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I’m concerned that the advent of social media is leading to an erosion in the spirit, values and culture that have always been so closely associated with our club fell race.
There is, of course, only one reason that we subject ourselves to this annual humiliation, it’s to try to get our name on the trophy and be immortalised in club history!
Occasionally this may be achieved through athletic excellence, but to the vast majority of us, this is an unattainable route. Fortunately, there is the alternative path to victory, that of ensuring a favourable handicap.
The methods of handicap manipulation are well known and deeply engrained in club culture. The easiest and most direct is to appreciate that many fell race organisers are open to bribery, corruption and occasionally blackmail. Seeking to capitalise on this is entirely within the spirit, values and culture of the event. But be careful, if you mis-read your target your chances could be doomed for good. Fell race organisers constitute a devious cabal (remember they have somehow achieved victory themselves in a previous year) and they will heartlessly spill the beans on clumsy attempts at manipulation to the current year inductee. An ill-advised approach could commit you to a lifetime of being last on handicap.
If you consider that the handicapper may be an honest ‘un (or more likely you think someone else has already nobbled them), then there are two other tactics to fall back on.
The first involves injury, feigned or otherwise, as a ploy to achieving the handicapper’s favour. Many consider that the bar for this has now been set impossibly high and that this path to glory is forever closed. I refer, of course, to Dave Crowther’s year in leg frames and on crutches (no handicapper could possibly have missed it) followed by his glorious run to victory in 2010. It may well be that Dave’s skiing mishap with a crevasse was a genuine accident. However many of us believe it was all planned as his only way of achieving another race victory and thereby constitutes the gold standard and true definition of the spirit, values and culture of the event.
Seeking less time in A&E, you may choose the alternative method of hood-winking an honest handicapper. This starts with several years of studied underachievement in the annual race. “Just jogging around at the back with the kids” used to be a popular excuse, but with “the kids” usually very near the front nowadays, this is a less useful ruse. Once you are happy that your fell running abilities are appropriately assessed, you embark on months of frantic and highly secret training leading to a ‘surprise’ result and well deserved victory on handicap. The essence here, of course, is that the training must be secret. Race organiser will be finely attuned to any hints of unusual activity in the months leading up to the event. Previous successful users of this ploy have been known to leave the area for weeks leading up to the race, or only ever venture out after dark for their secret runs. Watch out for the inadvertent slip, for example, unconsciously showing your secretly won fitness by burning your mates off on the walk to the crag. The “bin training for the fell race, youth?” comment can be a real crusher if your campaign has been running for years and your moment of glory nigh.
So why the concern about social media? Well, if you suddenly, in the months before the race, start posting details of runs on social media sites – ITS NOT SECRET TRAINING ! You know who you are and there is more than one of you! Now, I do acknowledge that you may be deliberately posting slow runs in an attempt to deceive the handicapper, whilst secretly tearing it up in your real training. In this case I thoroughly applaud your ideas to enlist modern technology into the historic dark art of handicap manipulation and your commitment to the spirit, values and culture of the event.
Best of luck to everyone in this year’s race. Sadly, I may not be able to participate this time. As anyone who had climbed with me this year will have noticed, I have been unlucky with a series of leg injuries since the spring. If I can walk reasonably, I will join in and limp around at the back, just to take part. It’s the spirit, values and culture of the event that matter, of course.
No! no! its me with the bad legs. Honest I’ve been having physio all year for it and just starting to get out again now 🙂
Concerned that my actual not being any good will be viewed as manipulation now.
Is this the correct forum to announce that my triple bypass heart surgery went very well this week, and they’ve managed to pin my leg that I broke tripping down the hospital steps on my way out… And that I should be just about fit for my inaugural fell race ‘run’ in a few weeks, all being well.
🙂
Right I’m just off to check out the route. I’m thinking of setting people off at different times so its more of a chase, so let me know if you are running (and of course any issues concerning fitness and ability, which will of course be totally disregarded during handicapping)
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