THE FELL RACING ETHIC
Foreword
What is so special about fell racing?
I believe that our sport has a unique ethos, made up of a core set of values that are fundamental to that ethos, and which collectively distinguish it from all other kinds of run racing, and all other sports.
In this article, my intention will be to outline as fully as possible exactly what these core values are, and why they are key to fell racing. I will also make the case that it is precisely this unique character which makes fell racing so enjoyable, and that it is therefore important that we cherish and maintain it as best we can, even among the inevitabilities of change. While outlining the great things about fell racing, I will draw regular comparisons with other forms of run-racing, and the ways in which some emerging trends in our sport may be mirroring those of other sports, and by doing so leading us away from the fell racing ethic. Although the alternatives to our way of doing things may hold some appeal, those alternatives are widely and increasingly served elsewhere, while our own unique ethos – small as the sport is – might easily be lost in the noise if we do not consciously try to maintain a clear and steady note.
Running and racing are not the same. Running is not a sport, it’s a movement; like throwing, like kicking, like jumping. Sometimes we run to escape danger, sometimes to try and catch the bus, sometimes for the sheer joy of the moment. Sports have arbitrary rules which shape their character, and they usually have a competitive aspect, because the rules provide a notion of better or worse against which we can compare performances. They usually also have very specific cultures and histories associated with them, far more than the ways that we move, which are physiologically similar among humans everywhere. It is the layer of rules, competitiveness and culture which turn throwing, kicking and jumping into Shotput, Karate and Long-jump, and it is this same layer which turns running into racing. Although there are many reasons to choose to go for a run other than for sport – all of which deserve deep and prolonged examination – I will not linger on them here, because that sporting (racing) impulse itself will be my focus. There are also many reasons that someone might choose to run over mountainous terrain specifically that have nothing to do with fell racing, and because the phrase ‘fell running’ must encompass them all, no sport’s governing body has the ability or authority to impose any kind of rules, limits or expectations upon the term fell running. If you are moving with a particular kind of gait over upland areas in a region where ‘fell’ is a word used for hills, no matter how or why, then you are fell running.
But fell racing is a sport, and as such it is very much open to the imposition of rules, limits, and expectations from those of us who participate. I believe that the character of fell racing has come to serve as an exemplary counterpoint to many of the troubling things that big professional sports now represent, driven as they are by a relentless push towards ever-greater commercialisation at the expense of all other considerations. But fell racing is also to some extent under pressure from those troubling things, and their widespread acceptance in other sports should not make us ambivalent about their advancement in ours, because the enjoyment gained from doing things the fell racing way is just too valuable to give up.
The Fell Runners Association’s ‘Principles’ (as outlined in the FRA Handbook) clearly legislate on some of the key rules of fell racing that mark it out from other disciplines, and refer in passing to many of the themes that I hope to provide a broader and deeper reflection of here. I won’t dwell on the obvious first and foremost compliment of our races, which is the general friendliness of their organisers and participants, because it seems to me that goodwill and kindness are important in every aspect of our lives, and so it should not distinguish sporting interactions from other interactions, let alone our sport from any other sport. Instead, I will try to identify as precisely as possible the ‘spirit’ of fell and hill racing in the British and Irish isles: the ephemeral aspects of fell racing culture that we cherish the most, even if we rarely articulate exactly what it is we are cherishing. None of these virtues in isolation are unique to fell racing, and none alone could mark out what is great about it, but all together give rise to an emergent sense of joy that only fell racing can provide.
Participation in fell racing is growing as part of a wider turn towards ‘nature-based’ sports, partly in thanks to its similarities and overlap with the more international notions of ‘trail’ and ‘ultra’ running. We should be glad that races are rarely now under threat of unsustainably low turnouts, but we should be mindful of subtle changes that can happen without us noticing what is being lost with the change. I do not suggest that every fell runner should only ever run in the fell racing spirit, but rather that when we go fell racing, then there is a certain kind of way we should go about it, newcomers and old hands alike.
So what follows is an examination of five core fell racing values – simplicity, communality, creativity, effort and responsibility – why I believe them to be fundamental to the sport, and why all together form a unique and precious ‘fell racing ethic’ that we should all strive to maintain.
__________
Simplicity
A typical fell race is about as low-key as a formally organised event can be. A handful of runners gather in an often-soggy field, on an often-soggy day, and shiver uncomplainingly until somebody shouts ‘go!’ and they leg it off up the hill. The climbs are gruelling, the descents are startling, and at the end of it all the only things you receive are an approving look, a pat on the back, and, if you are really lucky, a sandwich and a flapjack, and the opportunity to buy each other a pint at a nearby pub. They are straightforward, unpretentious events, and deliberately so, because they are organised on the principle that the only reason you are there is out of a desire to actually do the race. Of course, there is a certain amount of excitement and sense of occasion that comes along with some of the more prominent dates in the fell racing calendar, but this is still only a simmer – brought about through natural shared anticipation – compared to the full boil of commercial events.
Although simplicity may seem to be a merely aesthetic consideration, preserving a modest profile does much more than maintain the right ‘look’ for the sport. Instead, it reinforces the attitude at every event that we as participants are focused on the activity itself and its immediate social role, rather than on the spectacle of the event and a desire for ever greater public profile.
