat us.”
DT – well? This all makes so much sense. This new system of our webmaster has the Comments link below, so…?