On the 4th of July I woke up and had planned to go and do a hill rep session. However I was very tired and didn’t really feel in the mood for it so I made the short trip to Heptonstall to do the Heptonstall fell race. A very different race in the sense that the descent comes first before a climb up to high brown knowl. You then drop back into the valley and finish with a climb upto the finish line. I set off out of Heptonstall at a good pace. I wanted to get a gap before the descent as I was conscious I would get time taken out of me dropping down to Hardcastle crags. When we reached the bottom a group had caught me but I was still leading. We started to climb and I started to pull away. I knew I could work had on the climb as it was roughly a 2 mile climb to the summit. Just before the summit I had a look around and I had managed to build up a nice lead. We turned at the top and I started to lose the path. I ended up running too far right and ending up in the middle of a herd of cows. This probably lost me about 20 / 30 seconds. However I still had a gap and strode out down the hill. When I reached the bottom I felt ok. I got into a rhythm on the final climb and just stuck to a pace I could maintain. Upon reaching the finish I was really pleased with my time. I ran 50.57 which was 1.20 outside Karl Greys record. I finished nearly 3 minutes ahead of 2nd place. Overall I was happy with the race as I hadn’t really done anything more than 3 miles in training.
Photo courtesy of Woodentops (Dave and Elieen Woodhead)