From Peter Shelley…
The route: – 35km taking in roads, tracks, footpaths, bridleways, fields, woods and exposed moorland. Something for everyone to love and hate!
Surfaces – the variety of surfaces presents you with one of many kit dilemmas: shoes that are comfortable through suburban Menston will have your feet slipping sideways and backwards on the Chevin climb.
Kit – in addition to the shoe dilemma, what to wear? Y fronts only with a view to getting round quickly, or the full walker’s kit including camping stove and bivvy bag?
Fuelling – there are several checkpoints offering food and drink which work well particularly if you like jelly babies and flapjack. When I asked the good people at Burley Woodhead for something salty to combat the cramp I was beginning to feel, I came away with about a kilo of peanuts in cupped hands.
Toilet – to stop or not to stop? You could go full dehydration and dispense with it, or do the right thing, drink plenty and pick your moment and place. Personally I go behind a tree just off Millenium Way to the right after ‘Ilkley Bottom’. Too much detail? Apologies.
The Chevin Climb – yes, that climb. Steep, slippery and placed for maximum inconvenience and discomfort at km31-32 of the route when you’ve already climbed 800m over Baildon and Rombalds Moors.
Weather – you pre-enter this popular event in the autumn thinking ‘how bad can it be?’. Well, it’s in February, so quite bad as it happens, particularly if you are not an elite runner who makes it back to the scout hut by midday for your pie and peas. The forecast deteriorated daily in the week preceding the event, and the rain and 40mph winds crept forwardsin the day. By the flagstones at Lanshaw Lad we were running in slow motion into a powerful headwind. A bit of team-work came in handy if you could find someone to rotate with Tour de France style.
Headwind became tailwind at Piper’s Crag to blow us east. A series of unlikely, exciting and possibly unwise segment times followed on tired legs. Familiar obstacles and terrain approached at unfamiliar speed. As the route veered south-east, care was needed to avoid being blown down the slope to Hangingstone Road by a sudden gust.
Coordination – running in the wind was bad enough, but anything involving physical or mental coordination like pace calculations, fiddling with kit, zips or food became a challenge from 10k in. Fingers and eyes refused to participate in the self-clip exercise at the unmanned checkpoints.
Navigation – Even on home turf like Ilkley Moor, it helps to know exactly where you are going. It’s easy to take a wrong turn in Burley or Menston and end up in someone’s vegetable patch. The number of participants meant that, unless you were Tom van Rossum (2hrs 50mins – what?!), it was possible to follow other people for much of the route, although it’s worth choosing who you follow carefully in case they are lost too.
Descending – there are a few off-road downhill sections to enjoy, but when deploying the ‘brakes off, brain off’ technique, fell runners must beware gathering road runners around their ankles.
Pacing – 6 min average km pace will get you round in 3hrs 30mins, for what it’s worth. Unfortunately none of the kilometers in this event are average, and mental arithmetic is out, at least for me, (see ‘Co-ordination’), so I stuck to my other measure of 145-165bpm heart rate, which got me round in 3hrs 49m, ten mins slower than a previous attempt in 2019 in better conditions. Garmin declared it ‘5.0-Over-Reaching’, which sounds about right.
(1 2:49:59 Tom van Rossum, Valley Striders)
12 3:06:05 Dave Robson
17 3:09:44 Nick Kealey
21 3:19:31 Dan McKeown
23 3:20:33 Kate Archer 1st F
33 3:30:48 Justin Pierce
37 3:35:33 Andrew Overend
44 3:40:05 Colin Williams 3rd M50
51 3:43:45 John Hayes
56 3:45:31 Ann-Kristin Marsham
72 3:49:23 Peter Shelley
89 3:59:05 Catherine Charlton
95 4:03:35 Duncan Cooper
119 4:11:32 John Pickering
120 4:12:52 Alison Weston
133 4:17:24 Mary Fairclough
135 4:18:09 Peter Roll
138 4:18:09 Michael Ho
142 4:23:52 Jill Ezard
150 4:30:12 Paul Disney
186 4:48:57 Tom Worboys
207 5:01:26 Matt Tupling
217 5:04:40 Paul Stephens
230 5:13:50 Stephanie Fox
231 5:13:50 Teresa Brooks
232 5:13:51 Petra Bijsterveld
269 6:05:49 Helen Doyle
386 finished