Bournville Harriers: Birmingham's only Flora London Marathon Partner Club! : Trail and Fell Running

Rodney's Pillar Fell Race 2008
19 Jun 2008 22:58

Rodney’s Pillar is named after a statue of Lord Rodney (I don’t know either, but it has nothing to do with Fools & Horses) who looks down mockingly at anyone stupid enough to run up the hill he sits on. It was my first Fell Race and the organisation was so relaxed I wondered if Graeme and myself had inadvertently turned up to a family barbecue. However things soon fell (!) into place and I would commend the organisers for a well marshalled course and good event.

The race itself is simple - two miles up the hill, two miles down. This belies the quad-burning agony of the twenty minutes of solid ascending and the sheer terror of five minutes descent. I settled into the leading pack for the first half of the hill, and then pushed on to take the lead, feeling good. Another guy went with me, then passed me, and I tried to hang on to his coat-tails which worked until we reached the top. As he reached the top he was 20 metres ahead of me, as I reached the top he was out of sight! This was my induction to downhill running and in about 10 seconds I had lost 100 metres to him.

I read a Fell Running book recently (Feet in the Clouds by Richard Askwith-try it), which persuaded me that trying this form of running would be good fun. It told the story of one of the legends of Fell who had run a sub-three minute mile…all downhill. After half of the downhill section on this race I was convinced my spine had compressed so much I was now a pygmy and most of the landscape was a blur from a combination of watering eyes and speed. You are running so quickly you can only focus on the very next step, which means you don’t notice impending corners, and your eyes are blurry from the wind so you can’t see where to step anyway. All of this on a mixture of grass, mud, roots, gravel and the odd pothole! However I reached the bottom less than thirty seconds behind my nemesis so I felt I’d done OK. The only downside to the race is that two days later I still can’t walk. Graeme had predicted he would take three-quarters of an hour, but he was far better finishing in 32:35; not bad for his third race in five days! He is now off to run/walk in the Italian mountains for four days, so this was his warm-up.

Despite the fact it hurts lots and is scary as hell, I am hoping to run again next Wednesday in the same series, so let me know if you fancy joining me and Graeme.