2010 saw the first snowy High Peak Marathon for a few years. The cold winter lasted long enough to leave the peak district moors under a blanket of snow on the night of March 5/6. The race was held under clear skies and a half moon with only the odd snow flurry in the air later in the night (or more accurately early in the morning).
The race was won by Flipper’s Gang in just under 9 hours: a great result considering the conditions. Dark Peak Ladies Accelerate won the ladies’ race in 11h35m. I was in the Team Vasque South team which came 2nd in just under nine and a half hours. We were closely pushed by the Nuns from Chinley who were third in 9h37m.
Our team were the last to start at 23:45 on Friday night. Being last to start has the advantage that you always have another team to chase until you are hopefully out in front (although we never got in front!).
The southern section of the course was pretty much snow free, with the odd little patch on Lose Hill giving a hint as to what would happen later. The first significant snow we saw was at High Neb where there were some white banks of snow below the Stanage Edge crags.
The first food-stop checkpoint at Moscar went in a blur. We ran in, picked up some sandwiches and filled water bottles and then ran off, shouting to each other to try to re-group after the checkpoint. Pulling out of Cutthroat Bridge, we ascended onto the higher moors and got into the snow. This came as a bit of a surprise to us southerners at first. There was a reasonable covering, sometimes obscuring the flagstone path and at other times turning that path into a skating rink. A low point for me was the stream at Sheepfold Clough. I was so busy trying to make sure that I didn’t get my feet wet that for some inexplicable reason, I sat back in the freezing stream, getting drenched to my chest. I will never know for sure why this happened. Having wet clothes and being cold for the exposed Bleaklow section was bad, but I determined that if I was cold, I was just going to have to push harder to get warmed up.
The running to Bleaklow from Cut Gate was through deep snow: at least we weren’t running through sludgy brown bogs. Navigation through this snow was surprisingly difficult. Although there were tracks in the snow, these would diverge leaving us in a bit of a quandary about where to go (until Tim Laney got his map out and pointed us in the right direction). It was over these moors that we started catching up with the second team (the High Peak Rollerbladers) and had the nightmare of being reeled in by the team behind (the Nuns from Chinley). We desperately wanted to make progress ahead, but had to make sure that we navigated well in order not to make silly time consuming mistakes.
The run from Bleaklow Stones to Bleaklow Head worked a treat. There was a line of footprints in the opposite direction to the one we were going in. Given that walkers only go between Bleaklow Stones and Bleaklow Head (there is nowhere else sensible to head for up there, we had to be going in the right direction). As we were running, we passed loads of stakes marking the path (something we have seldom seen before on the High Peak Marathon).
We had a navigational nightmare between Bleaklow Head and Snake Pass despite the dawn. We lost a good 10 minutes on this section which was frustrating and we were despondent to be caught by the Nuns from Chinley at the Snake Pass checkpoint. We pulled out all the stops and had a great run to Mill Hill, recording the fastest time on that section. This got us five minutes ahead of the Nuns and five minutes behind the Rollerbladers. The race should be over by this stage, but this year, we really had to pull our fingers out to make the difference between 2nd and 4th places.
After a snowy Kinder (there were some massive white and grey cornices on the west side of the plateau), we caught the Rollerbladers at Edale Cross. I don’t know what happened, but one of the Rollerbladers was having difficulty running and ended up retiring at this checkpoint. Although the other three Rollerbladers continued to run, they were out of the race by this stage (unfortunately). We had a great line over Brown Knoll (for the first time in 4 years), but slowed down on the ascent to Rushup Edge where we were finally caught by the Nuns. We had an 8 minute advantage over them (by virtue of a later start time: the start of the race is staggered), but we weren’t sure that was a sufficient margin and we still wanted to race to the finish. Hence we had a good fast race along Rushup Edge, round Mam Tor and then down from Hollins Cross to the finish, crossing the line together in a sprint finish: quite a way to finish a 42 mile nine and a half hour race.
Overall, 35 of the 45 teams entered finished this brutal, but magical race.
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Team Vasque South were Tim Laney, Martin Indge, Martin Humphreys and Martin Beale.
Well done Team Vasque (Northern and Southern - what a great start to the year - lets keep this going)
