Burbage Skyline

Burbage Skyline on Tue 8th May 2018

Thank you to all runners and helpers for this year’s Burbage Skyline – the very first on its new route. As you may recall, heightened sensitivities with regards to erosion and disturbance to nesting birds (ring ouzels in particular) meant that the Eastern Moors Partnership, which manages the Burbage estate on behalf of landowner Sheffield City Council had required the route to be changed because they didn’t believe that Natural England, the central government quango that oversees these matters, would grant a licence for the race otherwise.

In changing the route, the biggest loss is the removal of the famous plummet – the steep off-path descent from Higger Tor to Burbage Brook – but that aside, the requirement to revise the route was also an opportunity: to move the start to the main track and allow for a less crammed in / frantic start in particular. It also gave the opportunity to explore a bit more of the Burbage valley and I’m grateful to Tim Tett for his suggestion of using the path below Burbage South quarries. The final tweak to the new route was to get in a bit of extra climbing by adding a second short-but-sharp ascent of Higger Tor, and all in all my Strava track told me that there was 185m of climb, in a race of 5.7 miles. It has been pointed out since that this under-records the amount of ascent, and indeed, checking out Strava race tracks it looks like there is more like 1000ft or 300m. This also means that I incorrectly classified the race as a category C (>20m climb per km) rather than a category B (>25m climb per km). Sorry about that – I blame my Garmin.

Anyway, feedback about the route has been universally favourable, so we’ll keep it – and thus we have a whole batch of new course records – very well done to all!

Well done too for the men’s and women’s team winners – Dark Peak and Smiley Paces (FGR!)

Putting on a race is very much a team effort and thanks all of the volunteers – you did a brilliant job. Special thanks to John Dalton on Registration / Results and Richard Hakes at the finish line. Thanks too to Bob B, Tim T and others for help liaising with the authorities and in devising the route.

I also want to thank the Fox House Inn, for yet again generously allowing us to use their facilities, and the folk at Eastern Moors for listening to and taking on board my many route proposals – we got there in the end! Thanks too Seven Hills Bakery for the great prize-bags.

And a huge thank you to Matt Hood and the team from Edale MRT whose presence was very much needed this year with one injured runner.

We used pre-entry only this year because this makes the registration process much quicker (thanks SI Entries), which is really important because we need to get the race going on time so that the slowest runners get back whilst it is still light. This worked well, and we’ll do the same next year. I was surprised that the race sold out at 400 runners – but also a bit disappointed that 78 didn’t turn up on the day. Perhaps the 5pm downpour put some off? Either way, the race generated more funds than it has from previous races, the majority of which is invariably donated to charitable causes such as MRT and conservation / environment. On that note thanks to all the runners who listened to our request to bring their own water bottles and allow us to have just a few emergency plastic cups on the night.

Please do let me have any further feedback.

Richard Hakes’ photos are available here - http://dpfr.piwigo.com/index?/category/547-burbage

Cheers

Paul Fauset