Fell Handicap 2023 – results
It was a record year of 59 runners. Thanks to all who ran & helped & of course to our friends at St Dunstan’s who welcomed us this morning only 5 & a half hours after their village event the night before.
Annette, Jo, Ruth, Wendy, Elf Rob, the Bunyans’, Mark, Dave & Billy did a grand job enabling me to put on the day.
Particular thanks to Sarah for handling the food money and entry forms, Tom for doing the unenviable task of handicapping and event marketing, Annette for help at start & finish & getting results out at the end of a long day (further delayed by rescuing her 90 year old neighbour this evening), and the Lynas’ for mince pies & acting as lost property monitors!
Sadly we had a few casualties, Sarah not feeling well & rescued by her husband, Robert with a twisted ankle (taken home by the Bunyans’), & Swatts with a heavy fall on the steps at the end fighting for 2nd. Hope you are all OK. Lastly, well done Vanessa who sacrificed her race to help a road accident victim, glad that belatedly you got a run
Congratulations to Gillian on a great run, clearly on song & fully committed, and to Simon for a sub 2 hour run in tough conditions. Well done to Egg, fastest lady on her first attempt which I failed to spot on the day
St Dunstan’s happy to host again next year, so we will need to set a date.
Cheers, Phil
Post race analysis of handicaps (‘cos who doesn’t love some stats?)
It was tough this year! Record entries and over half the field hadn’t run it before or raced at all in 2023. The sloppy conditions also come into play, where shoe choice can easily affect times.
We had 48 solo/teams out, of which 30% came within 5mins of handicap, 52% within 10mins, and 70% were back by 12:15. Of those outside this time, in my defence 25% either had either been given the time they’d requested, or had been set the max handicap time of 3:30 (we’re very happy to include people that take longer, but we do need to set a limit for the competition). A further 2% were ‘unlucky’ – Sorry about that, perhaps you should have tried harder or worn better shoes!
The three top spots came from people returning from injury/illness – something for me to reflect upon next year (not least my own time, which BTW was vetted!).
Congrats again to Gillian for her well-deserved win. She has been out of action for 4 years due to long-term injury and came in 2 minutes ahead of her last Handicap race run in 2015. A fantastic come back and one that is noted for next year’s times!
Thanks as ever to Phil for continuing to inspire us all with this cracking event.
Cheers, Tom
