Five weeks later.  Sunday 14th June.  A field in Grasmere.  Carol pulled on her vest and downed a banana and bottle of water.  I sorted out my camera, a 600mg ‘horsepill of Ibuprofen pumping through my veins to numb my Achilles whilst licking my ice cream! Well, it was my 50th birthday!!

The morning was warming up ready for the 25th running of the ‘Grasmere Gallop’, “a 7+ mile race over paths, forest trails and fells around Grasmere and Rydal lakes.”

Carol was seemingly getting the hang of this racing lark as only a few months ago she’d spent all week ‘bricking it’ over a road 10K in the company of friends.

Since then she’s grown in confidence and was now on the start line of a race in the Lake District on her ‘Jack Jones’.  One thing was for certain, and even she probably suspected, races up the Lakes are tough.

Most of the runners were sporting local club vests and the footwear on display suggested a hint of fell running pedigree.  This was not an out and out fell race but listening to the runners in conversation as Carol was answering the last call of nature, she certainly didn’t need to hear the course descriptions I was privvy to!

The race started at 10.45 and I’d hobbled down the road to get a picture of the runners as they headed off on their way.  Carol was looking composed as she passed and soon she was disappearing down the walled lane towards Grasmere lake.

The route skirted the lake shore before leaving the narrow lane and heading onto the lower slopes of Loughrigg Fell.  This was the first of many climbs and any hopes of flat running surfaces were left behind.

Carol was toughing it out along with the others around her including Jenny from Bowness and Andy now living in North Wales.  They’d done the race for the last 3 years. The trio were to spend most of the rest of the race close together, Carol getting some good pointers of what lay ahead.

As the path rose higher so did the temperature.  There seemed to be no air to breathe as the sun beat down on the barren, rocky fellside.

Along Loughrigg terrace with views of Rydal Water coming into view down to the left.
The path was either going up or going down and sections through the forest led the runners down to and over a small bridge to join the Ambleside road.

As with races of this kind, there were no distance markers and Carol avoided the temptation to look at her Garmin.  This was turning out to be her toughest race so far and she just got her head down and got on with it.  Jenny and Andy were never far away to egg each other on.

The road was undulating and after passing the Badger Inn at Rydal the route left the road and followed a path across between Rydal and Grasmere lakes.

Again the path went up and then down as the lower slopes of the fell were followed heading back towards Grasmere village.

Meanwhile, I was enjoying a spot of sunbathing in the park at the finish.  By the look of the runners finishing, I deduced they’d had a hard race.

My duties as cameraman were about to be tested as Carol entered the finish field.  My first shot was a disaster, a complete blur and soon she was hurtling past me as I struggled with the controls.  I aimed like a crack sniper and ‘bingo’ I got the ‘shot’ as she neared the finish line.

Jenny and Andy finished just behind and by the time I collected up my equipment and got to the finish area I was in time to capture another bonus shot of Carol and Andy (does he look like Pete Hillman or what?) in post race discussion mode.

Carol was exhausted. “The hardest race I’ve ever done” was all she could gasp. “and that includes the Trevornick” she added.  Crumbs!  I did the Trevornick and know what that was like…and that was 10 miles!

Her finish time was 1:24:03 for the 7.3 miles that most runners GPS’ had recorded.

The bottoms of her feet were in tatters from the rocky sections.

The race had 324 finishers and most were recovering, laying in the sun or hunting out a bargain or two from Pete Bland Sports mobile running shop.

Sounds like it could have been one of the nicest races I’ve ever missed.  Well, there’s always next year.

In the meantime we hoovered down an ice cream each and enjoyed the rest of our break in the Lakes.