The Stan Bradshaw Pendle Round is a nine-point-something mile fell race starting and finishing in Barley, a small village to the East of Pendle Hill.
I'd been out for a recce of the route the weekend before the race with some of the Bowland Fell Runners crew and had had a thoroughly lovely day out on the fell... afterwards, I was feeling particularly confident about the navigation except for the descent down from checkpoint two to three: I imagined on a claggy day, that section could be troublesome unless you just happened have someone experienced in front to follow.
Barley is a lovely village, race registration was in the village hall and the Pete Bland Sports van was in attendance in the car park... all we were missing was a brass band and a fair!
The route starts with a mile or so of tarmac road heading West out of Barley before bearing North for the longest climb of the route, a solid mile up to Pendle Hill trig point and the first checkpoint just beyond. From there on it's pretty runnable all the way to checkpoint four at Wood House Brook, where there's another shorter, less steep climb. Nearing the end, the route takes a sharp left after Fell Wood and there's a funky-mucky little stretch down to the penultimate gate before you join the tarmac to fly down to the finish.
I made it round in 1 hour, 24 minutes and 30 seconds... just 22 minutes, 10 seconds (but 80 places) after the winner, Josh Holgate... who I later plonked myself down next to to eat my soup and bread. "How was that?", I enquired enthusiastically... "Er, I won it! How did you get on?", he replied... I choked briefly and we had a lovely chat, Josh is super-nice and clearly a talented runner who's coming to the fells from a road-running background... I'm sure we'll see more of him at future fell races.
As a club champs race, it was excellent to see thirty Bowland Fell Runners at the Stan Bradshaw Pendle Round... congratulations to all the runners and a huge thank you to the race organisers and all the volunteers.
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