Carl Bolton was there to spectate and Mark France had decided that he could risk not attending. Nigel Barnes and Duncan were also absent. And so Jonathan Stubbs became the bookies favourite to take the magic 150 points.

Heading out towards Wetherlam from the start Jacqui and all the male Dashers, unusually, were grouped together leading someone to comment ‘There’s a lot of Darwen Dashers in this race!’ After hearing horror stories about the climb to the summit from both Jamie and George, I latched onto a group taking a different route up in the hope that it’d save me getting stuck in the traffic of about 300 fell runners in single file. It paid off to a certain extent, gaining me about 100 yards on the people I was with at the bottom at only the cost of a life threatening climb over wet rocks. I paused here to get some film footage and looked up towards the mist shrouded summit and the long line of runners ahead.

Between Wetherlam and Swirl How we were cheered on by Rebecca and Barry and, further on, by Carl Bolton. Julian caught and passed me here, impressing me with his navigational skills (no, really!). Using his thumb compass and map he mentioned that we should be on a path at that point and started to bear downhill slightly and then the path magically appeared out of the gloom. I was content to use my tried and tested method of just following somebody else.

Dropping down Great Carrs towards the Three Shires stone at the foot of the valley we came out of the low cloud for a while. I’d been descending gingerly due to my bad ankle and I passed a runner who had obviously gone over on his and was pulling out. This didn’t do a lot for my confidence and, right on cue, Jonathan flew by me.

Now we were climbing up to Blisco summit and I found that I could manage the uphills ok and so put in some effort here to both drop Jonathon and gain on Julian. At this tricky, rocky checkpoint you have to double back on yourself briefly so I managed to get a shot of Julian starting his descent as I reached the top. Given my poor downhilling I was surprised that I could see Julian for a lot of the next section as we now descended towards Blea tarn. He pulled away slightly on the way up the steep climb to Lingmoor , my lack of long runs suddenly taking their toll. During the prolonged, sweaty trudge I took time to shoot a few rearward glances to make sure I was still holding Jonathon off. Reaching the top with camera rolling revealed a) some marshals amused and delighted at being filmed, b) a fantastic panoramic view of the Langdales and c) no sign of Julian.

I knew that the final part of the course was approaching and it was a flagged zig-zag through the ferns to the road and finish at the Three Shires Inn. I felt sure I had no chance of catching Julian (I found out later that he was starting to cramp badly by now and so I might have stood an outside chance) and so set about hanging on to my 145 points for second Dasher. I also set about hanging onto the ferns as I tried to slow myself on the descent!

The final run in to the finish seemed to take an age as I ran in with a Lady runner from Horwich. I managed to shoot some very wobbly film as I crossed the line and then helped myself to a well earned scoop from the dregs of the orange juice (and dead fly) tub.

This was my first real Lake District fell race and I really enjoyed it. Despite the low cloud of the first few summits the conditions improved considerably to reveal some absolutely stunning views. It was a hard event so to compete in it after assisting on a BG attempt is pretty impressive so kudos to Jamie, Julian and Kevin. It’s also worth noting than Jonathan managed to knock about half an hour off his time from last year.

Video of the race here