From John Hayes…
At some point, Jane McCarthy and Jann Smith must have decided there was no better way to celebrate their birthdays than team up and enter this fabulous two-day mountain marathon. They were rewarded with a prize for 3rd vets and came in as 4th fastest females and 19th overall in the Long Score event Not to be left out, Paul Carman came along to the Lakes too and got up at 3am to support a 20 mile leg of the Joss Naylor Challenge. He arrived back on Saturday morning at about the same time as Sarah and I were heading out to do day one of the Short Score course. Sarah teamed up and walked round with her sister and it was lovely that various other members of her family entered too. I ran solo. Now, there are mixed opinions about that race strategy. Some people think that it is beneficial to run as a team, bouncing route choice ideas off each other and correcting the other’s navigational errors. The counter view is there is no one to debate with and if you make a navigational error, no one will ever know (unless they obsessively scrutinise your Strava trace). Anyway, I enjoyed my solitude and came in 15th overall, 8th male and 6th vet. This meant I didn’t make it onto the podium like Jane and Jann. But I made up for this by eating large quantities of their birthday cakes.