Hope Moors and Tors 20m Challenge 03 October 2010 Gavin Long reports: Wow! The figure of 8 route visiting Hope, Castleton & Edale, as well as the summits of Mam Tor, Hollins Cross and Lose Hill would be a testing enough 20 miles in good weather. On Sunday however, we battled torrential rain and storm-force winds which made it one of the most memorable races I’ve ever done. We’d already covered 8 tough miles before the climb up Grindsbrook Clough – think of rock climbing at the beach and you’re pretty close - then somehow we had to cross the thigh-deep river. And when I say river, don’t picture a gentle, flat flowing stream. This was more like a waterfall, cascading with incredible force. It was pretty hairy knowing that one slip could send you crashing down 30 metres over the boulders. Finally we reached the top for the fantastic ridge run over Edale. If you’ve never run this, I strongly recommend it. It really is a fabulous path. Unfortunately, this time it was a bit windy. The gusts were driving the rain upwards and over the rim of the ridge. These waves then collected grit to pebble dash our faces. It was hard to see, it was hard to keep upright and at sometimes it was just hard to know whether you were moving. Once back in the valley, the wind had lessened but the rain was heavier and was now being driven into our faces as we slipped and slid across muddy fields. The imposing silhouette of Lose Hill, the final climb of the day, ominously appeared through the mist. It was a long, slow slog uphill, the reward for which was a fast downhill to the finish. Unfortunately as my knee stops me running downhill, I frustratedly watched others shoot past. Paul, in preparation for the Beach Head Marathon, made the whole day seem remarkably easy, and wasn’t even perturbed by submerging to his shoulders in one of the rivers. Steve, in one of his last races in the MV40 class, was again very impressive with a top 20 finish. At the end we were given a print out of our split times between the 10 checkpoints. You can imagine that it seemed a very long journey home with Steve analysing the data and questioning how it had taken Paul and I so long to complete some of the stages in comparison to him. It was great to be back running with them again. The course profile: