Not Spring more like Winter

What a week this has turned out to be, largely dominated by the weather which has felt more like winter than spring. Changes in the weather throughout the week has made things quite difficult for me as i run my own garden maintenance business so it has been a case of working inbetween the heavy rain that has battered us all week up here in the dales. For training though it has been a good week for me and i have managed to get some good runs in, five in total, three 1hr+ runs on the fells, one 1hr trail run, and a long run of 21/2 hrs on the fell. The long fell run which i did on Saturday was to co-inside with watching the later stages of the Fellsman Hike, a 60 miles event with 11,480ft of ascent that starts in Ingleton and finishes at Threshfield and goes over part of the training route that i do and  is one of my favourite training runs from home in which i take the footpath up to Bare House then continue across the next field to the stile and join the route that takes you to the top of Capplestone Gate, from here i continue across the top to Providence Pot a well known pot hole which is situated just below Hag Dyke Scout Hostel.  

Hag Dyke Scout Hostel

After reaching Hag Dyke I took the steep path to the summit of Great Wherside, height 2 310 ft, grid reference SE002739. After reaching the top of Great Whernside I followed the path across to Black Dike as to get a good view of the runners ascending Great Whernside, the first of them being course record holder and two time winner Jez Bragg from Dorset, who went onto win for the third time in a row in a time of 11hrs 2mins. His time this year was 56 minutes slower than his record time set last year but given the conditions out on the fells yesterday it was a great effort from the top ultrarunning star. Second place went to Belper runner Ian Phillips who finished 7 minutes behind the winner, with joint third placed runners being Konrad Rawlik of Poland and Odredj Mandula from the Czech Republic in a time of 11hrs 31mins. 

After watching the first few runners come past I followed the same line of decent from the top of great Whernside as the Fellsman runners took, all the way down to just after Green Hill, then across to bare House again and dropped down home to Grassington. 

After watching the Fellsman it is definitely down as one of my races to do next year in preparation for my Bob Graham attempt, speaking of which sees me back up in Cumbria next weekend on another recce with Martin, can't wait, just hope the weather is a bit better!