Sunday 13 August 2017

Hardmoors Rosedale 2017

"Welcome to the Hardmoors Rosedale marathon. There are two things wrong there, you won't be going into Rosedale and it's not a marathon". This was how Jon, the race director, started the race briefing. Hardmoors events are famous for giving you 'extra miles' at no extra cost....

I have done this event three times before. The first two years the route didn't change too much and it was the easiest of the Hardmoors marathons in my view. In 2016 Jon had to make a radical change to the route just a few days before the event and for the marathon this meant two laps of a route round Farndale which was a tougher route.

This year there was a more radical change and it is now longer than the original (most people measured it as 29.1m) with significantly more ascent (4500 feet approximately). The weather was hot, up to about 20 degrees at times. There was also some mud.

I was running this one with Sara and we started at the back as we knew there would be hold up at the first gate - the first 1.5m was the same as it always had been. Once through the three gates, we ran down the side of a wheat field.



and up into the lovely village of Gillamoor


where there was a lovely surprise view


We ran past the SportsSunday photographers




A few field edges and woods






The bracken was high in places (thanks to Sara for this photo)


and then onto some moors



Churches in the middle of nowhere


We were making reasonable progress, walking the many hills trying to preserve our energy in the heat. We had mainly be heading west, but finally we turned west with lovely views of the purple heather


There was a lot of steep descents into attractive dales (the route was very well marked with tape)



but inevitably there were steep ascents out of these dales. We past an interesting abandoned farm




We had a bit of a long road section with a descent into Bransdale, 


 before a climb and a descent into the lovely Farndale


Then onto the popular daffodil walk between High Mill and Low Mill, which was relatively quiet, before a big climb out of Farndale


and the inevitable descent back into Farndale. There were some lovely woods and this photo doesn't really do it justice


Then it was a relatively simple, but hilly section to the finish. At the start Ashley had taken a photo of the Elvet Striders running the marathon (thanks for the photo Ashley)


Suffice to say, I didn't look quite so happy at the end. It had been a hot, tough day on a beautiful route. Thanks to Sara for her company 😀