‘Hype’ is a potent marketing tool, which is why it is one of the defining features of almost all for-profit running events. Races organised as part of a business strive to outdo each other with claims of having the most difficult course or the best atmosphere, and they compete over how many lead-up emails they can send you telling you to ‘get excited!’, how loudly they can blast the pump-up music at the start, and how much tatt they can throw at you at the finish. Yes, all that fanfare can be quite fun, and most of us dabble in it from time to time, but it is all there as a distraction from just how simple the activity you are being charged for actually is: getting together and sharing a competitive run. It is clear that the profit motive pushes most organisers in a similar direction, which is towards selling as many entries as possible, but then trying to impress upon the participants the idea that they are about to do something special, unique, and awe-inspiring, in spite of the fact that the activity (running) is a basic human movement, and that by selling the same story to a thousand other people they have immediately disproved how special and unique you actually are to be doing it. Fell racing, by comparison, keeps its feet on the ground, and its eyes towards the hill. Running is simple, and racing can be too.
Of course, it was arguments over the muddying influence of money that gave rise to the pettiness of the amateur/professional arguments of the past, where winning a fiver made you a ‘professional’. We shouldn’t begrudge a great runner making a few hundred quid in prizes over the course of a season, or perhaps even taking on a sponsorship of the ‘shoes-for-photos’ kind, but I believe it is essential for the light-hearted and low-key feel of the thing that fell racing remains almost entirely amateur in the true sense of it not being anybody’s job. This is not because it is inherently wrong to make money from games, but rather because of the importance of preserving parity and playfulness in our game.
Professionalism brings with it the luxury of being able to build each and every day around what is best for your running, and that is a luxury that most people do not have. If, on any given weekend, those kinds of professionals were lining up alongside the rest of us farmers, bricklayers, computer programmers and sales assistants, we would not be engaging in a fair fight. Any comparison of times becomes muddied in these circumstances (Billy Bland’s 14 hours and Kilian Jornet’s 13 on the Round That Must Not Be Named, for example) because it is not like-for-like. Impressively, an amateur will sometimes beat, or come close to beating, a full-time professional (Finlay Wild, as a doctor, being only 7 minutes adrift of Jornet, as a professional runner, for example), but the exception should not discount the rule. In such cases, I feel it is helpful to place an asterisk by the records of professionals, to help to maintain appropriate regard for the additional skill of racing under the regular daily stresses of non-running work.
Of course, the contrast in resources between amateurs today and professionals today is probably less than between amateurs today and everyone running forty years ago. Our access to in-depth running data – let alone nutrition choices, kit options and the rest – is considerable. But while terrible shoes might stand in the way of a record-breaking effort at the sharp end of the sport, the best shoes in the world (despite what marketers would have us believe) will only give you a marginal speed gain on anybody else; they will not turn you from a decent runner into an elite runner. On the other hand, having the plentiful training time, recovery time and expert support of the professional athlete just might.
Some might argue that to really see the ‘pinnacle’ of human achievement, an elite group must be free to train and race without the stresses of another job. That is probably true, but what is immediately at risk when sport becomes work is the playfulness that likely drew us into the activity in the first place. Attempting to strip away as much of normal human life as possible, and elevate the activity to a science, in order to become purely a vessel for the demonstration of maximal human capacity, would change the questions I think most of us ask ourselves at the starting line of a fell race from ‘how fast can I go today?’, to questions such as ‘how fast can I contract my muscles, metabolise my food, and optimise my oxygen intake?’. Then we have stopped playing, and started working. But we are not training machines, we are people, and it is the dance of motivations, talents, knowledge, preparation and luck that makes a sport interesting to take part in, not pure capacity in and of itself.
There are no clear-cut definitions here as to what counts as professional, it is a sliding scale of time and money. Jack Kuenzle, for example, is not paid to run, neither by sponsors nor prizes, and is therefore not ‘professional’, but did dedicate months of time off work to chase the Bob Graham record. Fortunately what is at stake is the amateur spirit, not amateur absolutism, so there is no need to legislate over how much money is too much money. Professional runners are welcome to come and take part in the sport of fell running, because openness itself is a precious feature of our races, but when they do, they should be mindful to engage with the sport on its own terms, and limit the obvious commercial aspects of marketing fanfare, sponsorship promotion and sheer seriousness that their professionalism engenders.
So even if pigs flew and all of us were offered footballer salaries to race each weekend, preserving parity by making us all highly paid professionals, I hope that we wouldn’t take it, because it would destroy the playful atmosphere that we cherish.
Aside from the negative influence of too much money in racing, there are also the parallel distractions of fame. All sports gain big names, usually the names of ‘the greats’; figures who are considered to be the best-of-the-best throughout the generations. It is inevitable that racers will become notable by their achievements, and it is helpful to young runners to have people to emulate. But while role models are something we can benefit from, outright celebrities are something we can do without.
Throughout the last fifty years of fell racing history, the best runners of the day have always been accessible, no matter how notable their achievements. Although the origins of the Guides races were steeped in gambling on hot-ticket superstar runners, participation has opened up considerably since then, and our sport has become – for the better – an inclusive one, where everyone is welcome at the start line, race times speak for themselves, and nobody gets too big for their boots. Everybody takes part in the same event, whether they are fast or slow, which means that we all have ample opportunity to mingle and talk, get to know one another and learn from one another in a community of equal respect. For a total beginner to have a crack with Joss Naylor or Billy Bland, they need only to walk over at the end of the Wasdale or Borrowdale race and strike up a conversation. This normality also helps to keep the elite runners’ feet on the ground, and avoid the more egotistical aspects of notoriety.
But perhaps due to our increasing consciousness that fell running is a part of a global family of mountain racing sports, there is a slight trend away from these helpful role models and towards outright celebrities. This seems largely in step with the increasing prominence of the long individual challenges, because of the focus they create on one person (no matter how often those people might try and deflect attention onto the large team there to support them). Hundreds of people cramming into the centre of Keswick to catch a glimpse of the latest international BGR record attempt hopeful may create an exciting atmosphere, but it also creates an aura of invincibility around top athletes that does more harm than good to the sport.
