Kendal Winter League- ''It doesn't get any worse''!

Well, after last weeks intro to these 'events', and, despite being recorded as DNF ( it must've been someone else who crossed the line with number 113 on then! Strangely, I FELT as though I'd run the course myself, only the organisers seemed to have missed me), I turned up again on Sunday, with Rhiannon and Mrs D-S-D.
Now, after the half lies and untruths I'd been told about last weeks event, Rhiannon had already told me (a) nothing else is as bad as last week, and (b) this one is a boggy course, and I was having difficulty reconciling these contradictory statements, as the starter told us it was 'wet on top' and to 'follow the flags down the wallside coming down', and 'GO'!

The run was up a steep climb, out over a 'plateau' ( an area of alternating boggy wet low areas and higher, well, boggy wet high areas) and Rhiannon, I'm sure had said the race takes about 50 minutes, up the hill round the plateau and back down, so I thought I was doing fairly well to get to the wall with the flags marking the route down in less than 20 minutes. ( The more alert reader will realise that there had been yet another misunderstanding). We had to run nearly back to the bottom of the hill then go up it AGAIN and retrace our steps through the bogs back to the finish, the highlight for me was not falling full length in one of the bogs, but seeing the guy I was running with do exactly that! I had 3 options: (1) Help him out, (2) run past him or (3) step on his back to get over the bog without getting wet! I chose option (2), life's all about making choices..............

So, soaked and mudcaked, we finished and went for some soup and chips at a nearby cafe with Rhiannon and Stu (who'd shown he had more sense than the rest of us put together by going off on his mountain bike instead!)

I'm going to keep at these races, if only because at some time the weather's going to warm up, the sun shine, the ground dry out, I'll run a route as I imagine it to be, and all will be well with the world.......................but then will it still be fell running?

PS Upcoming: Part 2 of Tatras Tantrums and Bavarian Bravado - a saga of the cross country skiers!