Thursday 29th July saw a small band of Pendle AC Fell runners travel to the Lake District for the annual Ambleside Sports Show. A traditional Cumbrian County show with a very full programme of events ranging from Hound racing to Cumbrian Wrestling and a Unicycle event.
The organisers could not have asked for better weather as the skies turned blue ish and the sun shone here and there for the day to give excellent conditions for running and for the rest of the events. Either side of Thursday had been low cloud and that fine rain that soaks you through.
Well on to the BOFRA races and to start things off was the U12s race. This is where the Pendle runners set the standard for the day. With 11 seconds separating three of our runners overall, Tiarnan Crorken lead this group in, coming 4th and literally hot on his heels was the ever improving Morgan Ratcliffe in 5th postion and coming in strong only a few seconds behind Morgan was Thomas Marchant in 6th position. All three lads are running really well at the minute on the fells, which is a credit to their coach Noel. Noel has brought these lads on great guns, it is looking good for Pendle AC and the U13 Mid Lancs X-Country season coming up later in the year.
As there was no U10s race, two of our younger members had to join in with the U12s and they did not look out of place. They both had fantastic runs against some of the Lake District’s best fell runners with Joe Lonsdale coming in 17th and again another close finish with Joe Alderman coming in 18th. These two lads supported the other three Pendle runners brilliantly and considering there were 47 in this race did extremely well, which again goes to the credit of their coaches down at Seedhill.
Now on to two lone runners in their races starting with the U14s. James Marchant ran well in his race coming in 9th position. As usual he put his heart and soul and a little bit extra in to this race and ran very well and was hot on the heels of some very good Wharfedale and Helm Hill runners.
In the U17s was Lucy Alderman who had a tough race against again some of the best fell runners in that age group and came in 6th girl and 17th overall. Well done Lucy.
Last but not least was the seniors race where two regular Pendle fell runners ran. These took the form of Sam Richards who is always up amongst the leaders mixing it up, coming in a brilliant 16th. Showing good form and a good supporting role was our Chairman Paul Wilson, well done lads.
Richard Marchant
PS Richard doesn’t mention that he competed in the 9 mile Rydal Round race which happens before the Guides races. This follows the Fairfield Horseshoe and I believe that Richard finished in a very creditable time of about 1 hour 50 minutes. If anyone has walked this famous route then they will know it as a tough day out.
