This time last year, I hadn't been a member of Bowland Fell Runners for very long and I was eager to get involved in all aspects of the club: I spotted a call for volunteers to help out at the Bleasdale Circle Fell Race (a club race) and so I put my name down. It was my first experience of volunteering at a fell race and I thoroughly enjoyed helping out in the kitchen and meeting other members of the club at the same time... as it turned out, there was a substantial snow shower mid-morning which transformed the hall and course into a winter wonderland (at least for those of us not running the race)... it was quite special!
This year, we didn't get any snow... just plenty of low cloud and strong winds! I was assigned marshalling duties at the Paddy's Pole checkpoint: the highest point on the five mile course where it would likely be very cold with a significant wind-chill factor. I was teamed up with another club member, Roy, who is also a member of the Bowland Pennine Mountain Rescue Team, Roy is ace, he's especially good at pointing and all the other mountain rescue team members were really lovely!
We gave ourselves an hour and a half to hike our way up to Paddy's Pole from Bleasdale Village Hall... and other than stopping for a couple of photos, it took us every minute we had (and a fair bit of grunting on the final approach) to reach the summit in time. To put things into perspective, the lead runner (and winner of the race), Ellis Bland reached the summit in a little over nineteen minutes!
It was awesome to be able to encourage the runners as they passed through the checkpoint... I saw many familiar faces and I high-fived as many of the runners as I could. Thanks for the hug, Katie! After we checked the last of the 106 runners through, we made our way off the summit collecting the course markers as we went.
We had dropped down about 260 metres when the radio sprang into life, two runners were unaccounted for: they hadn't made it to the Parlick checkpoint and it was presumed they'd headed down off the ridge line early. We made our way to a better vantage point where we were able to get a reasonably good view of the slopes running down off the ridge line but could not spot anyone making their way down. We waited, scanning the landscape for any movement for about forty-five minutes before race HQ notified us that all runners were accounted for... we could finally head back to the hall!
All in all, it was a great experience... a day well spent in wonderful company and I had a gentle run home afterwards.
I also learned that when someone is describing the different types of cake left at the cake stall and they announce, pointing to what is clearly the very last piece of lemon drizzle cake, "And that's my lemon drizzle cake...", I learned that that, is in fact, not always a subtle recommendation...
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