February 26, 2018 George Foster

Who scared off the Beasts?!?

Treat yourself to a rarity here for I have ‘done my research’. Well, some anyway. It’s patchy at best if I’m honest and consists of reading a book and half-heartedly glancing at spurious headlines from potentially unqualified sources. But. It’s a start!

I’m here today to discuss the extinction of the ‘beast’.

In order to prove the science of this question and to provide some faux legitimacy to the proceedings I’ll try to set this treatise out in some vague semblance of pattern, with a softly-softly nod to PhD-paper conformity.

Here goes.

Beast (noun) any nonhuman animal, especially a large, four-footed mammal; a live creature, as distinguished from a plant. Examples: hunger brought out the beast in him or (and one especially pertinent to this post [and conveniently ignoring the pinch of mischief when you begin to answer a question with a question]) what manner of beast is this?

Fell-running has had it’s fair share of beasts. I’ll name some. Kenny Stuart, Billy Bland, John Wild, Joss Naylor, Hugh Symonds, Sarah Rowell, Wendy Dodds, Colin Valentine, Colin Donnelly, Fred Reeves, Angela Mudge, Andy Styan……….there’s a lot that I’ve missed there. No doubt someone will pick me up on it. Cheers, you’re obviously a great person. I won’t apologise because I’m a human and listing names does not make for entertaining reading (arguably nor does any of my writing). That list simply serves to highlight that there are quite a few. You’ll notice that I have missed out ‘new’ runners and those that don’t generally ‘race’. This is by no means discounting the Herculean efforts of folk like Jim Mann or Steve Birkenshaw or Jasmin Paris/Rawlik. It’s just outside of the scope of this article. They’re all still beasts.

The Boss surveys his kingdom

What this is hoping to deal with is the fact, and the road-running fraternity has been harping on about this for a long while now, that records ain’t falling. People don’t really seem to be getting all that close either. What gives??

A few fast times immediately jump out. Andy Styan’s Langdale Horseshoe record from, wait for it, 1977 (!!!) has stood for 40+ years (I had to use my fingers to work that one out…..and I will be training to be a teacher in a few short months, go figure). Kenny Stuart’s 1:02:29 at Snowdon has stood since 1985; over 30 years for that one. His Skiddaw record, though nearly bested (I love that word) by Jon Albon in 2016 (who was still 3 minutes out!!), of 1:02:18 is another that is over 30 years old. Finlay Wild has been nipping away at Kenny’s 1984 Ben Nevis record too. Alas, no dice. In fact, only Colin Donnelly has even got better than 1:26:00 for that one….and that was in 1986! Fred Reeves’ Grasmere Guides time of 12:21.6 from 1978 is still there, hanging about like a ageing rocker at a Stones tribute concert. Kenny, again, with his 1981 Alva Games record of 18:39. The Borrowdale record of 2:34:38 held by Billy Bland since 1981.

UPDATE: Who can forget Andy Peace and his 1996 Yorkshire 3 Peaks record of 2:46:03? Me apparently! And he came back from cancer to do that! Yikes! Sit down Lance Pharmstrong.

To the good news….Gareth Wyn Hughes nabbed the Welsh 1000m record off Colin Donnelly in 2016, who then had it robbed off of him in 2017 by Jack Wood from Ilkley. Similarly Hector Haines ‘smashed’ the 1988 record on the Jura Fell Race set by Colin Donnelly with a time of 3:06:30, which in turn was beaten 3 years later by Finlay Wild with a time of 3:05:14. The old ‘two-buses-at-once’ cliche. A massive mention (cos I think this must have slipped under the radar somewhere, at least I don’t remember ANY(EVERY)BODY talking about it..) of course to Vic Wilkinson ripping up the Yorkshire 3 Peaks record last year in 3:09:19. Boom.

Bored of the ‘lists’ yet? Apologies, it’s the only way I can function day-to-day. Again, what gives?? Are we slower? Not as good? Not training hard enough? Does our culture have anything to do with this? It it societal? Lack of competitive depth? Or, is it all just bollocks?

I’d hesitate to say that we’re not as good. To me the answer lies somewhere between there being too much choice in racing (bred from irresponsible media) and a lack of significant competitive depth. But! I think this is changing. Let’s look at these reasons.

Choice.

I want to buy some toothpaste. I head to Tesco/Sainsbury’s/Aldi/Lidl/Asda/Morrisons/Co-op/Booths and navigate my way to the toothpaste section. I look at Colgate/Arm & Hammer/Crest/Aquafresh/Macleans/Sensodyne/Signal and finally settle on my ‘favourite’ brand, Colgate. “What do they have that I require?” says ‘me’ to ‘I’. Colgate offer me Hydris/MaxFresh/MaxFresh Knockout/Total/MaxClean/Advanced Deep Clean (I want to clean my teeth not pass a food safety inspection…..although on reflection cleaning my teeth is just that, in a microcosm….I digress). You can see where I’m going with this. In this scenario I left the house for some bastard toothpaste and this monstrosity confronts me. There’s choice, a red apple or a green apple, and then there’s fucking choice. What’s a boy to do??

In running we suffer from the same. And I choose ‘suffer’ deliberately.

In the UK we now have ‘Skyrunning’, yet without the mountains worthy of the title, in its’ original form, namely “mountain running above 2,000m over extremely technical trails” (taken directly from the ISF website). Our highest hill is 1,345m. None of our ‘sky-races’ go that high*.

We have fell-running. Need I describe that?!?

We have trail running and now a whole host of trail series and festivals celebrating that fact.

We have OCR (Obstacle Course Racing).

We have Mud-runner/Tough-mudder/Spartan-runner events (don’t get me started on those jokes).

