The final details aren’t in yet, but a staggering 21 Poly members turned up for the High Cup Nick fell race, the first championship counter of the season. The previous best was 12 at Brough Law a couple of years ago. It was good to see a few new faces and a return to the fells for one or two old stalwarts.

High Cup Nick is quite an easy race as Fell races go,  but it is early in the season and conditions can be testing. This year though,  apart from a brisk wind and a few patches of ice on the top, conditions were superb. An incredible 420 runners took part, almost double the usual numbers.

There were several gents making their polyfeller debut and one of them,  Paul West was the first home, proof if any were needed, that fell running is little more a walk in the parkrun.  Westie just shaded out perennial polyfeller Chris Rowe for second place with Graham Lewis-Dale third home. Others participating were Ivor Potter, Paul Dolphin, Trevor Wakenshaw, Barry Young, Michael Harvey, Will Powis, Mark Smith, Richard Hanley, Rich Fawcett and last but least, yours truly, David Johnson. I apologise slightly to anyone I’ve missed out and not given a name check here.

Eight ladies took part and the first three were Katherine Davis,  Helen Heaney and Jenny Simpson, also present were Kerry Swindon, Suzanne Lewis-Dale,  Alison Smith, Rachel Inman and Mel George.

As I’ve  already said, the club turnout was amazing, so let’s see if we can keep the momentum going at Carrock Fell on Sunday March 18th and Brough Law on Sunday 25th. This year the latter is also the NEMAA fell race so there’ll be a plethora of gongs available to the more mature “athlete”. Oh and this year there will be championship prizes for the runners up as well as the winners.

 

Author: David Guy-Johnson