The Gill Garth Gallop and my achilles of doooooooom

Last Wednesday night me and Hester drove 5 minutes up the road to Gill Garth farm near Selside to run a brand spanking new fell race, the Gill Garth Gallop. The farmer there approached Settle Harriers specifically to get this race up and running as a fund raiser for the local primary school in Horton and last week, on a stunning evening, about 50 fell runners turned up for the inaugural running of it. And what a route - up through a couple of meadows, over the two stiles at Allum Pot, a mile or two running parallel to the hills before a crunching climb up Park Fell, another testingly runnable climb onto Simon Fell and then a plummet down from there and a whiz back to Gill Garth for hot dogs, cake and tea/beer. A cracker and a half of a race

Hester ran a blinder, coming home as second lady, and I did okay too but not without twanging my left achilles and having to run the last mile or so from the foot of Simon Fell in a fair amount of agony. I was limping badly once I'd finished and, come Thursday, my limping was nothing short of pathetic - at that point I was fully expecting that amputation of my left foot was the only option and, in fact, it was so bad that I couldn't run at all that day and had no option but to break my running streak, which up until that point had been a run every day since 11th August 2011 (ffs!) 

Anyway come Friday my foot miraculously felt a bit better and I was able to go for a two mile river run of sorts with Hester (new running streak, day 1 ☺︎) and, by Saturday, I was fairly ambling along and was able to do a six miler over Moughton from home. That said, Moughton is so rocky on top that I had to take it very steady up there but, anyway, my ankle was on the mend and I was back running. I have absolutely no idea what I did to my achilles - its occasionally been swollen and tender on and off for a fair few months but on Wednesday I really thought that I may have torn (or even ruptured) it. But no, after a few iced pea sessions, it was pretty much sorted and good to go again.

Touch wood.................

Runners warming up before the Gill Garth Gallop on Wednesday evening

And we're off

The Park Fell climb

Gill Garth a speck below with Pen y Ghent beyond - viewed from the cairn on Simon Fell

Ze race route

Friday's river run

Hazzer river running

Saturday's trot up Moughton - Harry and Hester had gone on a 'proper' run up Pen y Ghent together instead

Moughton - an ideal place to be running with a dodgy ankle

A big sky over Ingleborough

Somewhere over there are Haz and Hes