Hill running

There is an excellent article in the ‘Independent’ about the Mountain Marathon (originally the Karrimor Mountain Marathon) by Richard Askwith. You can probably read it in its entirety online but it’s worth passing on some of his comments about the event. Naturally he is in agreement with the runners and officials who felt that it was right to go ahead with it. We should maybe remind ourselves that the point of the event is to spend a night on the hills in October and the runners are all trained and equipped for it – they run in pairs, they are experts in using map and compass and always know exactly where they are, they carry on their backs all they need for a night outside – tent, cooker, food – as well as first aid kits, survival gear and good quality clothing. I quote:
“Were they lost? From the point of view of the police and the mountain rescue teams, they were because no one could say precisely where they were. Most had a pretty good idea themselves and in due course every one of them succeeded in making contact with the organisers.” “Reports that many of them were forced to spend the night in the mountains completely missed the point. The only ones whose plans were disrupted were the disappointed hundreds who were forced not to spend the night on the mountain. I have yet to speak to a single competitor who felt that he or she had been the victim of an emergency. “You’d have loved it Richard,” one of them said, “Incredibly violent conditions but a true test of mountaincraft.” So much for some of the specific comments on this race but in more general and philosophic terms, how about the following?

Chief among the ‘good bits’ of fell running are “the joy of feeling utterly absorbed in an environment far bigger than oneself, and the joy of pushing oneself to one’s limits, and the joy of throwing off the shell of physical caution that encases most adult lives to do something that is simultaneously ludicrously imprudent (have you tried running flat out down a steep slippery mountain slope?) and utterly instinctive.” “Selwyn Wright a social worker from Barrow who organises the Three Shires Race which he organises over 12 mountainous miles in Langdale refuses to introduce a bad weasther route over lower ground. His reasons are worth examining. “If you make it the organiser’s responsibility to make the race as safe as possible you take the individual responsibility away from the person on the hill. I’m not saying that organisers should be gung-ho but I don’t want people to think that if the weather’s bad they shouldn’t worry. I want them to worry and to take responsibility for it themselves.” “The last thing we want is an influx of people who think it’s safe to do fell running.”

There is much more in the article worth reading – it is the main article in the paper’s ‘Life’ section. The correction: His book (referred to in the previous blog about Hill Running), “Feet in the Clouds” (Full title: Feet in the Clouds: A Tale of Fell Running and Obsession.) is now available in paperback for £8.99 and the Independent Books Direct is offering it (freep&p) at 0870 079 8897 for the time being.

PS: If you believe the last quotes about where responsibility lies, maybe we should abandon risk assessments for road races? How about “The last thing we want is an influx of people who think it’s safe to do road running”? or “I want them to take responsibility for themselves.”