Pendle Way on a Midsummer’s Night
45 miles, 6000 ft of ascent| ROSE RUNS
My friend Caroline left a comment on Strava: “rock up and do 20 miles, why don’t you?”| ROSE RUNS
Recce or reccy. From “reconnaissance,” from the French “reconnaitre,” to recognise. Somehow to recognise in English has become to scout or scope out, and a recce or reccy is familiar to any soldier but also to any fell runner because when there are sometimes no paths, and route choice is a free-for-all, a recce of the race route is a prudent thing to do.| ROSE RUNS
It’s nearly summer. Never mind that I had the heating on three times last week, and one night I nearly put the gas fire on too. Never mind that I got drenched while walking to the bus station on Saturday. I know it’s nearly summer for a few reasons: the menopause, the gift that keeps on giving, has now seen fit to give me hay fever, so I arrive at my studio after a two mile cycle ride streaming and itching and cursing nature even more than stupid drivers who cut me up at least once a comm...| ROSE RUNS
This was my third year of running Heptonstall Fell Race. The first year it rained all the way round. The second year I got lost. And here I am again on the cobblestones, listening to a kindly vicar say actually very sensible Christian things (I am an atheist but think there is a lot of sense in the Bible). He said he had tried to find quotes appropriate to what we were about to do, so he wished us perserverance, and also — though I forget the exact phrasing — to go forth and find fellowsh...| ROSE RUNS
There are many Dodds. Watson’s, Great, Little, Stybarrow. I know their names because I learned them, and I learned them because getting them in the right order seemed necessary, when my nerves were skyrocketing in the days before the race. I had entered us — me and FRB — just after the Three Peaks, in a fit of ambition. Of course I then got a cold, something that apparently happens after you do something like running for 5 and a half hours up and down three peaks without giving your bod...| ROSE RUNS
You’ll be sick of me writing about this race by now. I’ve done it five times, by my count (which is probably off), and I will be doing it again, because it is so astonishingly beautiful. And because the race route serves my skills perfectly: five miles to the top of the Nick, then four miles mostly downhill. So as long as I do OK getting up, I will usually win places going down and as I only ever then lose places if a downhill is followed by a climb, I should be able to keep them. Not tha...| ROSE RUNS
