High Peak Marathon

Friday night at 11:07pm in Edale Village Hall and it was kick off time for team High Peak Scuttlers (me, Hester, Gav and Phil) for our attempt to scuttle round the 42 miles of the High Peak Marathon. The HPM is such a fantastically organised event with checkpoints all manned (and womanned) by crazy, fancy dressed, volunteer students from Sheffield University, and thats with virtually all of the checkpoints being stuck absolutely in the middle of nowhere mostly 500 to 600 metres up. And the route is completely brilliant, taking in Hollins Cross, Lose Hill, Win Hill, a scoot under High Nabb/Stanage Edge, a massive loop around Derwent Edge and Howden Edge, over Bleaklow, down to Snake Pass, over Mill Hill, up and over Kinder Scout, a 'scuttle' around the south east corner of the Edale valley, another visit to Hollins Cross and then a drop back down to the finish. 

We were of course an awesome team and finished a "mere" 11 hours and 18 minutes later on Saturday morning. The conditions were pretty much as good as they could have been with a clear, almost windless and bitterly cold night, making all the ground rock hard, rather than the extreme bogginess usually expected, with the still plentiful snow nicely hardened off by the frost (minus 7º and then some). In fact the conditions were so good that the winning team knocked something like 40 minutes off the previous record with a stunning time of 7:52 whilst the best all ladies team knocked an hour off the previous record with a time of 9:40. Full results here

The Scuttlers were all magnificent and especially well done to Gav, Phil and me for not laughing when Hester fell face first into that ditch of ice cold water! My legs felt really good all the way round although, come the finish, my feet felt battered by all of the hard ground we'd been over. 

Fan-bleeding-tastic!

Seconds before the off - left to right: Gav, Phil, Hester and me

Looking fashionably unfashionable

The dawn coming up somewhere near Bleaklow

Gavin cresting one of the many frozen peat groughs

Sun-da-rise, early in de morning!

Hester whizzing down the Pennine Way off of Bleaklow - note the speed blur

Heading for Snake Pass with Kinder Scout beyond

Edale at last