Mount Famine

This is Horatio. Horatio is a magnificent brute, and we’ll come to him later.

Mount Famine (full name the Mark Boulton Memorial Mount Famine race) is the fanciest race of the three, pre-entry only and £9. For that you get a nice stroll through the village, an air horn start and a load of Haribo at the finish line. If you put a couple of quid extra in the bucket back at the Scout Hut you also get to choose from a fine selection of cakes and a notably excellent cup of tea.

All of that hides the fact that it’s an absolute brute, and begs the question of why I ran it for the third time in a row. You tell me.

I picked up Laura Rangeley, since her car was in the Lakes with Jim (doing Old County Tops, a race I can barely comprehend). We got our numbers, checked out the cakes for later and bumped into Ian Stinson, another returning Strider. Then it was a ten-minute walk to the start, which is on a trail but not along a trail. Instead it’s a make-your-own-path clamber up a tall wooded (and brambled) banking, and I’d gone for my old Walsh’s partly for that reason, figuring they’d be good for the climb but not too Mudclaw-y on the dry ground.

Once you’re up the banking, the next couple of k, while not wholly runnable, isn’t too bad. There’s another steep (but not wooded) banking, before a hardish climb up to Mount Famine (Ethel 2) and a small down-and-up to South Head (Ethel 3), the high point (in many ways) of the race. That’s where the fun starts/stops.

All of a sudden you’re belting down a 30% gradient into the bottom of an unfeasibly deep valley called Dimpus Clough, trying not to get distracted by the pretty cottongrass when you should be watching your feet. When you finally hit the bottom, you’ve about 100 yards to get your breath back before you cross a little stream and have to climb back up to Mount Famine, about 140m vertically in 500m horizontal, on grass. I did not excel here. My calves were not having it. As I lost sight of Ian ahead of me, Graham Barnes came trotting past with a friendly greeting and disappeared up the hill.

After a calf stretch and a stern talking to at the top, I bucked my ideas up for the run back down the hill, via a fall on my arse on the second banking. Luckily, you don’t have to go back down the start, but instead you get the mixed blessing of about a mile on a bridle path/road, to the finish in the village playground. I managed to turn my ankle for good measure, but managed something approaching a sprint finish, for which I rewarded myself by fishing the cola bottles out of the tub of Haribo.

Laura turned up not long after, having made friends with another V70, the marvellously named Ronald Rees.

This one was won by Tom Owens (Lochaber AC) in 44:35 and Katie Walshaw (Holmfirth Harriers) in 53:24. I finished 55th again, this time out of 72, in 1:14:09. I was faster than last year but still slower than the year I fell over twice and got cramp. Graham Barnes came 53rd, in 1:11:43.

As for Horatio, as we headed back for a post-race picnic (courtesy of Laura), the charmingly named Calico Bazaar caught our eye, with its window full of assorted Things. Among the stuffed birds, vintage dictionaries and madeleine tins, Horatio stood/leapt proud. And perhaps after doing what Laura referred to as her daftest race yet, a daft stag (don’t tell him I said that) was the perfect finishing touch.

Striders result