Tom and Will were a bit of a mismatch over this particular terrain and brought us home in 6th. Myself and Matt worked through the field and at the leg 3 changeover had moved up to 2nd place, although we had lost a little time on the first team, Calder Valley. It was at this point we realised Calder had Ben Mounsey running on two legs. The rule states that a team struggling for a runner can run two legs but when that club fields a B team, I think they should promote from that team and an A runner could run a leg in the B team to help out. So this particular loss sticks in the throat a bit more than our previous 2nd place finishes at Calderdale. All teams get dropouts as we did this week, so we called lads up who had put themselves forward for the B team and so on. It should be about fielding your strongest 12 rather than 11. I have nothing against Ben, but I feel the competition was devalued somewhat this year. Anyway on with the race. John Whiteside and Shaun Chew lost a little more time but maintained their hold on second place before completing their leg at Blackshaw Head. On leg 4, Jimmy Craig and Nick Treitl started pulling the Calder lads back with a storming run. It's great to see Nick back running well. On leg 5, Luke Maude and Craig Shearer ran the fastest leg and the gap was down to 3 minutes at the final changeover. On leg 6 Ian Livesey and Gary Shaw chased hard but came up short, although they did run the full route without the shortcut across the field. So it was another 2nd place, consistent, but disappointing. The B team put in some cracking performances the pick of which was Virgil Barton and Chris Smale on the tough leg 4. They should've secured a top 10 spot but Dan Taylor and Andrew Chew got lost on leg 6 and they dropped to 13th. The C team were inside the top 30 which is fantastic and the ladies were 5th ladies team and only 4 minutes off the podium! Thanks must go to Halifax who do a sterling job of organising the biggest Fell relay in the calendar with 1200 runners taking part this year. Hopefully next year the rules will be changed to avoid the controversy of this year.