Ian Hodgson Mountain Relay

Second year I have done this now and I've got to admit, I love doing it.
In a fell race, your on your own and the only person you let down is yourself, but with a team event such as this you really don't want to let anybody down and as a result, if you paired with someone of equal ability, you really do push that bit harder.
Along with Steve Bennett I was down to run leg 2, a leg we have recced 3 times over the last few weeks, so we were more then happy to see the clag well down and rain lashing down.
Waiting for the leg 1 runners to come in, we were very surprised to see the Keswick open team come in first, with Borrowdale a good 7 minutes behind them, obviously the weather was playing a part.

Our own team had put 2 quick runners on leg 1, but something had not gone well and they arrived in 29th place.With a quick change over we were off, with me slightly ahead of Steve (Steve normally needs a mile and then he seems to have a turbo button). By the first checkpoint we had closed one team down and by the second we had passed another 2 teams.
The clag was down on the tops, but we never put a foot wrong and we were joined by the Todmorden pairing, who would be by our side the rest of the leg.
On the line down Threshthwaite mouth we kept left and picked a good line all on grass down to the bottom where we passed another team.
The climb up towards the beacon was tough, but I was relieved to be heading up because route finding was all straight forward now.
High Street came with another team passed and then it was all down hill, which Steve lead and I followed, through the beck and then down the fast track to the finish.
We passed over to Sam and Bernie with a feeling of job well done.

We had passed 7 teams and were 14th fastest overall on leg 2.

Sam and Bernie continued the good work and passed another 3 teams before handing over to the leg 4 runners who passed 5 more teams to bring us in a very credible 14th position. Last year we were 33rd.
Eden Runners is a small club, so we were delighted with the result.

More photos can be found at  my flickr account

Andy,Sam,Bernie,Steve,me,Kim and Dave. Anth missing

Oh and Borrowdale won........again.