![]() Scores of runners gathered in the drizzle outside a cow shed (no, really) to pick up their hand-written racing numbers. (I was a guitarist in a punk band - we didn’t “do” sports.) But watching this event unfold felt like being privy to a beautiful secret. He found out where a race was being held and invited me along, on a gray and bleak evening in the Yorkshire Dales.Īt the time, I had little interest in sports, apart from watching my local football team. I learned of fell running in my late 20s when my dad showed me photos of a race he’d stumbled upon high on the Pennine Hills that bisect Northern England, with distant wiry figures snaking their way over the inhospitable moorland. It can look hair-raising when a fell racer hurtles the shortest way down a steep pitch of scree, but this version of running, where every step is different and you must pick your spot for every footfall, feels healthy and natural. No strained muscles, no pulled ligaments. What I can count is the number of running-related injuries I’ve suffered since I gave up road running entirely almost 15 years ago: none, aside from cuts and grazes. I can’t count the number of times I’ve gashed my knees over the years. But much as we might want to keep it under wraps, that sense of childish excitement doesn’t leave us.įor this 55-year-old, fell running is still a license to jump and slide, splash and fall. As we grow older, we try to quash that sense of playfulness we forgo the joy of stamping in puddles and sliding down muddy banks. This, for me, is the attraction of fell running: the idea that every run is a new adventure. That buzz of expectation that you might remember from being a kid, looking out of the window and seeing that it had snowed in the night, pulling on your boots with a giddy smile on your face. ![]() I’ve been running on the fells and mountains of Britain for more than a quarter-century, but even so, before we set off for our training run, I had that nervousness you get when you’re trying something new and challenging. Since then, a year-round calendar of events has developed farther afield, with now classic races up and down Britain’s highest mountains: Ben Nevis in Scotland, Scafell Pike in Cumbria and Snowdon in North Wales. It may also leave you utterly lost, pathless and disoriented.Īs a competitive sport, fell running really became established in the 1960s, when adventurous cross-country racers and superfit sheep farmers met to compete over the mountains of the Lake District. A fell run will typically cut corners, follow compass bearings with no regard for contours. Not to be confused with trail-running, fell running often involves no trail at all but instead requires the negotiation of everything from sharp crags and loose scree to rolling hills and river crossings. Races range from a mile - literally, straight up and down a fell - to cross-country ultra-runs. This rugged terrain is the spiritual home of fell running, and the sport has not moved far from its rural roots. Northern England is, unlike the gentler south, a land of peaks and troughs, often desolate and heather-covered, but always beautiful. ![]() ![]() Somewhere in between the prize livestock and crafts, there emerged the simple idea of a foot race up and down the nearest hill (sometimes, whisper it, naked) for the prize of a flagon of ale or a juicy pig. The lack of sun at this time of year seeks to keep us on lighted roads, but here’s the first nighttime run of the autumn season we kick through wet leaves, skip over slippery tree roots and jump from boulder to boulder as we cross the hill’s crest.įell running - “fell” meaning “hill” in the north of England - originated several hundred years ago at the country shows and fairs that pepper the rural calendar. An hour with friends from my running club, along a forested ridge close to my home, with various loops, climbs and scrambles, at night, wearing headlamps. LEEDS, England - I’m just back from a run. ![]()
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