But why should fell racing preserve its modesty? Are the efforts put in by those ‘big names’ not super-human? If you ask each of them, they will tell you; no. The biggest issue with ‘celebrification’, is precisely this elevation of role models into idols, because it is less conducive to records being broken to view them as untouchable, rather than replicable. The psychology involved in visualising what is attainable and believing themselves to be worthy of it has a part to play in how close elite runners can get to impressive records, and also in how the rest of us conceive of the progress it is possible for us to make ourselves. It is good to be reminded that times do change. The Bland BGR record was so familiar to many of us that the fact that it went seemed, in a small way, like a kind of loss. But it was just a time, just a very fast run that somebody did many years ago.
Individuals who are in such peak physical condition as to be able to take on extremely impressive feats of speed or distance, are not achieving the impossible, but instead by definition proving what is humanly possible. This is not to suggest that it takes no effort to do these huge challenges of speed or distance, but rather that the taking of that effort should be viewed and celebrated as human in the extreme, and not as something impossible for ‘mere mortals’. It's neither necessary nor helpful to elevate people to god-like status, and most of them don’t want to be put there in any case; it happens not because of how the individuals themselves behave, but rather because of how we treat them.
Another important issue with ‘celebrification’ is the narrowing down of a wide range of potential role models to a revered few, limiting our notions of what ‘success’ in fell racing looks like. It is always worth broadening the range of names we bring into discussion when talking about ‘the greats’, because the fell racing world encompasses a huge variety of distances and styles of race and challenge, and there are countless different approaches to success that can be taken when considering efforts and outcomes. There are also many great champions of consistency, participation and community service within the sport who deserve much more respect than they get, because being a big name in the fell racing community should not only be about setting records and winning championships. Perhaps Lindsay Buck and Darren Fishwick are the kind of ‘celebrities’ that fell racing could tolerate!
Respect and inspiration is key, but idolatry is anathema; we don’t get hung up on individuals. No autographs, no selfies, no superstars. No big money, no big hype. Go for a run, have a conversation, make friends rather than heroes. Keep it light, keep it fun, keep this thing on the ground. It’s just a game, after all.
__________
Communality
It is a principle of fell races that they are open to all comers. This is an essential part of them being first and foremost community events, because it is important that everyone in the community is able take part if they want to. And by community, I mean the actual local population, rather than the ‘running community’. It is not the case that we should want everyone to do fell racing, but what we should want is for everyone within fell racing areas to feel welcome and encouraged to participate in the sport at the local level, because these are first and foremost local events.
Personally, I would always rather see a participant from the village racing in a t-shirt and walking boots – having a go and having a laugh – than a serious competitor who drove five hours to get there, (though fortunately, there is almost always room for both!). That is because the aim of a place-based sport is not to grow, spread and dominate. The aim is to reinvigorate the places that the sport grew from, and be reinvigorated by them in return. To do that, the event must strive to involve everyone in those communities who has any interest, no matter their sex, gender, ethnicity, class, income or any other criteria that we have learnt to divide ourselves by.
We can always do more on this score to encourage local people to come along in the first place, and discover that for themselves. I suspect, for example, that there are many more people living stressful lives in the post-industrial towns of our upland areas for whom the release of competitive running could be a perfect outlet for their emotions, but who do not necessarily have an obvious route into racing. In the last few decades women’s participation has been overwhelmingly normalised, but women still make up only a quarter or so of runners in many races, so it also seems to me that more encouragement could still be given to women to have a go, especially to try and counter the apparent tendency for girls to give up sports during the teenage years. Even more lacking within fell racing is the participation of people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds: in an area like Bradford, where 25% of people identify with an ethnicity other than ‘White-British’, we might hope to see more than 1-2% of the area’s race’s entries be drawn from those groups, but that is how things currently stand.
Maybe something suggests to people that this isn’t the kind of activity that they would want to try, given their lack of experience, their background or their position in society. It may be the case that nothing is excluding people other than their own perceptions, but we need to pull them in, and say ‘you’re welcome, we want you to try this, because this is a local event, and we all share this place’.
I firmly believe that entry on the day is a precious component of fell racing, and one that I would hate to see disappear entirely, for precisely this reason. Despite the administrative convenience of pre-entry for many runners and organisers, EOD preserves exactly the right sense of spontaneous accessibility that I want to see in the sport, if only for the sake of have-a-go local runners.
It is also important that fell races remain generally affordable, because community events need to strive to be accessible to everyone, and not everyone has much money to spare. Running is about as low-cost as a sport can be, and the FRA kit requirements for racing fortunately keep things this way. Of-course, some folk are trotting around in nigh-on £1000 worth of gear, but no matter what anyone tries to sell you on, none of that is the real difference maker. A slow runner in expensive shoes is still a slow runner, and a fast runner in cheap shoes is still a fast runner. A quick glance around the shops shows that a very basic but brand-new set of FRA Mandatory Minimum Kit can be had for £50, plus trainers, socks, shorts and a vest all together for about the same, and probably everything second hand for half as much, making the costs of entering the sport – and being competitive within it – relatively low.
When it comes to the events themselves, the FRA Principles take a clear stance; Fell races are not organised for profit. Entry fees are therefore usually mercifully cheap, even for some of the longer dates in the calendar (£2 at Blisco and £4 at Caw are absolute bargains, Steel Fell is an unbeatable £0, and even the long classic Duddon comes in at a mere 34p per km). And even within that low fee, many races also manage to act as fundraisers for charitable organisations within their communities, such as local schools, outdoor centres and mountain rescue teams. Crucially, most good fell races are not ‘parachuted in’ to an area by unfamiliar organisers, they are organised by local runners – often through their clubs – for the benefit of other local runners, with the usual smattering of offcomers being more than welcome to come and experience the area. Club membership is also usually great value (£10 seems to be the going rate), although many clubs will welcome you to run with them regardless of whether you have membership or not. It’s a friendly scene.
