Captain Cook’s Report
263 runners lined up outside the Royal Oak to shake off the Christmas cobwebs and nearly 10% of the field were NYMAC runners with 21 men and 5 women doing the club proud. Paul Lowe was our highest place runner finishing second overall and in doing so took a share of the early lead in the NYMAC 2014 fell championship along with Eddie Meehan who also took 2nd in his age category. Keeping it in the family Claire Lowe was our first female runner home and along with Caroline Graham and Lucy Clough led the ladies to first in the team prize, with the men claiming fifth.
Of course when you’re running the event you only see a small part of the race and have to interpret the bigger picture from the results, photos and what others tell you. On this course I reckon that you can only see about 40 seconds or so up front and nothing behind, apart from at the turn at the monument. I’ll will try to bring the 40 seconds that I could see of the race to life where I can though. I never really saw Paul Lowe, not surprising given the speed he goes and the speed I don’t. Up ahead I did catch a brief glimpse of Kev McLoughlin on his return following a lay off, it’s was good to see him back running, but I didn’t see him for long because soon he was more than 40 seconds ahead and out of sight. As I made my way up past the farm I could see Jeff Belt and Jon Skidmore who were about 10 seconds or so ahead and Paul McGough and Nick Simmons were running alongside me. As a non fell running Fell Manager for most of the last year it was good to have some runners I knew to work off as I was feeling a bit out of sorts to be honest, even stumbling on a couple of occasions as soon as the track veered right and got rougher as it started to head up towards the wood. By this point Jeff had fallen back a bit after a strong start and Jon didn’t seem to be enjoying it too much as he mumbled something to the effect of ‘wish I’d done the Parkrun instead’ as I went past him. Nick was going strongly though and passed me on the steep section through the woods where it takes a lot of effort just to keep moving forward. I was trying to run within myself on the ascent but I decided to go with him and try to keep in touch on the descent if I could without going too much into the red.
In terms of time the monument comes at a little more than halfway, but of course you run down at about twice the speed you go up, so you have the bulk of the distance still to go. Normally I would moan about this race and its lack of technical descent, I remember once saying it was just a road race with a bit of mud. That was partly tongue in cheek but I have never done that well in this event and always feel vulnerable to the roadies so I needed to think of a suitable excuse! Today though coming back from an injury I was glad of the easy downhills. From the monument it’s a very fast race with only a short uphill section of tarmac to slow you down before the section through the fields at the end. Try as I might I though I couldn’t seem to get within 20 metres of Nick who was still running really smoothly. As there was no one immediately behind I was just about to settle for what I had when I seemed to close a little. Approaching a gate I was just about on him when he took me by surprise and vaulted it. An impressive move, I wasn’t feeling so confident and as a result was back to square one. Again I gradually drew him in on the easy lower slopes and just managed to edge past about 400 metres before the finish, I hoped he would give up the ghost but no such luck and he rightly made me work all the way to the line and we nearly caught the runner in front in the process. A good battle and for me finally light at the end of the tunnel.
Full results are on the Esk Valley site but NYMAC runners are listed below:
2nd Paul Lowe 34.00
26th Kev McLoughlin 37.29
40th Paul McLean 38.36 (not listed as NYMAC but I think Paul has joined)
41st Paul Christon 38.39
42nd Nick Simmons 38.45
49th Jonathan Skidmore 39.39
54th Paul McGough 40.13
59th Jeff Belt 40.51
60th Paul Godley 40.53
75th Gary Burnip 42.03
88th Ian Hodgson 42.55
94th Julian Barwick 43.06
140th Claire Lowe 46.05
144th Caroline Graham 46.12
148th Chris Wright 46.23
152nd Eddie Meehan 46.34
154th Ian Higgins 46.47
155th Mark Behrens 46.54
167th Lucy Clough 47.57
174th Di Jobson 48.24
192nd Phil Hughes-N’bro 49.54
194th Bill Pennell 50.02
207th Doug Welsh 50.53
222nd Bob Howe 52.47
232nd Helen Duggleby 55.06
236th Richie Clarke 56.22
Paul Christon