I tell the kids at school all the time, especially the older ones, “you should know better than that!”. Well I think I should know better than to agree to do a “proper fell run”. The North Yorkshire Moor fell runs are certainly scenic, mostly challenging, occasionally muddy and quite hilly. However, they are considered quite tame in the world of fell running – glorified trail races. My map reading skills hover just above a learner driver, the many lost miles where I’ve got lost in Hamsterley Forrest are a testament to that. So again, I should have known better than to do a fell race which involved scaling three “mountains” and a little bit of map reading.

Nick had asked if I was interested in trying a fell race, specifically the Three Shires fell run, “about 12 miles long” he said. “Not a problem” was my reply, always willing to give something new a try (although I was sober when I agreed). I travelled with Nick along the A66 to the Lake District to Langdale, a good clean two hour drive. The race had a minimum kit requirement, which wasn’t a problem personally, and there was a good range of reasonably priced kit and equipment for sale for those without.

I parted with my £6 registration fee and signed on the line which basically absolved the organisers of liability if I died along the route. The organisation of the race was spot on; the race started from a pub which was offering the usual wares of hot tea and flap jacks and there was a man with a loudspeaker telling us about the conditions up top.

The race set off at 11am and it was a quick mad dash around the road and straight into a river. No really! Yes, it was only knee deep, but it was a little shock to the system to have wet shoes within five hundred yards of the start line. Out of the water, we hit the first gradient. I elected to run this race sans iPod and Garmin – I really regretted that over the next hour as I climbed solidly for 65 minutes. There was lots of mud, grass and rocks and it was steep. We climbed for an hour, pulling ourselves up. I became quite infatuated by the man in front of me, I spent over an hour watching his backside lumber up the mountain. He was wearing innov8 trainers and the same Ronhill socks as me. I think he also ate a lot of fibre that morning.

When we got to the top I realised that visibility was down to about five metres. I found the first checkpoint by following the man’s bottom. There was a man with a whistle asking for our race numbers, I shouted mine out and decided to stop and have some well deserved jelly beans. I started running again, this time I followed something a trio of much nicer things to look at. I guess I wasn’t alone because there was a gaggle of gentlemen also following the trio. However after about ten minutes they decided that we had come too far and we were lost. I then realised how very out of my depth I was.

The talk in the group turned to bearings and points, with a flurry of maps and frenzied arguments I just stood and wished I was running laps of Newton Aycliffe or Croft. We jogged around and then one of them recognised a “crag” and said we needed to turn south. We did and they all buggered off at suicide downhill speed leaving me pottering gingerly down the hill with no visibility. At this point I started to pray, I had absolutely no idea where I was, even with the map! I considered how reckless it is to do a race like this so unprepared. “Proper preparation prevents piss poor performance” rang through my mind as well as the fact that my mum would probably bury me wearing a tie I don’t like – if they found my body.

Eventually I caught sight of another runner, I flogged myself up the second climb to catch him up. We stayed together until we came out of the mist. He then stopped and told me to go on, I guessed he didn’t want the company. I had a quick look at the map and kinda figured out which direction I needed to go in. I put the legs into gear and bombed it along the flats, I eventually caught up with two runners. I stayed with them through to the next check point. Apparently we made it through the cut off with only a minute to spare! So far I’d been on my feet for two hours and I’d only done 5 miles!

The couple of runners I had caught up with were Beryl and Carl, a married couple who had reccied the race several times. They had hidden bottles of energy drinks along the route, which they kindly shared with me. I stuck with them for the rest of the race, up two more climbs, although the final two weren’t a patch on the first couple. On the route in, I fell and rolled down a wet muddy embankment, grabbed onto a thistle for support while trying to climb onto a rock and smacked my shin quite nicely into a rock.

I finished the 12 mile race in about 4 hours and 50 minutes, a full two hours after Nick and three hours after the winner. I think I finished about third last. I’ve never been on my feet running for that amount of time, the pain in my legs is a testament to the physical challenge of doing a race like this in such unique conditions.

Throughout the race I thought to myself that “I’ll never do this again”, but there was never a second when I didn’t enjoy it. Overall, it was an amazing experience and a fun race when I knew where I was going. I wouldn’t recommend anyone does this without being able to read a map and navigate in low visibility. In doing so, I put myself and others in danger. I think that I need to learn some map reading; next year I’m gonna take at least an hour off my time!