FRA Fell Relays – Kettlewell
October 20th, 2011 by Andy NicollThe FRA fell relays are hosted by a different club each year and in 2011 it was the turn of my club Bingley Harriers to stage the prestigious event.
We found out 2 years ago that we’d been selected to stage the race and since that time my clubmate Dave Weatherhead has worked tirelessly to pull together what proved to be one of the best days of fell racing the UK has ever witnessed.
He’s not revealed his secret but somehow he even managed to fix the weather and perfect blue skies and warm sunshine bathed the start and finish field from first light until darness fell.
Almost 200 teams of 6 runners from all around the British Isles competed for the coveted title of British Fell Relay Champions and after 4 legs of gruelling ups and downs Dark Peak took the men’s title and the mighty Bingley Harriers lifted the womens trophy.
I played a small part in proceedings running with Bingley’s president Martin Peace in the navigation leg for Bingley over 40s (AKA old giffers) team.
After a promising opening leg, the pair before us on the second leg had a difficult time with one of them really struggling to get to grips with the course. This effectively took all the pressure of Martin and I but we still headed out to make some amends and pick back as many places as we could. In the end we ran 23rd fastest on our leg and made up 41 places on the way which we were quite pleased with.
The story of the day was our ladies team who ran strongly over the first three legs and handed over to Mary Wilkinson our anchor leg in 3rd place. Mary was eight minutes behind as she hit the hill on a course that was only 5 miles long. Everyone (except Mary) thought the race was run and at best we might sneak 2nd, but after a simply stunning run Mary appeared in the finish field as 1st lady and brought the trophy back to Bingley!
A few too many celebratory drinks in Kettlewell afterwards led to a rather groggy feeling in my head as I awoke on Sunday morning to the sound of heavy rain on the event marquee roof. Those of us that had camped trudged back home via the little chef in Skipton with fantastic memories of a truly brilliant event.
