The future of running vests?

Would the colours of the club vest have an influence over which club you joined? I don't think it would for me. It also seems not to for any members of Dark Peak Fell Runners as their shirt is brown and purple!!

So if you could design your favourite fell running vest, what would it look like? Here are a few examples that have been designed by some of ever-young members of Pennine - note the tassles on the first one.

I'd like to apologise in advance to any clubs who find their best fell runners leaving in order to design their own vests to rival these ones. They probably feel, like I do, that 60s-inspired flower power designs are sadly lacking in amateur and professional sport.

For those who would like to see what other club's vests are like currently, there's a handy guide here as part of the Durham Fell Runners site. You'll notice there is a startling lack of love-hearts and tassles.

Exciting kitchen utensil news

I realise it's been a while since I last posted, but it's all been a bit dull in the world of Noel. Mrs Noel has of course been doing well with her running and was first lady at Famous Grouse fell race, which was more than a month ago now.

So why have I posted now after such a long period of inactivity? Well, Santa brought me something that I felt I had to share with the world. It's an apple peeler and corer. I'd seen one of these at a friends house a few years ago, and was delighted to get one for Christmas - thanks Mum. However, when I describe it to people, it's a bit hard to visualise (even with arm movements and analogies to other kitchen utensils).

To fully bring it to life, I've had to step into the 21 century and video the proceedings. Interestingly, once I'd uploaded this onto YouTube, I noticed there were several other videos of exactly the same thing. Anyway, this one is mine. Enjoy!

October means ...pumpkins

I'm not a great fan of Halloween, but have become more interested in it once I found a good recipe for pumpkin curd. 'PUMPKIN CURD?' I hear you say. I agree it does sound a bit strange, but it's largely like lemon curd but with a slight pumpkin taste.

The good thing about pumpkin curd is that you can scrape out the pumpkin you're going to make your children's lanterns out of. Because of this, I've almost convinced myself it's free. Although I have got three pumpkins this year and not just one as normal.

The recipe goes something like: scrape out a medium/large pumpkin (which gives about 4lb of pumpkin flesh). Cook this in a pan with about 25ml of water until it's soft. Then handblend it. Add about 3.5lb of sugar, the rind and juice of 6 lemons, and 300g of butter or marg. Cook it on a low heat so it only just boils (apparently it can curdle, but I've never seen this). After about 15 minutes, turn off the heat and add 3 beaten eggs. Unless you strain your eggs (which is a hassle) you'll get stringy white bits in it, no matter how well you stir it. So... hand blend it again until it's nice and smooth. Jar it and eat it before the end of the year.

So far I've only tried it on toast and in sandwiches, but I've had the idea of making halloween pumkin curd tarts. I'll report back on this if I do.

For those of you who read this blog due to an interest in fell running. I'm afraid this is my 3 month off-season. Luckily, Mrs Noel will continue racing through the winter. She's been doing some short hill reps this week to build up her leg strength. No races to report for a few weeks.

Windgather - trophy wife

Occasionally, Mrs Noel does a race where all her Christmases come at once. Windgather was one of these. It was the final race in the Gritstone Series, the final race in the Goyt Valley Series, and had category prizes for the race as well.

Mrs Noel was pretty apprehensive about doing a long race, as she's never done one before. She's also been put off the idea by my abject performances in most of the long races I've ever done. This has made her think that she too will not be able to do long races unless she trains up to that distance.

Fortunately, the reality was nothing like her fears, as she romped through the field to finish second lady, some way behind the clearly very talented lady who finished 3rd overall (!!)

Among Mrs Noel's various prizes, the most notable was the excellent Goyt Valley Series first lady trophy (pictured here). Races and race series somehow seem to have more gravitas when the organisers go the extra mile with the trophies.

Ian Hodgson Relay - Victory for Pennine

After Stanage Struggle two weeks ago I was considering winding down my running for the year. I had no more target races and there were four better runners than me who made up the men's half of the 8-person mixed team for the Ian Hodgson relays. But then disaster struck the Pennine mixed relay team camp, as one of our runners came down with a respiratory infection and they had to turn to first male reserve - me.

