Langdale Fell Race 2010
October 11th, 2009 by Andy NicollYesterday was Langdale Fell Race - 14 miles 4000 feet of ascent.
This is one of my favourite lakeland races as it takes in some awesome scenery and is a very challenging course both from a technical and a navigation point of view.
This year Langdale was an English Championship race so a big field of around 400 athletes were on the start line.
It starts at the famous climbers’ pub The Old Dungeon Ghyll or the ODG as it’s affectionately known and following a half mile run along a track the first serious climb of the day takes you up to Stickle Tarn and then upwards and onwards to Thunacar Knot. At this point I caught and passed my pal Andy Jebb who has been beating me recently so I knew either he was having a bad one or I was having a good one - as it turned out I think it was a little combination of the two.
After scrambling across Black Craggs it’s another boggy blast down to Angle Tarn before a long climb up to Esk Hause shelter. At this point I had another friend and long time fell sparring partner Jason Stevens of Calder Valley in sight. He ran really strongly up the track from Angle Tarn and pulled out around 150 meters on me but as I started to tackle the contour section to Bow Fell I managed to catch him.
We stayed together over Bow and we both knew we were in for a good race. Unfortunately, although I’ve now done Langdale 3 times, I’m struggling to get a few of the sections programmed into my mental sat-nav and as we made our way over to Crinkle Craggs I said to Jason ‘do you know the route’ - ‘haven’t a clue’ was the reply so it was a case of peering into the mist to try and spot the guys in front whilst at the same time trying to dance across the jagged rocks that make up so much of this course.
Thankfully we managed to pick a good line over to Crinkle and again topped out together. Just off the summit of Crinkle is one of the most famous features of any fell race - ‘The Bad Step’ this is a rock step that needs to be back climbed as it’s approx. 10 feet verticle. We all negotiated it safely but here again I was a bit unsure of the best line.
Rather than disappearing into the mist I waited for another chap from Clayton-Le-Moors harriers who took us on a good line round to the main track and from here I knew the route so set off at a good pace down to the final climb over Pike of Blisco.
I led our team of four down the track never looking behind me and only later did I find out that Jason had taken a mighty fall and very badly gashed his knee and hand on the sharp rocks on the track.
I climbed Pike-O reasonably strongly and was glad to see ‘Team Jebb’ half way up with a drink for the Bingley team.
After the summit my navigation problems came to the fore again. Last year I got a cracking line off here and whizzed down to the finish. I was pretty sure I could remember where to go but this thought quickly vanished as I lost sight of any stud marks in the mud and found myself on a track with a solitary walker. He confirmed my suspicions that I was way off line so I had to throw a left and pick my way back across the fell to pick up the track. I could now see the guys that had summited just before me way below me on the track so set off after them as fast as I could. Then just to add insult to injury I took another wrong line that led me to the top of a cliff face which again meant me cutting back against the direction of travel to pick up the right track - I think I need to recce this bit!!!
Eventually I found my way down and following a mad dash through the campsite and along the road crossed the line in 2 hours 30 mins and 51 seconds. This is a great time for me being 5 minutes quicker than last year but I would have liked to have dipped under 2-30 and think I would have done had I not taken the scenic tour off Pike-O.
The crowning glory of this race is the hot Cornish Pasty and pint of Theakstons XB that’s waiting for you at the finish - what a way to end a hard day in the hills….
