TIGHT TUSSLE WITH CAPTAIN JACKO
WHALEY WALTZ
There's an in-house club championships on the agenda at Ribble Valley Harriers this year and this race in Derbyshire's Peak District was the first of four on that fixture list. Not far as the crow flies to these parts, but nevertheless an hour and twenty minutes away from my resides in central Lancashire. It's a fair old way just for a 9K trail race and fair to say I probably would not have picked this one out to race but for the fact it was on the club champs list and I had pre-entered months ago. Heading South down the M61, the huge plumages of smoke bellowing from the moorland fires on my favourite training ground Winter Hill completely dominates the skyline. It's been on fire for days, with up to two square miles of precious peat, heather and grasses scorched beyond recognition. It's really upsetting on many levels, not least that it was seemingly started deliberately by some 22 year old scratbag who, we are led to believe, has now been arrested. If it's him, they should throw away the key. Akin to similiar fires on Saddleworth Moor last week, whilst firefighters and armed forces from around the region do an incredible job trying to attain the impossible of suppressing the blaze in continuously hot, dry weather with a strong flame-fanning breeze, just what the hell are the Government doing about this situation to bring extra assistance? Do they even know about it, sat in their ivory towers of some suave London suburb with a Champagne in one hand, polishing their trumpets with the other? Whilst the cost of human life fortunately remains zero, it's a catastrophe on a massive scale. If this was happening in the southern Home Counties we would have had a state of emergency declared and the kitchen sink thrown at it by now. I guess a positive aspect of the government's ignorance is that they haven't made a political stunt out of the situation, for example sending the Home Secretary and Environment Minister in yellow helmet and fireproof jacket for some kind of propaganda photo-shoot. Well, not yet at least.
Back to the running then and I'm joined by just five other clubmates who also made the journey - Ste Hall is expected to kick all our arses, Ben Walmsley versus Andy Payne will be interesting and
ladies captain Nichola Jackson is fresh from - well maybe not fresh - the World Long Distance Mountain Champs in Poland the previous weekend, where she finished a fantastic 24th overall and helped win a Silver medal for the GB team. Chris Barnes put his excuses out there having ran the Twighlight Snowdon race up and down Wales' highest peak the previous evening.
It was the Rose Queen Carnival day in Whaley Bridge and first the parade passed, headed by the local brass band, followed by a rich assortment of floats flowing down the crowded main street. Once the prosession had cleared, it was race time - or seemingly. Unfortunately there was a problem somewhere down the line and a delay to the start. High vis health and safety folk were scuttling about active on thier walkie-talkies about something further down the road. This wasn't a problem, but for the fact that two hundred and odd runners were all lined up ready and absolutely baking in the high sun. I looked down and my inov8's were making in-prints in to the melting tar. There was no direction or communication in the meantime as to when we were going to set off and so it must have been twenty minutes stood there, thinking we must surely be going off at any moment. Not ideal. I'd stiffened up in fact as we finally got let out of the traps, but I loosened off a bit and started to edge my way up in to the top dozen or so. There was some welcome stretches of running under the shade of trees early on which was a brief relief after getting sun struck at the start. But when the climbing began it was in stifling heat, beaming down hard and bouncing back off the parched grasses. It felt like a struggle was imminent, but I could see Andy Payne not too far ahead and so based on that I considered I was doing OK. I was near enough to see that Andy was doing something weird with his vest and turning it in to a cropped top. In some ways I'm glad I didn't get close enough to see the hairy bellied details! But the heat was desperate and when it's like this, male cropped tops isn't such an odd concept if not a great look. Before the main sections of ascent up to the summit on the Wind Gather Rocks, I realise Nichola Jackson is right behind me as she apologised for nutting the back of my leg on a ladder stile. This is going to be tough now. The climbing continues and she stays right my on heels. I'm thinking all sorts of things, like in recent years on the odd occasion we've been in the same race at Woodentops, I've never got near her. Nichola's just done a  mountain marathon in a GB vest last weekend, but then I'd raced Tebay only three days previous... did Barnes give her instructions to 'sit on Sutty on the climb until he buckles'?...all these sort of factors were being weighed up in my head as we slogged upwards. But then I thought to myself, 'Hang on, Jacko's got eighteen years on me, this lass is fair game!', so I challenged myself to stay ahead of her for as long as I can on this climb. I might just fancy my chances against her on the way down. I sensed Nic coming along side a time or two but there really wasn't much between us at all on the day. It sounded as if I'd managed to make a little gap on the first downhill stretch across a field, but then she closed in again and it wasn't until a couple of unpleasant downhill road sections where the few seconds of gap that eventually counted were mustered. I'd now set my sights on the young lad ahead who was looking like he was hanging on. Just before the finish there's a river crossing but it took me by surprise how deep it was, popping out of some woods and straight in to four or five feet of water. Panic set in, not through fear of water, but because Nichola is also an ace swimmer! I flapped and stumbled my way across. It cost me a chance to catch the lad ahead but was fortunately enough to hold my place.
So Nichola had big distance in her legs and she has bigger long term fish to fry than busting a gut in the short term to nudge ahead of the likes of myself. But she is a fierce competitor and a class fell runner, so I would be hard on myself not to take some satisfaction from staying ahead of her for once. Besides, it may never happen again.
For the rest of the team, Ste was on cue to finish third overall until he and another lad excruciatingly missed a left turn inside the final mile and lost nine places. So Ben ran well to take over for third place and first Ribble Valley home, keeping himself half a minute ahead of Andy all the way around. Ribble Valley Harriers were on the map in Derbyshire with six inside the top sixteen.
On the way home and immediately on the top road out of Whaley Bridge, the Winter Hill fires are prominent in the distance even here, some fifty miles away. Like some smoking volcano, the plume stretches West beyond Southport and in to the Irish Sea. They still can't see it from London though.

Saturday 30th June 2018
WHALEY WALTZ   5.8m/900ft   Whaley Bridge, High Peak, Derbyshire
1st Man - Jack Ross (Staffordshire Moorlands) 39:48
1st Lady - Nichola Jackson (Ribble Valley Harriers) 43:55
My Stats - 43:47   10/208