All of this, of course, rests on the notion of volunteering. The organisers are volunteers, not business owners, the marshals are volunteers, not employees, and club committee members are volunteers, not administrators. There is a strong culture among fell racers of taking a second to sincerely thank the marshals, either on the summit, at the finish line, or at the prizegiving, because without them, the events would not go ahead. Runners volunteer to help other runners keep these events going – fell races are built on friendships, not payslips. It galls me to see commercial races merrily putting out the call for volunteers to come and ‘get involved’ when there are long standing non-profit events who rely entirely on volunteers for their existence. If your business relies on other people working for free while you work for an income, and that is the only way to make your business profitable, then it not a viable business.
But it does cost something to put on a race, and so some entry fee is all but inevitable. Sponsorships can help keep this fee minimal, but they are a double-edged sword, bringing with them the distinct whiff of commercialisation, and all the problems that raises. I believe the appropriate response to sponsorship entirely depends on the nature of the sponsor. Some businesses (the Pete Bland Sports of this world) have proven through longevity and dedication to be so clearly and fundamentally supportive of the character of fell racing that it seems churlish not to actively welcome their money or their prizes, and accept their logo in return. Some others are nothing to do with running per se, but are active local businesses that are keen to support (or at least be seen to support) community events, without asking for much in return. But there is a clear line, and over it lie multi-national corporations who having nothing to do with fell racing communities, but would no doubt have their name emblazoned on the side of the mountain itself if anyone would but let them. We can all tell the difference, and I hope we would all know when things have gone too far. The day I am encouraged to enter the Coca Cola Three Peaks Race, or the Red Bull Fairfield Horseshoe is the day I shall stop racing.
Running clubs are of course an integral part of the fell racing scene, and not only form a visually pleasing multi-colour montage on the start line, but also reinforce and advocate for the friendliness, competitiveness, and non-commercialism of fell racing as a sport. They are communities themselves – when rocking up to an unknown race, it’s always reassuring to see one or two familiar faces with the same vest on – but are also a part of the wider communities of the towns and dales from which they draw their names and identities. And in that role, they form the essential network that meshes fell racing with fell-race-hosting-places, the strength of which is not only vital for the logistical harmony of the events themselves, but also fundamental to their character as community events. Clubs are also the bedrock upon which the entire culture of race volunteering is built, and it bears repeating again how essential that culture is to the continuation of a broad, busy and varied racing calendar. Fell racing could exist without clubs, just about, but it would be a much poorer sport without them, and one far less embedded within the places where we race these hills.
Having outlined the case for fell races to be treasured primarily as local events, I would also like to promote the idea that fell racers – if they strive to be champions of anywhere – should primarily strive to be champions of their local races. The history of fell racing is one of people spending most of their running time in their immediate area and racing their local circuits, taking occasional excursions to nearby regions, and venturing further afield for the handful of events of national significance. I believe that this is still largely the way that fell runners today approach their calendar, and I hope it remains so, because it not only reinforces the community-first priorities of races themselves, but also because it maintains the opportunities for place-based identity formation that local networks of runners all benefit from.
Taking this approach, the fastest racers in the country should be first and foremost local experts who dominate their village race, winning 10 years in a row, because participating maximally within their own community demonstrates their grounding in the spirit of the sport, and an authentic effort over their most identity-forming terrain. Of course, they will be national competitors too, because we all like to see (or be part of) head-to-head matchups between the best racers representing towns, clubs, counties and countries, but that is the icing on the cake of frequent local participation. One tangible demonstration of this commitment to locality are the races which give out a ‘first local’ prize, in amongst all the prizes for every combination of age and male/female. It’s a small thing, but a key moment of recognition that the first local is something worth celebrating.
However, with the advent of easy transport, disposable income, and ample leisure time, those of us in ‘developed’ nations have become inured to traveling relatively huge distances to satisfy our interests. Many of us have races not only across the UK, but across Europe and the rest of the world on our ‘bucket list’, despite the fact that we may have almost no relationship to the places those races happen in, and may bypass a hundred other closer races to get to them just because they have idolised status.
There are a number of issues with this increasing globalisation of racing, prominent among them the environmental impact of frequent long-distance travel. Jetting around the world to turn up and run around for a few hours is not necessarily a worthy use of planetary resources. I give full marks to one inveterate racer I know who cycles all over Cumbria to just about every race he runs, puts in top-end performances and then cycles home again. His range is largely dictated by his ability to get there and back under his own steam in a day, and he is an ever-present face at local races because of it.
But there is more to this issue than burning fossil fuels. The loosening of the tethers which tie people to places they inhabit is a social phenomenon centuries in the making, and one of its impacts is the style of our interactions with places that we visit. We bemoan tourism as a brash intrusion upon a place, but cause just as much irritation to locals when we go somewhere else, act as though we own it, and offer no deference by accepting our status as ‘tourists’. This is also true of races, when we arrive suddenly, spend a short time battering the local soil, and then depart, maybe never to return, because it has been ‘ticked off’. This treats the race as an isolated interaction, not a thing of the place which deserves some wider appreciation (like staying in the area, learning about it, and giving signs of appreciation for it, including – of course – pennies in the tills of local businesses).
