The UK Fell Relays are an annual highlight of the UK Fell running scene. Unlike other running disciplines who seem to have team relays of many and various flavours, in fell racing there is just one – keeping it simple and really focusing our attention on that one weekend in the annual diary – mid October. This year the event was hosted by what I think is a new club to the event – Meirionydd Runners who are based in Southern Snowdonia. A huge thanks to their club and their community for making it all work out so well.
The race format is 6 runners per team covering leg 1 short solo, leg 2 long paired, leg 3 long navigation, leg 4 short solo. We’d been to several iterations of the fell relays now as a club so we naively thought we knew what to expect but boy were we wrong when we got to the car park!!! Opposite the car park was the race routes – about 600m of vertical and it was literally that – almost vertical! The only saving grace being that they were mainly grassy with no rocks – which seemed to make most harriers more smiley.
The event centre was compact but concentrated and it was great to see club tents everywhere with the Belper Harriers flag being the first tent we could see as we entered the field. Andy & Wyke had stayed overnight the night before in their campervans and had kindly set the tent and flag up ready for us when we all arrived.
It was great to see all 24 racing harriers arrive safe and well on the start line – previous years have seen many last minute dropouts and there’s been lots of lurgies around recently so I personally was very thankful that there was no last minute surprises as our reserves were very thin on the ground! Everyone arrived at the event with a heady mix of excitement and nerves but also of shared club friendliness and warmth. Fell running brings the best out of folk as we typically don’t worry about gear or tech but just want to battle nature and the mountains.
It was reassuring to see new friendships emerge as many of us hadn’t met before and importantly it was great to observe everyone looking out for each other assisting where they could and lending a hand. As the race got underway we were all keen to see how leg 1 runners found the course – how steep it was, how much running there was and how much bum sliding on the descent too! It turned out to be quite off the scale in terms of difficulty – steepness both up and down were unrelenting – with even our strongest runners saying it was bonkers and mental!
The “short” leg 1 was only 4km, but no one felt short changed as it took our runners between 35 and 60 mins to complete less than a parkrun! Expressions on faces were a real picture as everyone was so excited to hear how the leg 1 runners got on and their thoughts on running in the Meirionydd. You can see the photo below of Ant “debriefing” everyone after his leg 1 epic. We soon got into a rhythm of cheering one leg off then cheering the next leg in, followed by the mandatory debrief session to see how everyone was finding it.
The fell relays never disappoint in terms of difficulty and being pure technical fell as all legs involved sections of almost climbing on the ascent followed by bum slides on the descent – with Simon Lloyd adding on a forward roll or two too for good measure!
The navigation leg also excelled this year – surprising everyone by taking them onto the opposite northern side of the road and out into the huge open expanse beyond the 550m ridge we could see from the event centre. Where it excelled was by taking them into areas rarely visited by anyone, let alone runners – with leg 3 covering a small proportion of the vast tract of desolate but stunning wilderness area which extends as far north as the Arans and eventually Lake Bala.
There turned out to be quite a tussle in the results between our Open Men and VM40 teams with youth winning over experience by 6 mins in the end.
Results courtesy of Sportident
The weekend was topped off with a stunning drive through some of Wales’ finest scenery north to our accommodation in the superb Vagabond Bunkhouse in Betws y Coed followed by a big celebratory meal, drinks, much merriment and I think several games of pool into the early hours.
What a classic weekend amongst fellow Harriers teammates and I think that captures exactly why I run with the Harriers – friendliness, warmth and many of us up for some adventure from time to time!
