Dalehead Fell Race

18th September 2011

Photos | Activity on Garmin Connect

I always like to do Dalehead Fell Race the day after Three Shires, despite feeling a bit wrecked. Dalehead is a far more low key event, and this year had only 24 runners compared with 288 yesterday at Three Shires.

The race starts with a stony farm track leading to a humpback bridge, to avoid the usual river crossing due to the river being in spate.  I reached the summit in 39 minutes, which I'm sure is my slowest ever, and realised it would be difficult to get under the hour.  I battered down the Borrowdale descent, and caught a Keswick runner at the fence crossing above the quarry. For a change I decided to go through the quarry, which was probably a reasonable plan apart from I made a stupid mistake by not following the high path out of the quarry to pick up the grassy descent. Instead I dropped down to the horrible greasy rocky path of the ascent route, which is much trickier underfoot.

Anyhow, there was nobody close to me on the run in, which was longer than usual with the flagged route via the bridge, so I finished in 7th place in about 1:00:46, which is by far my slowest time at Dalehead. But it was nice low key event and good to chat with Miles Jessop, Pete Brittleton and Pez Bullen after the race.