From Dan McKeown…

We had a gleesome threesome of Harriers at the Sedbergh Hills fell race on Sunday: Paul Carman had roped me into doing it because the race was short of numbers and in danger of cancellation, and we also had some bloke called Jack Wood in the car who was last year’s champion or something.

It was the 46th edition of the race, which takes runners out into the hills north of Sedbergh on a 14(ish) mile circuit with 6000ft of climbing and just about every kind of surface underfoot you can think of.

We’d had a few emails from the organiser in the lead-up to the race: variations on the subject line of “You’re Going to Be Very Warm and Thirsty” and advising us that we make our peace with drinking out of streams if we hoped to stay the course, but we were undaunted. Jack thought he had to go in any case, in order to return the trophy from last year. Upon arrival, it turned out they give out a new trophy each year.

To ensure his trip was not wasted, Jack then splashed quite a bit of money on some new waterproof trousers from the Pete Bland van in order to meet kit regs. Shortly afterwards, he found out that waterproof trousers were not required for the race.

Not a great start for the big man: he was probably going to have to win and set a new course record in order to break even.

We set off on steep but fairly runnable paths up to Arant Haw and Jack was to the fore, dibbing first at checkpoint one. The course then breaks northwest, descending to a stream crossing and up to CP2 on a smaller hill, before contouring northward along the fells, with runnable vehicle track giving way to ankle-twisting cambered tightrope trod. CP3 is a nondescript stream crossing, after which you pick your way east through three cols to another stream checkpoint before heading south to the finish via The Calf and Winder tops.

Sadly for Jack’s finances, he hit difficulties after The Calf and fell out of podium contention, still managing to amble home in a very respectable 11th place out of 90 finishers on the day. Paul strolled past me on the ascent after the first stream checkpoint and disappeared over the cols to finish 45th.

After blowing my knee out at the Stanbury Splash and a consequent DNF at the Three Peaks, I was expecting a tough day and, in that respect at least, I wasn’t disappointed: I blundered home almost an hour after Jack in 59th place. I did have the marginal satisfaction of having bested him on the section from the final checkpoint to the finish, but it came at a cost: in sliding down the hill on my bum, I’d burnt a hole in my best shorts.

(Happy to report that Jack didn’t go home empty-handed: in the most pyrrhic of victories, he won a bottle of air fryer cleaner in the spot prizes.)

I shall end this report with an earnest plea to everyone who’s read this far to get out and support races like this. It was within a hair’s breadth of cancellation at one point for want of entrants, and it would be a crying shame to lose established races out in the beautiful fells. Plus, stream water doesn’t taste that bad.

Sedbergh Hills Fell Race results (90 finishers)

11 Jack Wood 2:38:34 (* will now be able to clean his parents’ air fryer)

45 Paul Carman 3:21:25

59 Dan McKeown 3:37:37