Borrowdale Trailers

Three intrepid Hillingdon AC athletes took on the Lake District terrain in the Borrowdale Trail Run on Sunday 20th May. With the weather set fair, John Bignell, Paul Leppard and Martin Bateman took a day off from hiking the mountains to compete in this competition. The event is fairly low key but the surroundings and route are anything but. Paul and Martin took the option of the 21Km route which started on the relative flat by Derwent Water for about 5 miles before  making the climb up a boulder path to Castle Crag. This was followed by a fast decent before another even longer climb up in the Watendlath region in the direction of a return to Keswick. In the meantine, John Bignell, who had chosen the 13km route option which missed out the 2 climbs of the longer course, was motoring along the flater course before the climb  at High Lodore where both races rejoined together. By this stage Martin had moved from around 10th in the first 2-3 miles to 3rd at the top of the first climb to then being able to see and chase down second place with 4 miles to go passing those who were on the course from the shorter race too. The route terrain being  narrow, twisty, rocky and of course very scenic made the going one of great concentration and exhilaration with no time to worry about such things as time.

Martin on a flat bit!

John Bignell V60 was the first to finish out of us coming 10th and first v60 with 1:12:38 for 13km. Martin Bateman V35 was second overall in the 21km race with 1:37:52 and Paul Leppard was 16th in 1:52:12.

Full results here.