FRA Juniors 2019 - Sedbergh

On a very wet and overcast morning we arrived at the People's Hall in Sedbergh in advance of Helm Hill's hosting of the FRA Junior championship for 2019. At the time it was so cloudy that the tops of the hills weren't visible and it was a worry as to whether it would be safe for the under 19s to run their full route as it took in 3 summits (luckily the weather cleared in plenty of time!).

After my marshal briefing I walked the under 9 route with my son so I could find the best videoing spot. It was a challenging if not too long a route for them:

My son and his friend walked some more of their under 15 route whilst I set myself up to film just below the under 9 turn. There were 26 runners from 6-8 years in this race:

After they had gone I walked up along the descent route to capture the under 11s. This shows how steep some of the course was:

In this race 54 children took on the challenge of the steep side of Winder:

There were a few fallers as they raced back down the hill:

Each race was running further up the hill so I had to keep on ascending myself:

There were 68 under 13s who had the next section of the hill to tackle:

Again the under 15s had a longer route so I climbed up to where they would be starting their descent:

They had another tough bit of hill added to their run:

61 runners came past me to run back towards the finish:

I then headed up to my marshalling point to ensure that the under 17s turned onto the correct descent route:

For the 29 under 17s the race route took them over the top of Winder itself before a proper run along the side towards me:

For the final race for the u19s I moved up to the neck between the 3 peaks (Winder, Arant Haw and Crook) that they would have to run up on their 6 km race:

It wasn't long before they appeared from Winder:

and headed up Arant Haw:

before tackling the final summit of Crook:

My video only shows the descent from Winder with some of the ascent of Arant Haw:

A fabulous race to be witness to. The full results are here.