The international ultra, sky, mountain and trail running calendar is not a bad thing. It is a wonderful forum for the best-of-the-best to test themselves against one another, and for us all to discover what is humanly possible. It is simply a great shame that to take part in such a thing, copious jet fuel is usually burnt. But it is also a shame – and an avoidable one – that such a thing provides a model of participation (arrive, conquer, depart) that does not promote best practice to the rest of us. Instead it furthers the prominence of the ticklist mindset, over a commitment to more genuine community engagement.
I don’t say we shouldn’t run and race elsewhere. Of course not; we all love to run in different places. It is exciting to run on new ground, in new surroundings. Most of us would find it exhilarating to run on perfect alpine trails or along coastal cliffs, across deserts or down snow-packed roads in the arctic, as well as on the fells. We do not have to pretend otherwise, nor to dismiss the opportunity for international competition if it arises. Instead, I say two things. Firstly, prioritise the local: be a master of the immediate, and a student of the far-way. Secondly, when you go somewhere new to run, go with commitment. Make it part of a wider exploration, and an immersion, while retaining respectful acknowledgement to those locals (runners and non-runners alike) that you are a visitor: be a good guest, not a transitory disturbance. And of course, take the greenest transport available to get there.
We are an open, accessible and fundamentally place-based sport, which contributes to the health of our communities, and those things are not ‘nice to haves’, they are essential.
__________
Creativity
In both the lines inherent in our racing, and the imaginative explorations we contrive outside of the racing calendar, route creativity is a core element of the fell racing ethic.
The first form of this creativity is the ‘route salience’ of races. Fell races are designed to be a series of open options between mandatory checkpoints, and the prevalence of two kinds of checkpoint distributions in particular are fundamental to the sport, because in fell landscapes they are the two most salient routes imaginable. One is the out-and-back, and the other is the horseshoe. The out and back reflects the undeniability of the top of the hill as a local landmark, especially when the starting point is within the village and there is only one checkpoint (the summit), while the horseshoe reflects the undeniability of the valley as the vessel within which local upland life plays out. These routes are rooted in their places.
While it may seem that the distances of most fell races – 2.8km, 17.3km, 22.8 miles, etc. – are arbitrary, it is in fact entirely the opposite. Hill racing routes accord with the distinct geography of the landscape they occur in, and they take their distances from it. It is in fact the set-distance road and trail events (the 10k, the 50k, the 100 miler) which truly bear little relation to what is on the ground, favouring as they do entirely arbitrary human units of distance for the sake of an easily sharable and repeatable marker of achievement. The notion of the ‘ultra’ is even less intuitive, and to consider anything beyond that 26.2 miles to somehow be a separate category of thing to everything beneath it is no more than good marketing built on a singular arbitrary tradition. For example, a road 50k has more similarity to a road half marathon than it does to the Tor Des Geants or the Spine Race, even though all three are ‘ultras’.
Because each fell race is such a unique combination of variables – distance travelled, elevation gained and lost, steepness and camber dealt with, ground conditions tackled – there are also no ‘standard’ times over fell distances. Each race stands on its own merits, and someone’s time for that race only makes sense compared to other times (theirs, and others) at that same race. This of course, is in clear contrast to the understandable obsession with split-second timings that comes from having meticulously controlled and standardised courses in track racing, and the minute-chasing ‘PB’ culture of road marathons.
A good fell race is homegrown; it traces the underlying landscape as simply as it can, with checkpoints being at natural prominences or bottlenecks along the way. These checkpoints form the nodes, and the lines runners take between them form the connecting links. Faster links are always being sought in the interests of a quicker completion of the circuit, and in most cases almost anything goes. We are not constrained to paths, we make our own way. The peak bagging fell walker is obsessed by tops, and the ultra runner is obsessed by distance, but most fell runners are obsessed by lines; by thoughts of flowing over the contours of the land with ever greater fluidity. This creative hunt for the best line gives rise to much of the interest in race routes among runners, and means that intimate affinity with microscopic deviations that shave off seconds become a particular point of pride among course aficionados.
Open route choice and the need for navigational competence is what sets fell racing and orienteering apart from other disciplines, and the fact that the nodes are prominent and salient, rather than obscure and hidden, is what distinguishes the former from the latter. The advent of affordable, wearable GPS devices created the need for clarity on their use in fell races, with the FRA eventually settling on a firm ‘no’ in order to preserve the integrity of route knowledge and navigational skill as key determinants of success at all races. Fell races pay homage to the contours of their setting, and prioritise them over the whims of arbitrary units of measurement and prior path creation. I am glad that we compete in the Goatfell Race rather than the ‘Arran 10k’, and the Old County Tops rather than the ‘Lakeland Summits Ultra 60’. We use our wits and our imaginations to forge the paths we take, but we take our lead from the land while doing so, rather than forcing our ideas upon it.
The second form of fell racing creativity is the imaginative exploration of non-race ‘fell games’. There are broadly two kinds of fell running challenge, categorised according to whether they are sporting or not. Many people dream up running routes with a mindset and motivation simply to get out and experience the world, rather than blast through it at speed. There are no particular rules to their endeavour, and no times in mind, only a desire to run and be engaged with their surroundings. These challenges are fell running, of course, but they are not fell racing, and in that kind of pursuit it is wisest to keep any guidelines, ambitions, or extraneous faff to a minimum, to allow the sheer peace that the landscape can bring to shine through.
But many of us often go a step further, and built constraints into the route – tops we must hit, paths we must take, things we must or must not take with us – and also set our stopwatch to it, so that we will know if we finish under some stipulated time, and know how we stack up against all the other times that have been achieved on the same route. That process is the process of creating games, and to my mind it is clear that these games fall within the sport of fell racing, because it is essentially a time trial; a race undertaken against the clock, rather than directly against others. I refer to them as fell games, to avoid confusion with the ‘calendar’ fell races.
