Heneghan speaks out at UKA relay DQing
John Heneghan
There have been some heated debates on various forums regarding Sunday’s outcome to the UKA fell relay champs in Ennerdale. John Heneghan, a member of the DQed Pudsey & Bramley team feels pretty strongly about the outcome…
Writing on the SSOT blog, John scribes:
The FRA relays, which took place on Sunday, marked a disappointing end to what has been a fairly good season for me. The first three teams in Sunday’s event were all disqualified for missing a checkpoint on the final leg of the relay, and this included mine and fellow SSOT member Rob Hopes team, Pudsey and Bramley.
Although there can be no complaint with the disqualification, I did think that there was too much emphasis on navigational ability in the event, clearly benefitting those with local knowledge, or the opportunity to go and recce a location that was a seven hour round trip away for me.
To my mind although navigational ability is a key part of fell running it should not be the primary factor deciding who wins or loses races, and courses should not be designed to be ‘tricky’, but to test the ability of the runner on upland terrain.
Fell running is about following the lie of the land, traversing ridge lines and reaching summits, not having to try and determine the best line through a forestry plantation, or reach an indistinct pile of stones. If I wanted that type of challenge I would take up orienteering! Although this may sound like the ramblings of a bitter looser, it’s not, it is simply my take on how a competitive fellrunning event should be organised.
We think this one will run and run – as they say!
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