Written by RO Lou Osborn
10 days on and we’re just about recovered from the sleep deprivation and mental and physical stresses of organising a 24 hour ultra event! It seems the right time to reflect on the event and to share our thoughts with all of you who competed and those who helped us to stage this race.
In 2019, we took on the ‘10 Peaks’ which was an established ultra event that visited the 10 highest peaks in the Lake District. It was our first time organising an ultra and we also put on a 10 Peaks – Brecon Beacons edition later the same year. We learnt a lot from both events and met many great competitors and volunteers who have stayed with us ever since.
There were a few things which we felt that we could improve on moving to the ‘Lakes Ultra’ event. The support point food wasn’t great and we had issues with the transport required to bus people out to the starting point – Swirls How car park under Helvellyn. We also found out how crucial it was to have the right people on your events team – we needed experienced, friendly, supportive staff and we knew just the people!
We also felt that we could provide a better route that started and finished in Keswick and, using our local knowledge and expertise, plan a challenging but rewarding course for both the long and short courses.
So, the Kong Lakes Ultra was born! After many nights of discussion, we finally decided the details of the 2 routes and began the necessary preparations for the event. In hindsight, this was a little too late as entries only opened just before Christmas and we missed many runners who already had other races taking place on similar dates.
On the day, 43 people where on the long course and 45 on the short – low numbers but good for us on this inaugural event as it allowed us to test out these new courses and logistic plan to see how it went.
The feedback on the event was exceptionally good – better than we had hoped – with the only negative being that many people hated the Wythburn valley, a route that the Old County Tops fell race uses every year. We have considered other options to this but they would involve extra mileage and height gain and would make the route too similar to the Bob Graham Round.
Many runners on the long course even stated how they enjoyed the out and back to Pillar as it gave them chance to see others and this was not something we had especially anticipated. From our point of view, the only part of the course that we are possibly considering changing is the section from Esk Hause to Stake Pass – we are going to merge the 2 courses here so they follow the same line, making the logistics for us at base easier to control.
We had decided to flag the route this year for several reasons. We felt that it would provide a safer course and would allow those competitors who were not as confident at navigating an extra option in addition to the race map and the GPX. We were also under strict instructions from the National Park that our race route must be followed and runners not deviate off the agreed course. As fell runners will naturally cut corners and choose the fastest line, we had to stop this from happening and thus flagging seemed the best option.
The results from our online survey which competitors have filled in showed that 96% of the runners would have entered the race if it wasn’t flagged. We did receive one complaint from a member of the public about our flags ‘littering the fells’. We ourselves are not entirely comfortable with flagging the route in terms of the eyesore created by them and the potential damage to wildlife and nature from ripped flags etc so it is definitely something we are discussing with landowners, environmental consultants and our event team about how to manage the route next year without the need for extensive flagging – watch this space!
We were lucky with the weather initially. In the lead up we were dreading having to revert to the bad weather route before the race had even begun. Our Winter Series of fell races have been burdened with bad weather over the last few years so we were all crossing our fingers! At roughly 4pm on the Saturday with the race well underway, our safety team received a weather warning message for particularly high winds, gusting to 50mph from late evening. After holding a short team meeting, we knew we had no other option but to switch to the bad weather route and get people off the high fells before the weather set in.
We managed to get all the runners off the high fells by roughly 8pm and many of the later competitors said they really enjoyed the bad weather route – silver linings!
The first person back to the event centre and the finish line was our good friend Mike Robinson who won the short course, building on his race victory at the 2019 event so a double event winner – not bad for someone who had a bad back!
Alice Kershaw won the women’s short course with great support from her family – hopefully she will be back next year!
The long race was won by 2 amazing athletes – Thomas de Lotbiniere and Emma Stuart – both setting fantastic course records that will be very difficult to beat!
It was particularly impressive for us to see our good friend, Lesley Malarkey, aged 73 years young, complete the short course – what a total inspiration!!
In both courses, we had a total of 6 people retire, some from previous injuries that flared up and some because their bodies were just not up to it this year. There were 41 competitors who finished the long course, with just 8 of them completing the whole route. In the short course, there were 37 finishers with 34 completing the whole route.
Our survey response highlighted that 100% of competitors thought that our staff team were excellent. That was so nice to hear – our events team are all experienced runners who just want to do their bit and put on an event for other people to enjoy. We also had many members of staff who work at our shop and climbing centre and their enthusiasm, generosity and good humour made them a pleasure to have help out over the weekend.
We are incredibly grateful to our event sponsors – INOV-8 – who have supported us in terms of prizes and event funding. And finally a huge thank you and well done to all of the competitors who were friendly, enthusiastic and inspiring!
We hope that next year’s event will be just as successful and will attract more runners to come and enjoy our event – the date is set for Saturday 24th June 2023 and entries are now open on SiEntries HERE. Hopefully we will see many people returning next year! Check out more details on the race website: www.kongultra.com/
And if you’re reading this and thinking of entering the second edition but want to see what’s in store, check out our race promo film and what the runners thought of the inaugural event below…
