Surprises and miscalculations in the Duddon Valley

A beautiful day in the Duddon Valley (not many people know about this wonderful place in the Lakes) and as expected the bluebells were out enjoying the sunshine.

As I drove over Wrynose Pass and down into the valley, I looked at the peaks (especially Little Stand) and knew right then that I wasn't going to attempt the full one today.

There were 31 of us lined up for the short one: 9 miles and by my reckoning that would put me around 21-24th position given my usual performances.

I stayed light on my feet up the rocky road to the base of the first steep climb and managed to avoid being overtaken by anyone at all - that's a first! But once at the first checkpoint, halfway up Caw, I had a lot of pain in my lower back to the extent that I considered dropping out as one, two, three then four runners overtook me as we traced the wall along to checkpoint two.

Then the pain just went after about ten minutes and I started to feel better (not comfortable, just better). Without really trying I had overtaken the four runners, who at one point had 100 metres on me.

This lifted me a little and as I reached checkpoint three, I was determined to get up to Dow Crag without letting them catch me.

I took a quick fix on the compass to stop me wandering and not only did I keep the other runners behind me up the very steep, long climb but I could see two more in front of me (about a minute at the checkpoint).

I knew that it was good running from here (for those who don't mind rocky patches) so I aimed to open up the gap between me and the chasing pack.
The gaps were changing for the better as I headed for checkpoint four on White Pike and I could now see the two front runners struggling on the rocky areas. I thought if I could catch them before the final rocky descent off Caw I would be in with a real chance of taking them before the finish.

As I dropped off White Pike down the screes to the soft marshes below, we all came together from different routes, so now I didn't need to catch them, just keep up.

They were moving faster than I wanted to but I managed to tail them on a perfect trod all the way to the bottom of Caw, then it was game on. We all chose different routes to the top and I ended up with one in front and one behind me with only seconds between us.

I dropped off the top following for a while then started my gentle swerve right towards the long wall, over grassy and occasionally sharp rocky uneven ground as fast as I could. Eyes glued on the ground I knew I had to get to the stile (about halfway down) before either of them if I was to stand a chance through the bog and more rocks to the finish.

I found the wall too early which meant slipping in mud as I negotiated the tricky little crag but made it to the stile before them.

I followed the flags down towards the paddy fields and was expecting my feet to be sucked under at any moment, halting my long strides but I made it the stream crossing safely and tiptoed down the rocky field, and even more rocky road for a sprint finish.

I was surprised when looking back up the fields that the two runners were nowhere in sight and came in a good few minutes later.

They said they could see me flying down on their right side and thought I was on a footpath so they tried to track me but couldn't find a footpath...because there wasn't one!

Another surprise was that I had knocked two minutes from my PB on this race and the third surprise was when I found out that I came 11th out of the 31.

I savoured the moment of being in the top half of the field by eating Singapore Chowmein as I watched (for once) the other runners coming in.