Ostensibly and laudably, the purpose of fell games is for us runners to find either a kind of flow state, or to find the frontiers of our capabilities, where we are operating in accordance with everything we know how to do, but in a new place or in a new way, or at a new level – for longer, further or faster – on a route with some salience to the community, and some salience to us as a part of that community. It is identity forming to us because of the place in which we are running, and at the sharp end it is also identity forming to elite runners because they are pushing what is possible, as highly skilled human movers. And as a by-product of all of that, these games can be inspiring to others, who see what is possible, and are encouraged to try and find that flow state, or those frontiers, for themselves.
There are essentially two route motivations to all of these fell games: tradition, and personality.
Any runner who completes a Bob Graham Round, has in effect taken on another person’s challenge – Bob Graham’s – and while doing so they adhere to long-standing rules of an established route and time. These are old traditional games, and challenges such as these form a key part of the racing community. They are often somewhat arbitrary in their choice of routes or checkpoints, because they are based on the subjective preferences of individuals, but they have nevertheless been repeated by hundreds or thousands of runners over the decades, gaining a significant enough reputation along the way to become core traditions of fell racing. They tie us back to the history of the sport, and tie us together through shared experience.
Anyone who designs a new route, but does so by choosing cultural/ historical lines or checkpoints – for example the ‘Six County Tops’ (Highest top in each of the Peak District’s modern counties), ‘Abraham’s Tea Round’ (every top visible from the café in George Fisher’s, Keswick), or the ‘Great North Inns Run’ (Kirkstone Pass Inn, Cross Keys Inn, Moorcock Inn, Old Hill Inn) – is essentially launching a new prospective candidate for a traditional game, because they are not only salient routes to the creator, but also salient to others in the running or the local communities. Some of these routes will take their lead from our interpretation of the landscape; tracing a ridgeline or a river for example, while others will take their lead directly from society; linking landmarks or features of public knowledge and note. For a couple of decades after their creation it is usually too soon to tell which ones will stick around and become established traditional games – passed on to the next generation of fell runners – and which will fade away and be forgotten, and this uncertainty is what distinguishes them as the new traditional games.
The third kind of fell game, the personal game, by comparison, is any route that probably will not be particularly relevant to others, because it speaks mostly only to one’s own experience as a runner, and as a person. For example, that might be running between the two or more houses where you have lived, running every top you can see from your bedroom window, or just chasing a personal-best on a favourite route based on individual aesthetic tastes.
Both personal and traditional games have their merits, and are potential sources of self-exploration and self-realisation. But I feel that in recent decades, too much emphasis – especially among newcomers to fell running – has been put upon the pursuit of old traditional games, at the expense of designing, pursuing and promoting new and personal games.
The reason that the trods of the Bob have become well-worn is not only because local fell runners keep running it, but because endurance runners of all kinds come from far and wide – even internationally – to do it, and give it more focus and status than countless equally brilliant challenges waiting in their own back yard. This emphasis on the inherited tradition is likely an inevitable product of the desire to fit in, to not miss out on what others are doing, and to have the comforting ‘brand recognition’ of a known route when describing your achievements to others. These are not flaws per se, but over-reliance upon them results in handful of totemic rounds and records overshadowing all of the creative breadth of possible adventures. Not only does this saturation of certain routes place a considerable environmental burden on their immediate area, but it also makes the sport less expressive, and therefore simply less interesting. The bucket-list mentality brings people from far and wide to a place they know little about, to tick something off and leave, while other great options fade into obscurity. Picture the images of snaking queues up to the summit of Mount Everest, while a hundred similar Himalayan peaks offer extreme seclusion and personal achievement in every direction, and you get the point.
Several years ago I was at a talk, where a Cumbrian, born and raised within sight of the fells that he set records over, was asked about whether a Catalonian would try and break one of those records. He didn’t seem bothered one way or another about if it would happen, but instead seemed a bit perplexed as to why it would. “What do these hills mean to him?” was the question he asked, and it was a good one. What they meant to the visitor of course was a part of mountain running history and tradition, and by all accounts the record run was done with the best will in the world. But if it encourages the rest of the best in global mountain running to make their own way to the Lakes to try their feet at the same thing (as Mr. Kuenzle’s superlative effort this past summer has already demonstrated that it might), each time with further publicity for – and pedestal-putting of – the route, I think a dis-service will have been done to fell racing. Local runners on such challenges are usually very keen to help their friends to complete them, because there is a strong culture of each helping each: you earn your support crew through your support of others, and through your long engagement with the local running community. But very fast visitors often rely on the generosity of strangers for their own support, without the prior investment having been made, and I worry that repeatedly capitalising on this generosity will become little more than taking advantage of people’s goodwill. In an even more disappointing trend, we have seen the quiet emergence of paid guiding services on these rounds that supposedly represent a culmination of individual commitment, hard-won mountaincraft skills and local community support, and not much could erode the virtues of non-commercialism, playfulness and modesty more than that.
The focus on a handful of traditional games also has the wider effect of over-promoting more extrinsic motivations to undertake challenges, at the expense of potentially far more satisfying personal motivations of athletic inventiveness. It seems that many runners only dream of faster and faster times on the same well-known rounds, rather than championing new rounds and exploring lesser known challenges. Maybe this is partly because it is easier to draw upon that supply of external motivation for well-known fell games than to draw upon our own fallible supplies of internal motivation for something obscure. In many ways it is easier to train the body for extremity, and leave decisions over purposes in the care of others, than to make endless choices over relative importance, while trying to push the body so far beyond its willingness to keep going. Although I can never begrudge those who complete superb feats their athletic performance, regardless of why or how they do it, I do wonder whether more joy and satisfaction might be gleaned away from the cheerleading of the public announcement, the online tracker, obsessional split-time management and a large support team.
