From Andrew Merrick…

After the exploits of Ritchie and Petra, I feel rather unworthy writing about a run that used less than a fifth of their route…..

As a result of a number of circumstances, I found myself signed up for the Dales Traverse in early April, and running it with my daughter Sophie which was rather a change to the original programme.  

Neither of us had managed much training, but we both decided we were up for the adventure so headed off early on a sunny Sunday morning to the start at Kirkby Stephen courtesy of a kind friend.

My experience of Ourea is that they are well organised and care about runner safety so it was no great surprise that they were very focused on whether we had sufficient warm layers when we got to the head of the registration queue, our kit as many runners’ in a bag for life for ease of access…. We had arrived just after the coaches ferrying participants from the finish at Richmond so a bit of a wait in the chilly school playground before we got to discuss layers.

Whilst waiting, Ritchie wandered across to say hi, looking as if he had also travelled by coach to get to Kirkby Stephen from St Bees ….. Petra also very kindly had found a mid-race moment to wish us luck.

Our chauffeur had to endure some high quality pre race faffing before Soph and I were ready for our adventure – 2 long sleeve layers a hat and buff in my case, Soph had gone early with the waterproof.  

It did warm up a bit as we set off on the longest climb of the race up to Nine Standards at which point we were 25 mins or so inside the notional cut-off and still hadn’t felt the need to de-layer.

Our route across the next section was made slightly easier by a number of newly arrived flags, although it was boggy enough in parts for one runner to be separated from his trail shoe at one point and had to go back into the bog to dig it out…

As we descended gradually towards the centre of England or at least the crossing point of the Pennine Way and the Coast to Coast just outside Keld, I had decided I was warm enough in a reasonably fresh easterly to remove my hat and buff – my two long-sleeved layers remained on for the rest of the race.

It is a lovely section of the Northern Traverse route, made even more beautiful by the glorious weather, the slight challenge being that the only check point is 2/3 of the way into the race (ca. 22 miles) at Reeth, with no obvious refuelling point en route prior to then. Soph had played safe with a bladder, but given the chilly weather I found a litre of Tailwind was plenty.

After Keld, there are two more decent climbs, in and out of the lead mines, prior to which we bade the Yorkshire Shepherdess good morning (the level of make-up was a clue) as we jogged past. Both climbs required some effort and the descent in between required a level of concentration (only one fall for the record). We stuck with the no stopping on the hills plan and overtook a few people en route to Reeth, where suddenly I seemed to be leading about 10 of us towards the Dales Bike Centre – a highly recommended cafe. We adopted the Petra plan here and just had some soup and a loo stop and a quick call with Soph’s sister who was happy that we would be in Richmond before it was dark – I suggested 6:30 but Chloe seemed to think 6pm was a better plan….

We cracked on, passing the almost aptly named village of Marrick before we started our final climb (most of the climbing is done by the time you get to Reeth) and the last 10 miles of our adventure. We continued to make progress and overtook a few more people including some full NTers using a combination of marching and jogging on the flats and downhills, until we could see the welcome sight of Richmond in the distance.  The final mile or so is all gradually downhill on road, we could see a gang of 4 in the distance ahead of us which encouraged us to jog to keep them in sight; I was also conscious it was quite close to 6pm so we had a further incentive. Happily, the finish at the football ground (unlike the previously used rugby ground) is very central and involved limited navigation (again unlike the previous route) so we were able to meet the 6pm challenge and I almost immediately literally bumped into a runner who Petra and I had run for a while last year before I bravely bailed at Shap. She was due to do the full NT again this year, but a calf injury meant she had kindly volunteered to marshall instead.

We were looked after at the finish before having a family meal and compulsory beer in Richmond.

It was lovely to do a race with Soph, and we were both happy to finish in just under 8 hours despite the lack of training, aided by a scenic route and beautiful weather.  A lovely day out, the positioning of the checkpoint being the only (unavoidable) imperfection.