DARK PEAK NEWS Winter 2012 - Dark Peak Fell Runners

Dark Peak News Winter 2012 page 31‘southerners’ beating those Lakelandersat their own Borrowdale race, which theyalways win, as the next English Champsevent? Well, I thought it might be possible,and again with fantastic team packing fromLloyd second (2hrs 51mins 11), Oli eighth(just over 3hrs), Rhys ninth (3hrs 3mins)and Rob Baker tenth (3hrs 10mins), withNeil seventeenth (3hrs 15mins) we managedto do it! Also John Hunt in twenty fourthcontributed by beating Scoffer, and scoredhighly for the V40 team. Mick Robinson justsqueezed in to get some senior champs pointsfinishing forty-eighth. Good efforts too fromGlen Borrell and Dave Sykes racing eachother to just get under four hours, finishingeighty-seventh and eighty-eighth.The excitement in the English Champswas now building. With us and Borrowdaleboth having won two and been second inthe other two, we were level on points. Wehad a chance for the trophy but needed greatteam performances at Weasdale and Kielder.So with a car load from Sheffield, a flightfrom the Isle of Man and a short trip acrossCumbria, Dark Peakers assembled on theedge of the Howgills for Weasdale fell race,(or should it really be called Mud Splash?!There’s a good video of the river and marshcrossing on YouTube apparently). Admittedlyit’s not a rocky route with long climbs likeBorrowdale but this suited us well, as againwe had close racing between the team.Following Lloyd in sixth, I finished a minutebehind in eighth, then Rob Baker in ninthand Rhys tenth, all within 45 seconds. OliJohnson finished the team score coming intwenty-second, just trying to keep movingalong the flatter run in to stay ahead of PeteHodges, twenty-fourth. In his first race ina Dark Peak vest, Steve Pyke enjoyed theshorter race to finish twenty-seventh, lessthan 25secs ahead of Jon Morgan (thirtyfifth),who himself was only 10secs aheadof a fast finishing Mick Stenton. Plus JohnHunt only 12 seconds later in thirty-seventh.Great efforts for V40 points, and after a quickcalculation the very exciting news that thesenior men had beaten Borrowdale.So after five varied races the simple factwas that if we could win the newly instigatedKielder Blast race in September, DarkPeak senior men would be English teamchampions. A shoot-out with Borrowdale!The course looked interesting and a couplewere even salivating at the thought of runningthrough woods! But let’s just say trying towork the route out from the multiple loopsshown on the course map was challenging. Iknew we had a great chance, but we neededour best team. Unfortunately, for unavoidablereasons, we weren’t quite at full strength.With a top Borrowdale team present it wasgoing to be tough, but we’ve never ducked achallenge.The course was fun. Very varied fromhard fast trails, woods and up across boggymoorland. Yet again Dark Peakers werepushing each other around, (Rhys literallygrunting I wasn’t moving fast enough for himapproaching the top!). In the end I was eighth,Rhys 16 seconds back in tenth, and Oli onlysix seconds behind. Neil ran hard to finisheighteenth and Jon Morgan was last counterin twenty-fourth. I should also say that theV50 team turned out in force here and wontheir category. Unfortunately the senior teamwere pipped to second by Borrowdale. A tie!We had each won three and finished secondin three, so it was over to the FRA statisticianto decide the winner based on aggregatescore, (adding up the placing in the countingrace for the five runners in each scoring team- so each runner’s place really did count).After careful checking they announced thatBorrowdale had won the English Champs byfour places. Yes, only four PLACES! Is thisthe closest team championship result ever? Asan example, if I’d been able to run 26 secondsfaster at Lads Leap we would have won. I’m