It is inevitable that the elite of any sports will end up chasing first ever and fastest ever, but there is plenty of space for the rest of us to spread the load, to explore new and interesting routes and imaginative challenge styles, and by doing so reinforce a precious maverick tone within fell racing culture.
__________
Effort
Perhaps the fell racing virtue most obviously on display to those watching an event, is that of effort. I believe effort is not only related to competitiveness, and to success, but also – at both ends of the results list – to respect for our fellow runners.
There is a broad regard shared amongst fell racers for achievements across all kinds of distances, because we recognise effort above all, no matter the specifics of time, distance or terrain. Fell races do not compete with each other to be the hardest, gnarliest, most difficult challenges the world has ever seen based on their raw miles-forward and feet-up figures, because there is an implicit understanding that difficulty over a given distance is a consequence of the effort given over that distance. I could go out and jog a marathon tomorrow without too much discomfort, but I will never in my life be able to run a marathon in two hours. No fast fell runner would find it overly taxing to stroll around the Langdale race route on a day’s walk, but every fast fell runner who has entered that race for the past forty years has found it impossible to do it in anything under two hours. The mile and a half of the Alva Games could be the toughest race of your life if done at the right speed. Every race is as hard as you make it for yourself, and every race can also be just as difficult for the first-timer as the super-fit – given equal effort – because their bodies are adapted to different degrees and will suffer drastically differently at precisely the same pace. The common refrain from those who blast round a course in bad weather is that those twice as slow as them had a ‘harder’ race, because they had to persist against the bad weather for twice as long. That is not misplaced humility, that is reality, and it is part of the distinction between race efforts and race results.
Fell races can be challenging in many ways; overcoming trepidation, exhaustion or fear; making difficult navigational choices in poor conditions; or managing energy and pace over a variable course, to name just three. Perseverance in the face of such adversity provides many of us with a significant sense of achievement and satisfaction. It is effortful suffering in the spirit of self-discovery.
But as much as putting in a strong effort serves our own benefit in a fell race, it also serves the wider atmosphere of the competition. In this regard, the cliche ‘it’s not the winning that counts, it’s the taking part’ has some truth to it. The winning does count, of course, but the taking part is absolutely essential, because if you won a race with no competition, you wouldn’t have really won in the sense that anyone wants to win. And crucially, when I say, ‘no competition’, I mean both in the default sense of if there were literally no other runners entered (which would not be as satisfying as beating the field), but also in the sense that if there were no other runners giving any real effort you might win so easily that it would not be satisfying either. If, in a lead pack of five runners, the first four decided halfway round to stop and go to the pub, the fifth might be pleased to win, but far less pleased than if they had won against the other four.
So when we participate at the back of the field as a ‘taking part-er’ it is an act of generous good sportsmanship to still always be trying to put our best foot forward, just as we would if we participated at the front, because winners rely on the ‘losers’ having shown genuine effort, for their sense of winning. For those of us not challenging for the podium, at the race’s end the most helpful and positive thing to do is not to dismiss our own efforts as an ‘also-ran’, but to share in common assent that everyone tried hard, it was hard for everyone, and the fastest person rightly won the event. If that is true, then the race was a competitive success. Likewise for those at the sharp end, setting store by your own achievements pays respect to the efforts of your fellow competitors, whilst winning and then dismissing the winning as irrelevant (in words or acts) shows a disregard for their genuine trying. Putting in effort during a race displays respect for those ahead of you, and those behind you, and the event as a whole.
I have taken it to be obvious that the point of a race is for runners to compete against one another, and against the clock. If not, why record places, or times? This competitiveness requires genuine personal effort, as I have discussed, but it is also helped tremendously by the presence of proper individual and tribal rivalries. I believe sport to be a superb outlet for emotions which we would think of as detrimental or unhelpful in many other circumstances, and there are two such emotional outlets which fell racing can exorcise perfectly.
The first emotional outlet is for strong – not to say aggressive – individual competitiveness. When the whistle goes, our willpower, forcefulness and desire to dominate are given permission to run free. We do not usually want to all cross the line together holding hands, we want to beat our competitors. It is a fight, albeit a fun one, and because the rules constrain our tactics, it is a good, fair fight. It is very evident that, often, record times are the result of two or more fast runners pushing each other to the very limit of their capacity, dragging out the last drop of energy that they would not – or perhaps could not – have found without that competitive psychological motivation snapping at their heels. But when the finish line is crossed, all of that fighting energy is cathartically flushed from our system, and we can shake hands and congratulate one another; the battle done and the hatchet immediately buried in the comforting ground of friendship. Age categories and genders further extend our opportunity for competition among peer groups, and if nothing else applies, there’s at least always a runner in front of you or behind you (or your own best time from a previous year) to spur you on, no matter where you place overall.
The second emotional outlet is for group competitiveness. The presence of clubs (and counties and nations) provides the perfect backdrop of place-based identity and performative belonging to let our strong urge to form in-groups ‘off the leash’. This urge is of course responsible for numerous tragedies and horrors throughout human history, but it is so deeply ingrained in us as humans that instead of trying to ignore it, or bottle it up, I believe it is essential to find ways to engage with it that can be fun and harmless, instead of destructive. I can think of few better ways to do this than sports teams, both as a participant, and as a fan. A large group claiming superiority over a smaller group based on exclusionary criteria has all the hallmarks of imminent violence, while a broad collection of roughly similar sized groups maintaining loyalty based on criteria to which all have comparably strong claims can be enjoyable for all. Wearing tops of different colours is ultimately arbitrary (maybe you prefer one design other another, but it doesn’t actually matter which colour you are wearing), and being from one place or another is also ultimately only a matter of petty distinction, because everyone can choose to be from somewhere. This is exactly the kind of light-hearted tribalism that we can all take part in on a level playing field (or, rather, on an un-level hillside). The fact that some races are ‘home’ races for certain clubs adds to the interest, as does the mock-outrage of club ‘transfers’.
