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| the car park |
Nothing is easy round Glossop. Today saw my second encounter with the Crowden Horseshoe, and I was hoping that forewarned would mean forearmed and help me do a bit better on this tough course.
Pretty similar to the Kinder Downfall route in profile and terrain, the Crowden Horseshoe’s got rocky scrambles, narrow paths with big drops off the side, plenty of bogs and a cheeky dose of flagstones just to offer an extra chance to break your neck, in case you had missed it during the first part of the course.
This one climbs steadily upwards for the first 4 miles or so up to Soldier’s Lump which is just about as high as Holme Moss TV mast which is visible in the near distance. Rivers and streams that were trickles last year were well up this time round, which made for interesting running and crossing. Recent downpours had also given the bogs a helping hand and they were at their shoe-sucking best, coming just after the trig point and the previous few miles ascending to add an extra dimension to the race.
Once the turn is made at the trig point you strike back down a parallel route towards Crowden YHA, this part is undulating through groughs and bogs for a good few miles until some tricky descending back into the campsite.
I had a good few tussles with some other runners and everyone said how tough it was this time round – the weather was pretty fine except a brief downpour and a hailstorm over the tops.
I think there were 4 of us from Pennine there today, the rest of whom came in before me but I was just happy I managed to run all of the race as my comeback since chipping my ankle in April.
Next stop Cracken Edge on Wednesday!
http://fellrunner.org.uk/results.php?id=1423
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