Sheldon Fell Race 2019

A version of this report was submitted to the Steel City Striders website.






Race date: Thursday, 18 July 2019; race distance: about 6km
This was the race I accidentally did instead of the Hardwick 10k, because I'm too dumb to fill in a calendar. I regret missing Hardwick but I don't regret doing this.
Sheldon is a little village near Bakewell, in the limestone White Peak (this is relevant). You reach it by driving up a very big hill (this too is relevant). It's very picturesque, there's a story about a duck (https://www.wondersofthepeak.org.uk/facts/the-sheldon-duck/) and they look after their benches very well (photo). The race is part of their annual village celebration, though we'd have had to hang around till Saturday for the bottle darts, egg throwing and bee walk.
The race was part of this year's Steel City Striders fell race championship, so there was a healthy turnout from the club. Bob Grocutt told me there was a difficult climb to come.
After admiring the many village dogs, I joined the rest of the runners on the start line. The race starts off on the main (only) road, and runs for about a quarter of a mile before turning sharp left and across a field. So far so ordinary. Then all of a sudden you're plummeting, losing 140m in the next kilometre, with the gradient reaching over 30% near the bottom. I'd been to the physio the previous day because of a painful nerve in my heel, so I ran down the hill a bit gingerly, but apart from the odd painful twang it was fine. (Chapeau to the physio.) It did give me time to wonder how exactly we were going to get back to the village.
Not to worry. We turned left and ran along a scenic track by the River Wye, flat and fairly fast for about a mile. Then the trail started to climb the side of the valley, gently at first.
We were under trees now, and as the track got increasingly run-along-the-side-of-a-valley-ey, the fact that we were running on limestone got increasingly relevantly slippery.
And then we climbed back up the hill. All of a sudden, we were at the bottom of a 40% gradient, covered in loose stones. It was getting warm now, and the humidity really started to make itself felt as I trudged up the slope. I did not run.
Finally, though, we were over the top and into the last mile, which was a happy (if tired) gallop across fields and the race car park, before turning back on to the village road and pelting down the hill to where we'd started.
It was only a short race - less than 6km by my Strava, though the FRA say it's 6.4. It's a fun one though, and a proper village event. I was knackered by the end.

I was 107th of 174 in 35:40. The winner was Alex Ediker of Buxton in 24:24, and Caroline Brock of Steel City in 27:53

Full results: https://files.fellrunner.org.uk/results/race19/res19%20Sheldon%20Final.pdf





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