Alan Kirk Memorial Padfield Scamper

This race was run in memory of a lovely and talented runner and climber, Alan Kirk, who will be sorely missed by the local outdoors community. He passed away last week.

This was to be the beginnings of my come back from injury. I have been off running since mid-June, and re-habbing in various ways, shapes and forms. A sub-10k run around the local area seemed like a nice way to break myself back into the running thing. Not too long so I wouldn't massively overdo the distance, and not so technical that I would end up cronking myself into a rock.
Not only that, but a decent enough distance to assess over the next couple of days how well my recovery is going.

Chatting with Jules pre-race

The Scamper was chosen as a local race for the Glossopdale fell champs as well. I need to do 2 more races in order to qualify anyway, and this is the shortest of them all, so it seemed like an intelligent plan to enter.

What a delight it is to enter a local race without all the bells and whistles. Since being injured I have almost closed off in despair at all the "gnarly" and expensive races that are popping up all over the place, promising medals and t-shirts and this that and the other. It was a true delight to pay a fiver, get a number and just go and race in the hills against other people in similar states of raggedy old vests and shorts.

The idea was to go out easy, enjoy the climb, because that generally doesn't hurt at the moment, and then not go too crazy on the downhill, as it seems to be the impact that is the driver for the hip tenderness at the moment.
And then Des told us the race would be run anti-clockwise. Great, so the downhill would be down a hard track, instead of nice, soft bog. Ah well, we'll just have to see how it goes.

From the off I was very much off the front group pace, with Ali Campbell and Si Pymm setting a bit of a level, with Chris Webb close behind. After the first bunch up at the bottle neck I noticed Paul Skuse was also ahead of me, as was Caity.

towards the end.

I mooched along with Dave Soles for a while, trying to make sure any gates that could be opened were opened - 95 people jumping over gates in quick succession doesn't do them much good. By the time we hit the stream crossing I had caught up with Skusey, and overtook him on the jump across, and then tried to stick at about the same distance away from Caity on the climb to Cockhill.

It was going relatively well until Rookie Error of the day - shoelace came undone. Talk about lack of racing - indeed any kind of running experience at all...

By the time I'd sorted it out, I was back with Paul, and we topped out and started the descent together. It was a bit fun underfoot, and eventually I distanced him, and caught Caity in pretty much the last field, holding her off for 10th place at the end.

Hamstrings are a bit shot, as is my left calf, but that's just lack of running practice. At the moment I can feel the hip a bit sore, so I'm off to sit down. The acid test is how/if it recovers/improves over the next few days.

Thanks muchly to Des for the organisation, and the last minute chance of direction. Always nice to have a bit of a change of plan.
I wonder if they'll do that at Jura next year?!