PhilPub-
I’m rank average (48/138 at the race) but I descend better than I ascend. The going up is improving although if I aim to keep going to the lakes this year, I’ll need to get some proper hill reps in sooner rather than later.
Seeing the front runners descending on the way back as we headed up was incredible - the speed paired with the expression of those at their athletic limit was something. I wish I could’ve seen them on the more technical bits. One thing I do see a lot of at my end of the race, is that people zigzag too much. I’ll regularly pick up a place simply by having the confidence to run in a straight line on the rougher stuff, while others try and aim for slightly out of gait but flatter placements. The day will come when I go down like a sack of shit no doubt, maybe then I’ll share their sense of caution.
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Nef
Lovely experience from today. Was smashing it down from Silverhow, decent bit of descending and picking up some places. Hang onto a group of runners, with one in particular showing his familiarity with the racing lines. I managed to catch up with him at the road crossing before going back up Loughrigg. I thank him for his good lines and route finding, and he asks if I know my way to the tarn and I admit I don’t (nor do I particularly fancy uncurling the map in my cold hand and straining my hypoxic brain to try and interpret it to navigate from). He kindly suggests I follow him in that case! He remarks he’ll be slow going up Loughrigg (he wasn’t). Every time I bobbed in front for a minute he offered me the route - “turn right at the wall but don’t go through the gate” etc. but I never need the advice as he claws me back each time. Towards the final mile I manage to put some distance in and he shouts to me to “take a right, then over the footbridge and down the road to finish”.
He’s a v60 (the category which he won), so has little to prove against some bumbling 35m, but it just struck me that it was a lovely bit of sportsmanship - he could have easily let me flounder, go wrong, or heaven forfend actually attempt to navigate for myself, but instead just handed over his inside info and let me get ahead. Maybe I’m just a big soft idiot, but it really made me think about the great spirit carried in these races, and how lucky we are to get to enjoy them.
He also climbed Loughrigg while basically giving a sales pitch for the yet unreleased Ron Hill fell shoes 🤣. Tony Bolton, you’re a legend.