Sunday 28th April 2012 marked the 58th running of the Three Peaks Fell race in Yorkshire. The race is quite simply a ‘classic’ and a ‘must do’ race in the fell runners calendar. A couple of years ago it played host to the World Mountain Running Championships and this year there was a lot of local pride at stake as it was a Yorkshire Championships race.
745 fell runners assembled on the start line to run, walk and crawl their way round this challenging course. The course is 23.6 miles with 5,500 feet of climbing over Pen Y Ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough. 641 runners completed the course and I came 61st in a time of 3hrs 42mins. Despite being 7 minutes down on my time from a few years ago, I was quite pleased with my performance. The conditions weren’t favourable for fast times, the ground underfoot was extremely boggy and some very strong headwinds made the race very tough going at times.