While the seniors were either trotting around the 3 peaks fell race or the Fellsman, a small bunch of the juniors made their way to the 2nd race in the English Fell Championships in Shropshire. One even travelled down the previous night to get a head start on the rest.
We arrived in lovely spring sunshine at what looked like a nice little hill for them to climb. Well, weren’t we wrong!! After being there for 30 minutes in the sun, we experienced all the seasons in the next 3 hours, sun, wind, rain, hail and snow, then back to sunshine. While on a recce of the route we realised that somebody must have got this wrong, I thought the 3 peaks were in Yorkshire this week, but they had decided to push the juniors to their limits, giving them 3 peaks to climb over the route.
After staying overnight, young Joe Carnelley decided the route was a little to touch for his broken toe and decided it would be best to leave it another week before attempting his comeback. This was a shame for both him and I as I could see he could have made the top 3 in this race, but agreed with him, the rest would be best.
So, it was left to Lucy Shutt to start of the proceedings in the U12 race. She started in sunshine, soon hit the wind on the first climb and then summer like conditions on the 1st decent, 2 small climbs later, Lucy started her decent with some fantastic downhill running (cheered on by Joe) to pass a great number and finish 16th in the U12 Girls race.
Up next were Matt and Vicki Merrick in the U14 race. Again this started in the sunshine with windy conditions on the first climb. The route then took the U14’s around the next hill but then they met with a stiffer climb to the top of the second, followed by a great decent to the bottom of the valley, it was then they have a steep climb back to the top and a decent of 1k back to the finish. While attempting the last climb, the weather closed in and we went from cold dark sky’s to hail and snow, this didn’t put these two off (or Lucy and Joe who were back at the top of the climb) and following in Lucy’s footsteps, both stormed to the finish, with Matt taking 7th in the boys race and Victoria 4th in the girls race.
It was a great day in some trying conditions, with all enjoying the days racing in what I believe was the most challenging Fell route/race any of these have attempted so far. I’ve thought long and hard for the star performer of the day, but I think in the end I must give this to a team performance, they turned up, cheered each other on, recce’d all routes together and even cheered on the other juniors from around the country.
Well done all, you did me and the club proud.