Beacon Batch Fell Race, a pint of Doombar and a bag of chips

On a balmy midweek adventure Team Bath made a raid to the Mendips to try our luck in the Beacon Batch fell race.

It's never nice having to try super hard from the gun and with this 5mile course being the shortest by a good 8miles that I had ever put a race number on for, I knew it was going to be a right old lactic acid festival.

2.5miles up, 1 mile flat and then 1.5miles to drop like a stone to the start.



Nervous runnners anticipating the 300% heart rate spike
 

There had been some top Team Bath banter in the car with the insatiable Andy Mullett on the way over. With the threat of worsening piss taking on the way back, and forfeiting a pint and chips in the pub I decided I better put on a good showing.

The hard and fast and relatively short distance event that is Fell Racing is a predominantly Northern spot. This is because Northeners are generally hard. Fast as well. Yes and maybe short works too.

And once we were off it didn't fail to prove anything less than the body mutilating exercise I imagined it to be. Elbows are used in this event as bargaining tools to crowbar yourself into a marginally preferable water gunnel on the single track byway we started up. Views are not savoured; they are slobbered over. Descents are not a rest; you must fall down them.

We gathered in the TBAC troops at the finish line and gave a rousing cheer to our successes before toasting them further at the prize giving where I picked up a nice little bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon for my second placing. Tom took the much more topical prize of a football for his strong showing and 1st V60. New heights of inappropriateness were had on the return journey from this successful raid and it was late Tuesday night that we arrived home to fall asleep thinking about being proper fell runners; to one day compete  in such revered races as the Grasmere Senior Guides fell race where they run so fast downhill that they vault the dry stone walls.... Drifting off. Counting them as they come. One Northern hard man. Two Northern hard men....Three Northern hard men....Four............

BEACON BATCH FELL RACE 17 JUNE1 0:34:03 POTTER, Adam BrisOC JM
2 0:35:18 MAYNARD, Matthew TBAC SM
23 0:41:40 HUTCHISON, Tom TBAC V60
51 0:46:12 WATSON, Nick TBAC V50
60 0:48:00 MULLETT, Andy TBAC V50