Buttermere Sailbeck

Having rather surprised myself with a half-decent showing at the Triple Crossing, followed by a most welcome ‘first-DP’er-in-the-pub-to-have-emailed-the-RO-at-the-weekend’ prize at the Cakes of Bread (thank you Cap’n Harmer - who’d have though your soda bread would be so tasty), I had done the maths, established that - despite everything - I really should be able to keep ahead of the sweep (with an outside chance of beating Carshare Junior’s time from 2016), and taking stupidity into my hands answered Jenny Caddick’s shout out for a carshare, sending off my entry for the race the same day. It would be my first FRA race in over four years, and my first Lakeland medium since I too did Sailbeck in 2016.

Race day dawned bright and cheerful, I was late (of course) to pick up Jenny, Jon Morgan, and Jack Foxall, and we enjoyed ourselves talking the usual post-(here’s hoping) lockdown, pre-race nonsense on the way over, making good time via a beautifully sunlit Newlands Valley to Buttermere. Registration passed uneventfully, albeit there was some debate about whether it was a vest, vest and T-, or long-sleeved DP vest kinda day. When Jenny returned from her warm-up to pronounce that I’d be mad to persist with the long-sleeved option I relented, pottered back to the car, and returned resplendent in sparkly new green lycra (Jack was so impressed he was considering approaching the kitmeister for a pair of his own); perfectly off-set by a decidedly faded (‘Northern Runner’ issue) brown vest. Jenny was, naturally, correct in her choice of vest (and did not join me in sporting green lycra).

Avert your eyes, traditionalists, but the start of the race has been changed so that it now departs from the finish field, thereby avoiding the road altogether. A much more satisfying arrangement all round, and a gentle enough first mile or so to the foot of the first climb.

The descent off Ard Crags still sorts the sheep (me) from the goats (most of the rest of the field), and the climb to Causey Pike is as brutal as I remembered it (to the extent repressed and ageing memory allowed). I’d harboured delusions that I might be able to hang on to the coat-tails of Alison Wainwright, but she had other ideas and duly chewed me up and spat me out on the way up to the Pike, where it was nevertheless reassuring to be greeted by a characteristically wide smile from Spike and Judith, marshalling for the day (for which, many thanks - though I suspect I may have communicated this in a rather less measured fashion at the time).

Meanwhile, at the less competitive end of the field, Chet Gillespie was taking a most creditable 6th position and 1st MU23, Eleanor Wainwright 8th woman (sadly no FU23 prizes today, it appears) and Jenny C was celebrating her first race as an FV50 by taking home the first prize (albeit 2nd FV50), courtesy of the first FV50 (Lou Osborn) having cleaned up in the FV40 category and come second woman to boot. A very impressive run indeed by Jenny, who claims to have done virtually no training at all in advance of Jura, yet was only nine minutes slower than in 2016 (whereas your correspondent, celebrating his first race as an MV55, was fully 36 minutes slower - ah, the joys of ageing).

With the aforementioned Alison W coming 6th FV50, she, daughter Eleanor, and Jenny C took a very fine second place (to Keswick) in the women’s team competition, with the DP men coming fourth.

But never mind all that; as any true aficionado of fell-running knows, the real action is much nearer the back of the field. Having been dropped by Alison on Causey Pike, I settled into an heroic battle between myself and nature, with the latter inevitably coming out on top (and, should you still have the will to live, more of that in a moment). My (perhaps similarly repressed) memory of the final descent off Whiteless Pike as being ‘perhaps the best in fell-racing’ and ‘entirely eye-balls out runnable, even for the likes of me’ (something I’d been claiming to anyone in the field prepared to listen) proved to be hopelessly inaccurate as I struggled down the first several hundred metres from the summit (though it does get better still as you reach lower altitudes).

In a manoeuvre akin to an F1 driver cutting the corner at Copse (they don’t do chicanes any more, do they?), I managed to worsel a couple of my nearest rivals using a variation on the traditional marram grass traverse (memory again necessitating the variation) but sadly they both still beat me to the finish, where I was grateful to Mike R for the use of his chair and the offer of an alcohol-free craft beer (another welcome post-race, post-lockdown innovation). I’m also delighted to report that I just managed to beat Carshare Junior’s 2016 time, though Sarah B and Penny C will be equally delighted to learn I didn’t quite manage to beat their 2016 times (identical, naturally). I’m pretty confident I can also claim to have won the race to be first arthritic Dark Peak diabetic (though I’m prepared to give way to anyone prepared to claim otherwise).

Which brings us to the rather sorry postscript. Mike R had announced at the start that the spot prize - but only if you made it to the prize giving - was a ‘luxury holiday in the Lakes’. Not wanting to win the Pertex for missing out on such a prize, I dragged my unwilling body over to the cafe where I just about managed to drink a cup of tea, but failed entirely to get a flap-jack down before lying out on a bench to moan.

Having some experience of what can happen if I try to drive home after a tough fell-race-and-sugar-dip (ask Tom Westgate and Dave Bollington about Pendle), I was very glad of Jon M’s offer to take the driver’s seat, whilst I did my best impression of a car-sick eight year in the passenger seat (and of a drunk with food poisoning when we stopped to fill up with petrol - but that probably is too much detail).

I’m pleased to report however that by somewhere just south of Leeds I began to perk up a bit, and whilst it did take me fifteen minutes last night to work out how to get out of the bath without triggering another bout of excruciating cramps in my upper quads, I have managed to get up and down the stairs to make tea a couple of times already this morning without undue mishap.

Swiftly repressing any memory of yesterday therefore, and keen to compound my previous stupidity, I have gone and entered the Fairfield Horseshoe for next Sunday. It’s another cracking race - albeit significantly easier than Sailbeck - so if anyone’s also stupid enough to want to join me for a carshare next weekend having read all of this drivel, then I’d be glad of your company. I can see there are already half a dozen other brown vests on the starting list.