It was the Scafell Sky Race at the weekend and it enjoyed some traditional Lake District summer weather!
This race is part of the Skyrunning National Series and as such it’s a highly technical race with sections of scree and scrambling and it packs 3,500m of ascent into 40k. As the name suggests, it traverses the summit of the highest summit in England. In short, it’s a very tough race but the reward for runners is that they’ll experience stunning trails in a beautiful area of the country.
And this year a very tough race was made even more challenging by the weather. The safety team had to make a call about which sections of the route were safe to run. The organisers considered using the ‘bad weather’ course, which is a last resort for very extreme weather conditions. Luckily the forecast was looking up in the hours leading up to the event so the safety team decided just to remove two sections of the route to keep runners safe. With the temperature dropping to 4 degrees, and a wind chill making it feel like sub-zero, Scafell Pike was deemed too risky and this section was removed. The organisers stressed that the safety decisions are not only for the runners, but also for the 20 volunteer marshals, for whom it isn’t safe to stand on freezing summits for many hours.
Here’s a taster of the race from another year when you could see a bit more!