This was great news for me, as I really like the idea of competing as a team. It also meant that Mrs Noel and I would be part of the same team. We thought we were in with a fair chance of doing well, as our lady's half of the team is strong, and despite also having a Vet40 team, and a late-entry open (men's) team, we put a lot of our better men in the mixed team.

For those who don't know it, the Ian Hodgson Mountain relay is a 4-leg fell relay race where pairs of runners do each leg and then hand over to the next pair. Overall, it takes about 4-6 hours for the whole race. The rules state that you have to run together. This means if you're with a runner who's faster than you, you have to do your best not to slow them down.

I was given the first leg, along with my teammate Muir, who is faster than I am, but not embarrassingly so. Our leg was about 4.5 miles and had about 2800 feet of ascent in it. This is really very steep compared with most of the fell races I do around the Peak. However, I've done races such as Scafell Pike in the past which are similarly steep.

The good thing, for me, was that it finished in a higher place than the start, so there was more climbing than descending on the route. Luckily, we managed to find ourselves behind a few pairs of runners who obviously knew the route very well, so we could pick the best lines and follow a good pace. After a terrifying descent down some screes, we finished our leg 9th out of about 60 teams. I guess I would have kept up with Muir a bit better on the final descent if I hadn't stopped to take a photo on the way down. Only joking - this was taken on my reccie the day before. Note how much it resembles an 'aerial' photo.

We then handed over to Mrs Noel and her partner Lucy, who proceeded to run the 3rd fastest lady's time on their leg. After some great runs from the other 4 team members, we won by about 10 minutes. I think this is the first time Pennine have won anything at this event, and it's definitely the first time I've won anything. We should probably have taken a team photo, but we were too busy being grinning and patting each other on the back.

I can now wind down for the season on a high.

A trip down memory lane

Up until this year I have belonged to the Fat Boys running club. This has meant I've not been allowed to run the Stanage Struggle (which the Fat Boys organise), as it's a club unwritten rule that club members help out with marshalling, registration, etc instead of running the race. This is a very good idea, as it makes the Stanage Struggle one of the best organised fell races in the Peak District.

Now that I'm a member of Pennine, I'm allowed to run it again. Mrs Noel is in the same boat (former Fat Boy, now Pennine) so we agreed that one of us would marsall, out of good will towards the Fat Boys, and one of us would run it.

Mrs Noel ran yesterday at Lantern Pike, and took 1 minute of last year's time to finish 3rd lady. I've just finished a slice of the lovely date and walnut loaf that she won. This all meant I got to run the Stanage Struggle today.

Last time I ran the Struggle, in 2003, I was just getting into fell running and felt good enough to end with a sprint finish. This ended in tears, however, as I then collapsed after the finishing line and was sick. I was hoping to pace myself a bit better today.

In the end I managed to overtake a few people on the long and fast descent to finish in 8th place (20 places better than 2003) and about 3 minutes faster. It's nice to know my seven years of fell running have helped. If I'm another 3 minutes faster than today in 2017, I'll buy you all a pint.

Motorcycle plum mayhem

We've done two races in the last week. Longnor races and Padfield Plum Fair Scamper.

Longnor races mainly involves motorcycles and horses, but they also have a fell race at the end of the day. I've not done this race before and I was eyeing up a possible victory when I was told there were only 13 runners.

The race goes twice round the track so it was very good of Dark Peak's Mick Stenton to warn me to avoid the motorcycle ruts as they can be very muddy. After the lap of the track, we were directed off through fields onto a small course that we were to do two laps of. Just as we were leaving the track, I was thinking about when I should time my challenge on the lead of the race.


It was then that Jason Burgess of Staffordshire Moorlands went past us all like a speeding train, and went on to take first place by a street. I managed to edge into second, and was very pleased to win a nice lead crystal vase.


Padfield Plum Fair Scamper is one that we've both done on previous occasions, but it was Mrs Noel's turn this year. She was as quietly competitive as always while checking out whether any of the elite ladies were there. In the end she improved on her time from last year and won first place and a nice bottle of fizzy. There was a good Pennine turnout, but unfortunately our men's team were pipped to the team prize by Helsby.

I should mention our Pennine team-mate Steve, who completed his first top-3 finish (of many - I feel sure).