The 62nd Fellsman
Some notes on the 62nd running of the Fellsman in 2026. I’m not going to be quite as extensive as I was last time.
Arrival is, I think, better this time around: the various checks and check-ins are spread out over a couple of different stations, so while the total queueing time is about the same, the time in each individual queue is a bit shorter. Some queuing indoors: I kick my bag for life and my duffel down the hallway under the students’ presentations on the history of exploration and the scientific method.
Over supper, I chat with a lady running the Dart, and then hang around sipping a hot drink while a guy who’d run Western States back in the day regales us with tales of Fellsmans gone by. Then I go back to the hall and blow up my mattress and pack my bag and brush my teeth and go straight to sleep. Two years ago, I'd really struggled to get much sleep at all. This time round, I bring the Good Pillow from home and sleep like a baby through the snoring and the shuffling on crinkly sleeping pads and wake up feeling like a million bucks at 4:45 in the morning, maybe for the first time in my life.
Break fast on oats; a last personal kit check; meet up with a couple of other Striders running the race to catch the bus to Ingleton. David and Nina have both completed the Bob Graham Round. I wonder how many other people on the bus have — or will, based on today's result. I chat with a guy called Tom as the bus moves in and out of the rising sun. Tom will run about the same pace as me for much of the race but will literally disappear into the sunset later today and I’ll never see him again.
It feels like there’s less loiter time at the community centre in Ingleton. I clip my number to my backpack and take my fleece off and we meet with Strider Tom and take some pictures outside. Soon we're all hustled down onto the cricket pitch for the last rites. Some kind of weird siren plays to indicate that the race has started but no one understands what it is and the organisers all scream “Go! It’s started, go!” over each other until the crowd disperses in approximately 6 different directions.
Ingleborough and Whernside are much easier this time around: I purposely run at a leisurely pace. Slow is smooth etc. etc. I fuss with my pack coming down Ingleborough and then drop back from David to take a leak behind a wall, but catch him back up on the jaunt towards Whernside.
There's a topless guy doing hill reps on Whernside's flank. He has maybe -2% body fat. I say “well done” when he clatters down past me and he says, “I get to go home after this, well done you!” Next time he comes by I say to all of my fellow competitors, “Heads up, here comes Hercules,” and it gets a laugh.
The first time I feel the exertion is on the descent into Kingsdale, long and bruising on the quads and followed up by the steep climb to Gregareth. Maybe my least favourite. The sun starts to burn.
David and I make good time across to Great Coum at a plod. Plod is David’s word but it sticks in my head for the rest of the day. Then down into Dent: a good jaunt on the maps but gone before I know it. I smugly spot the secret shortcut over to the campground. We spend 15 minutes at Dent shovelling clementines into our faces.
The road section is blissfully shady but soon we’re out on the long climb up the Craven Way. The deviation down to the entrance of the Blea Moor Tunnel is frustrating: we descend forever and then struggle to determine quite how much further we need to go before we’re permitted to turn back on ourselves for the climb up to Blea Moor itself. By the time we get to the stark white trig point (“Is it true you repaint the trig point every year?” “What do you think?”) both of us are out of water in the hottest part of the day. I'm loading electrolyte capsules into my face at a rate of knots but they don't stave off the rising cramp in my calves.
It’s a long struggle down to Stone House; I arrive in a daze and mild panic and gulp down water and flat, lukewarm cola and then immediately break out into a thick sweat. Was I not sweating just now? I feel nauseous so I eat a couple of bananas and a gel and a knockoff twix bar and then we start climbing to Great Knoutberry. I am terribly jealous of David’s poles; I tune into the backs of his shoes and zone out and we plod up and up.
By the time I get to the summit of Great Knoutberry I’m feeling a bit better, so we hustle down to Redshaw in decent time. The breeze has finally picked up and I’m not showing up to each next aid station with no water — although there’s still no electrolyte at Redshaw. I fill up with lime cordial but it lacks the tang of suspended salt. As if to underline the point I step with both feet into a bog just past the checkpoint and both calves seize up and I go en pointe and topple and have to assume the sketchiest downward dog right there in the bog to ease the cramp.
Pass Snaizeholm, on to Cam High Road and then up Dodd Fell. On the way down, we get confused about how to get back onto the road — we take the long way round but a bunch of folks behind us just clamber over the wall and cut ahead of us. Oh well. We are not the only ones to take the long way round.
At Fleet Moss we all put our coats and layers on. The checkpoint marshal tells us to please turn on the red lights attached to our packs. Then down the long descent into Marsett as the light finally disappears. At a stile I pause and listen to the whooping of the curlews and the far-off caws of sundown crows. It’s quiet and the view northward is dark and hazy and lovely. The head torch goes on just as we approach the Marsett checkpoint by way of the garden of an empty cottage. The village is silent.
Walk all the way up to Stake Moss with another fellow, called Matt I think. Steep at first, and loose underfoot; but when we hit the gravel track we get into a good marching rhythm. Just before Stake Moss I find a wristband on the ground and reunite it with its owner at the checkpoint itself. The descent to Cray isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, and Cray doesn’t have the blaring music and disco ball from 2 years past. The warmth and light inside the tent makes climbing Buckden Pike a sorry prospect — but we force ourselves back into the dark.
Crossing the road outside the checkpoint, I see a lone headtorch on the side of the mountain, swinging wildly around in the dark, far away from everyone else, and wonder dimly whether they’re in trouble. It looks so forlorn. Looking at the map afterwards I can only think that they followed the Pennine Journey towards Buckden and then had to turn back on themselves up the tourist track.
We follow some guy up the right side of the gill on Buckden Pike: this is a path I’ve never tried before. Join with a pair of girls following him up the grassy hillside, but at a tall stone wall our leader puts on a burst of speed and disappears into the mists, so we have to find our own way through a gate and up to the gravel track. I feel remarkably fresh on the flags towards the top, notwithstanding the soles of my feet, the pain at once intense but also strangely easy to ignore.
Walk the flagged section to the memorial cross and then shuffle down the soggy path to Top Mere in the dark. The fog closes in so I carry my headtorch in my hand for better visibility. Then my hand gets too cold and I put it back on my head for the walk/run along to Park Rash. For a section I remember as pretty much flat, there is a lot of climbing here. At the aid station we catch up with big a group of people but they all wind up leaving before us. Nina also shows up, looking harried — grabs a banana, dispenses a quick hug, and stalks back out into the night. I admire her clarity of purpose; we catch her back up near the top of Great Whernside.
From there, we travel down the back of Great Whernside together, barely following the trod in the mist and the dark but making good progress across the peat hags above the disused mines. Just past the peat hags we start to catch another group (or the same one from earlier?) and I hustle to catch up with them. I move along at a plod with my arms swinging but don’t seem to be moving any faster than they are walking. After ten minutes I say something offhand to David and receive no response: on turning I find that Nina and he are just a pair of headlights bobbing in the mist behind me. As I can tell that they’re together, I continue on my own, past the group and into the lonesome dark, making good time down to Yarnbury. A group of kids are listening to Bo Burnham in good spirits, for 4am.
I put headphones in and trundle down the hill. I can’t tell if the asphalt is any easier to run on than the grassy trods of the last 20 hours, but I pick up pace as I roll into Grassington. The streets are empty but I’m in very good humour. I even run up the last little hill towards the school.
When I come around the corner at the finish line, a dark knee-high blur comes rushing at me, flying through the air in a spasm of legs and nerves. I suspect, briefly, that I’ve finally started hallucinating, but it turns out to just be Ghyll.
