On Saturday 2 September Adrian Townsend tackled the 22 mile obstacle course which is the Man v Mountain race starting at Caernarfon Castle in Wales, and four days later Toby Chapman successfully defended his title in the Sourton Tors Fell Race on Dartmoor.

Of Man v Mountain, Adrian writes:  “Last Saturday I ran Man v Mountain with my mate Chris. The route starts from Caernarfon Castle and weaves its way up to the summit of Snowdon and down the other side into Dinorwic Quarry then back up the Vertical Kilometre and finally back down to the quarry where there’s an array of water based challenges. 22 miles with 5295 ft of ascent. Chris had suffered a number of bad injuries in training so the plan was to run together at a steady pace, have crack at the vertical kilometre and enjoy the day. The weather was great and we got some amazing views as we headed up to and over the summit. At 25% gradient the vertical kilometre at 3 miles from the finish was tough and I paid for my efforts with bad cramp in both legs. The final challenges included a quarry jump with a lake swim, abseil and water slides with more lake swimming and a river crossing. All good fun with crampy legs! We finished together in just over 5 hours in 135th place out of 1197 and I was 2nd super vet for the vertical kilometre.”   It really does sound like fun!

Toby‘s race was rather shorter, at 2.6 miles, but nevertheless demanding, climbing, as it does, the 300m to Sourton Tor.  It is an evening race, which Toby won last year, so he had a title to defend, which he successfully did, winning yet again.  Toby says:  “always fun to go fast”.  Those were the days!