This was a race put on by Rossendale & Pendle Mountain Rescue Team and it attracted a few of our Wednesday pub runners.  The race was won by Sam Watson of Wharfedale.  The Barlickers finished as follows:

3 Andy Collins 50:22
15 Andy Berry 51:28
22 James Austin 54:24
38 Zac Kaye 57:30
61 Paul Elcock 60:43
68 Victoria Peel 61:32
84 Jacqueline Collins 67:14

174 starters

This event was held at Dalby forest and was the North Yorkshire Schools Cross Country finals.  This was the culmination of several rounds covering all North Yorkshire Schools.  

Jacob Reeday ran in year 6 boys and had a storming run.  He was well clear coming out of the woods, finished way ahead of the rest of the field and winning in amazing style.  What a way to win a final.

Lucille Pickles and Chloe Boothman ran in the year 6 girls.  Lucille had a great run and was 4th coming out of the woods, but she got pipped by a couple of other runners and finished 6th.  Chloe had a really strong run, finishing somewhere mid field.

This is an incredibly hard challenge, but even more so in the conditions which prevailed on the day.  Read all about it from the account of the day by John Boothman, from the link below.

Hardmoors 55 by John Boothman

Our two intrepid runners John "three races a day" Boothman and Lucas "ironman" Payne decided together to take on this challenge which is a 55 mile race, including 6,561 ft of ascent.  John was determined not to go off too fast but, as can easily happen in a race, he got swept along with the crowd and completed the first nine miles to CP1 at an average pace of 5.81 mph.  This was much faster than his target pace of 5 mph.  Lucas went off even faster, finishing the first leg at over 6 mph.  By CP2, there was a 12 minute gap between our runners and this is very much how it was throughout the rest of the race.  Sometimes, John would close the gap and then Lucas would extend it again. On the tops, all the runners were exposed to prolonged periods of extreme weather.  The wind would bring you to a standstill and your supply of water completely froze up.     The last big climb was Roseberry Topping, by which time, the gap was down to eight minutes, but John's water had frozen up again and he entered a real bad spell.  He forced some food down and drove himself on finishing quite strongly.  In the meantime Lucas pushed on finishing in 11h 14 m 54 seconds a full 22 minutes ahead of John. Given that they were up against specialist runners and the conditions on the tops were horrendous, this was a remarkable performance from both of them.

27 Lucas Payne 11:14:54 (31st overall)
34 John Boothman 11:37:39 (40th overall)

343 started. 164 finished.  179 retired.