Please don’t get me wrong. I enjoy running and I am ALWAYS in favour of getting people out and about to run (if only to stop the sort of antics shown in the picture below this paragraph). This is borderline hypocritical, yes. These events are a double-, or triple-edged, sword. They promote running. Good. They also both tempt people away to ‘extreme adventures’ that are nothing of the sort, and simultaneously open up the world of more niche sports like fell-running to masses in a place that is not ready to accommodate them. Quid pro quo (am I using that in context??) people with relatively little experience and a good deal of shiny shite sold to them by an equally clueless nobber in Cotswold/Nevisport/Tiso/Millets (there’s that choice again) are swamping the scenes and, frankly, getting in the way.

In turn, this has led to a trend for race organisers to stick limits on race numbers and control entries by way of either online, first-come-first-served systems or luck-of-the-draw ballots. Involuntarily excluding the very runners who have, at times and in some instances, been propping up those very same races over the more slender years.

I get it. That last point highlights the problem. Some of these races are flagging. Change IS good when managed responsibly and with common sense. Popularity is the necessary evil that allows some of these events to survive. That said it is at the point now where the race is as much to get into the race as it is to race the race itself. Best read that last sentence again. I had to. I’m having to enter races 8/9 months in advance that I may have no intention of actually racing as the time draws nearer purely because I need the option to race it, in case other race plans fall through. WTF?!?

Competitiveness.

All of this acknowledges the fact that those popular races that I mentioned all those moons ago at the top of this post (Skiddaw, Snowdon, Ben Nevis etc etc) are now massively over-subscribed. The competition for those is there. And doing damn well. Some get in, others don’t. There’s no parity. The competition is there, but it’s not as strong as it should be, with some notable absentees.

How do we fix it? Rather topically, I think we should look to Europe (forgetting momentarily, and for the purpose of this point, that we are actually Europeans ourselves, by virtue of our position on that continental land-mass/shelf). The established ‘names’ in the sport should get automatic first refusal up to a set number of places. For instance if the Ben Nevis race has 250 places, 25 of those should be reserved for the beasts for a set period of time, by invitation only, with maybe 25 more reserved for the local club to fill or with respect for those attaining a certain milestone (40th running of the race etc). If, after a cut-off date, they haven’t been allocated then the remaining entries are pawned off to the masses. Maybe that cut-off date can REMAIN fixed, eh Edale?

The ‘pros’ of this? The race has the opportunity to be a race. A true spectacle. Other races in the calendar are potentially more competitive as wannabe-asts have an antler-off to be top of the herd for inclusion in the elite list. All performances are traceable back for only a couple of years to stop people resting on their laurels/past achievements. The new/old system is still relevant, as once the relatively small proportion of places have been filled, there are still plenty of others for other folk.

No getting in Fin’s way!

The ‘cons’? That word ‘elite’. Is this the culture that we want in this sport? The ‘stars’ separated by the silent wall of favouritism? Has this happened in Europe and on the Euro scene? I dunno, I’m asking you. If my head you’re a dick if you let a little thing like being good at speed-hiking up a slope and controlled-falling back down it over-inflate your ego. Maybe I’m just being naive.

That’s my two-pence worth. There’s holes in that argument for damn sure. I think it’s fairly sensible though. We all hark on about how fell-running should just be left alone and go ‘back’ (was it ever ‘there’) to clandestine, night-time or non-publicised races. I’m afraid you’re just burying your head in the sand and ignoring the fact that for us ‘winter is coming’ (I went there). We should be proactive in getting ahead of it so we don’t get forced into a corner where there’s only one outcome, and it’s to the detriment of the sport, shit bust.

I’ll finish with an anecdote that sums up what I’m trying to get across in that previous paragraph. I don’t mean it to sound sexist and at the same time I do not know how true it is, though from my ‘insiders’ view I can see how it could be. The military is currently looking at ways to be more gender inclusive. It’s a good thing. Our ‘elite’ troops, the Paras and Commandos, need to be more gender equal. How do we (the military) achieve this, where history shows us that very, very few women are passing the respective courses (off the top of my head 0 have passed P-Company, the Paras selection process, and less than 5 have passed the All-Arms Commando Course [AACC], the Commando selection process) without diluting the standards of those respective and respected test programs.

Now, and I stress, anecdotally speaking, the attitude during P-Company is that of ‘no women will pass this course’. That doesn’t mean what it may imply, namely that women are ‘hounded’ out and ‘made to fail’. I’m not saying that. There is, however, no quarter given to females where there may be for some of the male recruits. Those running P-Company are terrified of the prospect that their standards will be diluted and the course will no longer be the force that it was. The attitude in the AACC is perhaps more open-minded. Women have passed this course, much to the mirth of their maroon-lidded brethren on the other side of the country. A pretty pathetic attitude amongst the minority in its own right. Alas. The AACC has not gotten any easier when taken as a whole BUT have women completed all of the tests in the same manner as the men? Arguably, and anecdotally, ‘no’. Some of the standards on individual tests or within individual tests have been lowered to allow some to pass (the same, in my personal experience of the course, is undoubtedly true for some of the men).

The point then? Well, the point is that when the government reviews the two courses from a recruiting/manpower/gender equality stance they will see the bare facts. The Commandos are actively engaging with the issue. Standards there have not dropped. They’re ‘safe’. But what about you P-Company? Why are women passing the AACC but not P-Company? We should seek to standardise the entry requirements for both men and women and you’re in the firing line.

Can you see how this relates to the world of fell-running? Embrace the change before it comes and whilst you still have more cards to choose from he pack.

 

 

*to add some spice I’m signed up to the UK sky-race series this year. Hypocrite? Yup.

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