In short, rivalry can be healthy if done the right way, and fell racing is full of fierce competition and healthy rivalry up and down the field, alongside real friendship among those rivals throughout it. Long may it stay that way.
__________
Responsibility
There is a subtle point of distinction between the entry culture of fell races and the entry culture of the for-profit racing scene. The marketing materials of the latter try to square the circle of at once impressing upon those seeking a challenge how difficult their course is, while also reassuring those just looking to stagger across the finish line that they will be able to do so. For-profit races have a strong incentive to get as many people involved as possible, so they do not mind a proportion of runners biting off more than they can chew, as long as they remain safe, and their entry fee remains safely in the bank.
Fell races by comparison have a strong ethos of warning people against trying to jump the gun. We do not enter Jura until we have done at least some measure of hard uphill apprenticeship, and we do not enter Trigger before we have at least some quantity of mountain-craft experience to deal with adverse winter conditions. For beginners, there are a fantastic array of shorter and less severe races, and for the experienced, a good choice of very hard options. This culture of personal responsibility is the fundamental reason why the FRA’s mandatory kit list exists, and the reason why we are not only supposed to carry a map and compass, but are meant to be able to use them too. The expectation is on runners to be self-sufficient; there are no aid stations, there is no hand-holding, and success depends entirely on the strength of your preparation, your experience, and the effort you put in (and just a smidge of good luck, too…).
The difficulty of races is designed not only to be formidable, but also formative; an opportunity for incremental development into a better, faster, hardier, more fell-wise racer. This approach in turn creates a bond of trust between runners and organisers that each fell runner can and will take responsibility for themselves as far as they possibly can. Meanwhile the prevalence of aid stations in most commercial events, even in distances shorter than a half marathon, while long classics like Wasdale go without, belies the truth that for-profit events mainly just need to get you to the start line, and then encourage, cajole and metaphorically drag you through their course, no matter what condition you are in. The quote sometimes seen goes – ‘Races always hurt. You don’t train so that it doesn’t hurt. You train so you can finish.’ – but in far too many cases, this is taken not to mean hurt, as in the ‘pain’ of fatigue (which is inevitable), but rather the pain of real bodily damage and injury, in which case the idea becomes completely wrong-headed. We do train for fell races precisely so that the distance of the event does not break us, or at least, that’s the idea. The grind-culture notion that a race should be a nightmare of pain, where you stagger across the line and are told you are awesome for having tolerated the pain, should not be welcome in fell racing. Of course there is a balance, because people must be allowed to go beyond their comfort zone and take a calculated leap, in order to make progress, but it is irresponsible for organisers to push runners to undertake things far beyond their current capacity, because that way accident and injury lies.
And just as we take responsibility for our own safety, we should also take responsibility for our impact on the running environment. In some ways the two go hand-in-hand. The idea that operating at a high level of exhaustion inevitably creates waste because the only thing we care about in the moment is moving forward, is self-fulfilling, giving ourselves ‘a pass’ in ways that should not acceptable, given the very low importance of a race event compared to the environmental burden such behaviour might produce. If a run makes you so exhausted that you feel unable to carry your own water bottle and keep hold of your own litter, you ought not be doing that run until you feel that you can. An unfortunate result of the cajoling mindset of many road races is the significant amount of waste involved in many commercial events – literally hundreds of plastic bottles scattered across the road after being used for all of 10 seconds – in stark contrast to the self-sufficient ethic of fell running.
Of course, there is a tension in fell running between our use of the land, and the impact of that use. Every footfall causes a certain amount of damage to what is beneath our feet, and popular routes can become over-trodden, just as with walking, biking and the rest. The responsible approach is to do our best to go lightly in all ways; to spread the burden across routes, to not disturb what we do not need to, and certainly at the very least to leave nothing behind us except those footprints.
__________
Afterword
I believe that fell racing was, is, and should remain: simple, communal, creative, effortful and responsible. Race organisers hold a lot of sway in these matters, as does the FRA, but our sport is a very small one, so the personal actions of individual runners have the greatest impact of all.
Although many of the points I have raised may have been well made by others before, in The Fellrunner and elsewhere, I can only express my hope that I have at least provided a comprehensive and persuasive exposition of them, that might serve as a useful reference point for beginners and old regulars alike.
I hold my hands up to engaging in the habit of identifying faults in others that reflect the parts of myself I like the least. I see how I could and do contribute to all of the threats to fell racing that I have identified, so this has been, and will be, as much a reminder to myself about where the real value in fell racing lies, as it is a manifesto to others. It is not just an imploration to you, to be the fell racer I want you to be, but an admonition to myself to be the fell racer I want to be.
I do not want to see something strong weakened in favour of what seems inevitable. Inevitable is easier, but easier is not always better. Sometimes, what’s best of all is what is already there. Fell racing is pretty low-key, pretty hard, pretty fun, and very friendly. And that’s pretty close to perfect.
__________
This essay was originally written for The Fellrunner - the journal of the FRA - for Issue 135 (Winter 2023). To listen to an audio version, please click here.
Sincere thanks to Daniel Clarke, Matt Owens, Andreas Sorger, Sam Clarke, Sam Wainwright and Carol McNeil for their helpful feedback on early drafts of ‘The Fell Racing Ethic’.
Bobby Gard-Storry
Cumbria, 2023