ILKLA MOOR WI' T'BELL 
BRADFORD MILLENIUM WAY RELAY
Midweek racing had to skip a week to give that calf strain a chance to recover and besides, I had to be fit for team duty in the BMWR and certainly didn't want to jeopardise my chances of racing another Wednesday night Cumbrian cracker at Tebay later in the week. Our Ribble Valley Harriers team were seeking to retain the Mixed Team category title and our team was mixed in the very purest sense with a male and female partnership on all five legs. I was selected to run Leg 4 from Silsden to Ilkley with up and coming former Barlick Fell Runner Sarah Bell. Sarah had a fitness worry herself in the build up after going over on her ankle and unable to get out to reccie the course - so only three days prior to race day, commander in chief Chris Barnes was kind enough to take me around. There's no avoiding reccie runs on routes like this. Race day would otherwise be a disaster to negotiate with countless gaps in walls, holes in hedges, multiple choice stiles and gates, unmarked paths... As lone navigator I was quietly confident I had recollected the whole way, but even just a few days later, my grey matter was starting to succumb to grey areas. With a great chance of sealing the category win again, going even ever so slightly astray was simply not an option. Early on in the leg I did feel just a little bit of pressure to keep us on the straight and narrow. The Helen Thornhill and Chris Barnes pairing from Leg 3 not only handed over to us in a commanding category lead, but also 5th place overall. With greyest areas in the first half of the route, it was concentration time and when doubt did cast it's cloud, fortunately we could see a team or two ahead. Two Wakefield vests passed us early on, but around the half way mark we got our place back when catching the Wharfedale men's pair. Sarah ran really well and paced things just right. There was some graft put in to the mercilessly hot and sticky climb up to the cairn on Ilkley Moor, but she had a great turn of pace off there for the final two and a half miles down to the town and we sealed the eighth fastest Leg 4 time of the day. My legs were certainly sore enough the morning after. Louisa Powell-Smith and Shaun Livesey Jnr took over from us at Ilkley, gaining two more places to secure the Mixed win and third overall with only Bingley and Saltaire's men's teams ahead.
  
Ilkla Moor baht 'at* - a well known folk song in Yorkshire dialect and testimony to the wildness of Winter up here - fair warning that lkley Moor is a very cold and windy place indeed baht 'at. But if it's week six of the longest and earliest heatwave I can remember, and if there is receding hair upon one's crown - which once resembled a little Amaretto biscuit but is now the size of a Rich Tea - then head cover is of equal importance up on t'moor in the Summer too. Said Rich Tea biscuit seems to be first to take the sunburn these days, although my sizeable Neanderthal nose still comes a close second.
*Although the official Blogger viewing figures of these pages rarely surpasses the figure of six, it appears there are readers from overseas and maybe even UK readers south of the River Trent. In which case I ought to mention for their benefit alone that the translation of 'Ilkla Moor Baht 'at' is 'Ilkley Moor Without A Hat'... tha knows.

Sunday 24th June 2018
BRADFORD MILLENNIUM WAY RELAY   Leg 4  8.5m/1250ft   Silsden to Ilkley, West Yorkshire
1st Men's Team - Bingley 'A' 5.44:46
1st Ladies Team - Wharfedale 7.29:01
1st Mixed Team - Ribble Valley Harriers 6.18:50    
My Stats - Paired with Sarah Bell   1.21:00   8/50