Three peaks race (spectating)

Up early this morning to run the Ilkley Harriers 'Hard run' interval session, before heading off the Ingleborough to watch the Three Peaks race. With it being the weekend of the London marathon as well as the Three Peaks, I wasn't expecting too many of us to be running this morning. As it turned out there were 6 of us, including Richard R & Jeff P to push the pace along.


As usual we ran efforts of 2X3 minutes, 2X4 minutes, 2X5 minutes & 3X6 minutes, with about 3 minutes of recoveries between the efforts. The course is out & back along the Nesfield Road to the A59, which is quite undulating, with a couple of significant hills up to Nesfield (which always are part of effort sections). Overall I averaged a bit less than 3:50 minutes per km during the efforts, which I was quite happy with considering that I was still feeling the effects of Wednesday's track session. In total I ran 16k, including regrouping & running from & to home.



Not much time to get showered, changed & something to eat, before driving up to Clapham. Arriving at Clapham at 10:45, I reckoned that I had about 1 hour 45 minutes to get to the top of Ingleborough before the first runner. It was therefore quite a brisk walk, especially after running an interval session. I managed to get to the top with about 10 minutes to spare.



The weather was perfect for the many spectators: warm, little wind, sunny, very dry. Not sure that the runners would be so enthusiastic about the temperature (the car showed 23 degrees when I got back to Clapham).






I've never watched the Three Peaks race before. I was surprised how slowly the leading runners were walking up the final climb to the summit of Ingleborough.....by this stage they had run about 30k, climbing Penyghent & Whernside along the way, so I guess that it's not really surprising that they looked worn out. There were some seriously quick runners, including Ilkley's Tom A & Dave W, who were looking well tired going up. The really impressive thing though, especially for the leading runners was the speed that they went down the steep rocky descent from the top. I have no idea how they can run so quickly downhill on boulders.

After about an hour of watching runners reach the summit, I headed off down the path towards Horton, which was the same route that the runners were taking, so I was mindful about keeping out of their way. There were some very weary runners making their way on the long descent to the finish....it must be about 10k into Horton. One runner in particular took a really bad fall just in front of me, he just lost concentration.


I turned off back to Clapham from Sulber Nick, making a walk of about 18k in total. Quite a lot of exercise & fresh air today covering more than 34k, so I'm going to have a couple of beers now.