It was my first attempt at doing the nav leg as no-one else seemed keen to volunteer. After a great first leg by Karen, Katherine & Jane headed out on the long pairs leg.
Right on cue they arrived back in the event field, ready for myself and Kim to head out to the woods to pick up our maps for leg 3.
The checkpoints were marked on and need to be visited in order. I managed to take (correct) bearings and with Kim's encouragement, we ploughed our way across the tough terrain from the first checkpoint via the Pile of Stones down to the furthest point of the route then back up again ! We crossed bogs, broken walls, contoured around spurs hoping the bearing would come good. We were encouraged by the sight of fell-running legends Angela Mudge and Wendy Dodds en route. I was delighted to find that I could actually locate the checkpoints and relieved to get back to the Bill Smith memorial gate which meant that we were back on the stream-side path and heading onto familiar ground. Unfortunately Kim took a bit of a tumble on the return across the fields and twisted her ankle which meant that she had to hobble back to the finish.
Emma had already set off in the mass start for leg 4. She did well to get round in a decent time and, most importantly, in one piece after her recent injuries.
Once the results were out, it was a pleasant surprise to find that we were 6th v40 ladies team in a very close race. We had no idea that we were less than 2 mins away from a medal! Not bad considering that everyone was carrying injuries or insecurities before the race.
The men's open team had a strong result in 58th place overall 👏👏👏
Another great day on the fells in fab company 💜💚💜
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