…A fun challenge and under 15 miles too.
By Matt Biglin
Saturday morning, and 90 runners are staring up a steep earth bank, through trees and bracken. Looking for all the world like a bunch of 10 year olds who have just lost a cricket ball.
Theyre actually just mentally picking a scrambling path through the scrub, but you can only see the bottom 10yds so its fairly pointless in fact.
It’s the renowned Mt Famine race start. The 2nd race in the Hayfield three days in May Following, the evening before, Hayfield May Queen (started by the actual May Queen), and followed by the Lantern Pike Dash on Sunday, named after the Lantern Pike pub. Or possibly the hill.
Always a sucker for a bit of novelty, this year I thought I’d give the triple a go. All these have featured in GVS champs recently, so they’d already be familiar to most. Its only about 10 miles in total but feels like more. The weather all weekend was *fantastic*.
So! May Queen; this year was on the GVS summer fell list so there was a sprinkling of club turnout. I noticed on my warm up that there was a narrow bridge after about a kilometre so I was determined to get there before the bottleneck started. You can always get your breath back going single file up through the woods. I know the top bit of the hill well but there’s no good way to run down the Pike.
I think I made 5th GVS back. A prize for Anna Aspinall (2nd F40), and 7th for William Aspinall of this parish. Full GVS listing below.
Then Saturday, Mt Famine and that start. It’s the start that people talk about but it’s the turnaround that does the damage. The route passes Mt Famine onto South Head then inexplicably down Dimpus Clough, a 200m drop, only to clamber back up to Mt Famine again. I did this race last year on fresh legs and really felt the difference. Yet again I despair of the numbers of runners who cruise past me on the steep down. Tell them to stop it.
Reaching the top again, I heard the marshall’s radio that the leaders had just finished. Hhmm.
The final offroad section is a very rocky path that I can suddenly remember tripping over on 5 years ago. ‘Slowing down a bit to be careful’ is not a phrase banded about by the hard core, but I’ll live with it. Then the usual Hayfield race ending, finish through the playground.
So that’s the main event done.
Last lap. Sunday 11am Lantern Pike pub in Little Hayfield. You can just about see all the 1k up-1k down course from the start; the entire East side of the Pike (hill not pub). Isnt there a long and honourable race tradition of pub-hill-pub events?.
Again there’s an initial dash to get through a gate in the first field, fording an ankle high stream, bit of upward zigzag then its just bilberries and heather all the way up. The leaders come down the same route but I didn’t stop to watch them. Turning round the trig point, I did briefly think ‘no more climbing for me this weekend’. But as we know, down can be harder than up sometimes. Some people I recognised from Saturday shot past on the down again. My Garmin has it at 2k total distance and 185m climb.
I hung around for the results, well, just because. 50 people turned out for what must be one of the shortest races in the calendar. There were 23 completed the Three Days, I came 10th, and walked away with a bottle of beer. Cheers Pennine.
It’s a fun challenge, a nice thing to say you’ve completed, with a great atmosphere at all three.
May Queen GVS finishing places. Friday’s fun.
10 Thomas Penn
24 Wayne Grant
28 Kevin Verdam
34 Anna Aspinall
38 Matt Biglin
47 Lauren Hogarth
56 Brian Holland
57 Eddy Webb
70 Anna Manley
72 Mary Jones
74 Kieran Smallbone