High Peak Marathon
New Ladies Record at High Peak Marathon
Press Release. Photo by John Dalton / 10.03.2009
Running a 26.2 marathon is one thing, to run 40 miles plus is another.The High Peak Marathon is an annual event that takes place from Edale every year. The difference is that Teams of 4 have to navigate themselves around the edges of the Dark Peak taking in all the obvious high points from Loose Hill to Stanage Edge and then over the Outer Edges to Bleaklow before returning along the Pennine Way and onto Brown Knoll. Oh yes, the race starts at 11 O’clock in the evening, when most of us are either enjoying a Friday night out or a quiet evening in.
With over 30 teams taking part the event is always over subscribed, attracts international teams and invariable the best ultra distance mountain runners from the UK.
Four local ladies from Dark Peak – Accelerate were once again on the start line. The Team of Kirsty Bryan – Jones, Debbie Smith, Rachael Horn and Janet McIver are no strangers to success. Kirsty, captain and navigator is an extremely well known orienteer with much mountain marathon success, whilst Rachael has competed internationally as a triathlete. Debbie is one of the foremost lady Adventure Racers, competing for the highly successful Team Accelerate Adventure Racing and Janet is considered the countries leading fell and mountain runner. So they have plenty of experience between them.
Last year they dominated the event taking around 2 hours off the ladies record. They felt going into this year’s event they could go faster. The ladies ensured first hand knowledge of the route they would take as they trained on differing parts of the way each weekend leading up to the race.
Debbie Smith, a local business woman combined this with the opening of a brand new running store, Accelerate. She combined working on the shop fit with a busy training schedule and continuing to successful compete in adventure racing. “Some days I just didn’t want to get out of bed and train, especially with the cold and the snow�. But train she did meeting up with her team mates most Sundays for runs over the Peak. It was Kirsty with the local knowledge and navigation skill who set up the Sunday Training. “Some days we were trying to run through 3 foot snow drifts and most of the peat-hag was frozen solid, yet there were occasions when you would sink to your waist and have to pulled out by the rest of the team, accompanied by plenty of laughter!�See All Event Posts
