Punk Panther Green Gateways

There's a running joke (sorry, not intended - blame it on a lack of sugar) in our running club concerning me and a race called the Belvoir Challenge. This is a local trail race in March over 16 or 24 miles, and specialises in mud - this is a central feature of every piece of publicity about it. I don't do mud running, so I've only done this race twice - the second time was to see if the first time had been as bad as I remembered (it was). Since then, its been "the race that Martin doesn't do".

So instead we entered the Green Gateways race. This is a 20 mile event (13 and 34 miles were also available) based out of Otley in Yorkshire, running in an anti-clockwise loop down to the fringes of North Leeds and back up again. Its a "urban trail" event, which means its a mix of fields, bits of moor and woodland, and some running through town parks and other urban areas. It's a real mix, and reminded me of the RRUM race in Reading I did some years back.

However, this is Yorkshire, which means hills. It was also just after the snow and ice had melted. And at registration and race briefing, there was a lot about mud. It didn't take long to work out that this was basically a Yorkshire version of the Belvoir Challenge, with their definition of hills and mud. Smashing, Gromit!

Our start was 8am, which was just after when sunrise would have been if the sun had been visible behind the clouds. And, just to make us feel at home in Yorkshire, the biggest hill on the entire route (and 25% of the total route height gain) was in the first mile, straight up the side of the escarpment onto the moor. Nothing like a couple of hundred steps to warm your legs up and get you ready for the next 19 miles. But at least there was a viewpoint at the top - which would have been a great view apart from the cloud. 

Once up, the next few miles were trail and moor, running south towards Yeadon and Rawdon. Going varied from rocks and tree roots to grass - and yes, also the mud, thus ensuring it was going to be another run in wet feet. I thought I'd had enough of that in the Outer Hebrides. However, the varied nature of the route meant that you were never doing anything for too long - we descended a set of steps and found ourselves in Yeadon, running down the High Street and round the pond in the local park before vanishing back into residential streets.

"Oi, not there, down the next one" yelled a guy out of a house window when I was about to turn down someone's drive - my Garmin's map view is excellent, but any useable scale makes it difficult to see which side of a hedge you should be on. The guy in question seemed to have settled in for the morning, as apparently he shouted the same thing at Andy when she got there a few minutes later. The correct route sent us back across the fields and into the village of Rawdon, and the first checkpoint. I topped up with chocolate bars, realised I hadn't been drinking anything near enough, and got straight back on again - it was cold enough (3C) that I needed to keep moving.

"What route are you doing? I've been going round in circles" said a runner coming the other way as I rounded a house. The 13 mile, 20 mile and 34 mile routes all started the same way, and then separated - the 13 mile route had already split off before Rawdon, but we were still with the 34 mile route. One fear (and apparently it happened every year) was that I'd somehow downloaded the wrong GPX file and was about to do the 34 mile route by mistake, so the question panicked me slightly - but I agreed with my questioner that we should still both be on the same route, and we found the gap in the hedge that he had missed. I was feeling smug in my role as master navigator, which lasted for all of three minutes until I took us wrong at the next turn.

The correct route had us dropping down a fairly steep path that had clearly been a river for the last few days, and the resulting watercourse made finding your steps much harder. A couple of runners who were clearly much more familiar with that sort of surface came flying past me - I followed slightly more gingerly. Once at the bottom, we were back on field and woods until we reached the River Aire.

We ran along the edge for a while - there were a number of notices warning of flooding, but the river level had gone back down and there was nothing that worried us. The river was another pleasant change that added to the variety of the day, but was soon gone and we were back up into the streets of Horsforth and then through a couple more fields to the university. There was a running track at the university, but to avoid us trail runners showing up their track team they'd decided to plant hedges either side of the footpath. It was slightly weird - the hedges were so close it looked like something out of a Harry Potter maze.

The last few miles had been fairly mud-free, but the next section made up for it. We were routed through a farm into an absolute mud-fest of a field, with the path locked down between two electric fences. The mud was a foot deep, and the penalty for slipping and putting a hand out was almost certainly going to be an electric shock. Since the fences were about 6 feet apart, which is less than me, I had the option if I went right over of being able to touch both fences and join the circuit, which would probably have been exciting from a physics point of view.

I was slipping around on this and trying to stay upright when a lady came up the tarmac farm access road that lay parallel to our route the other side of the wall. Due to the fences and churned up mud, I briefly wondered whether I was on the right route, or whether this was deliberately a cattle or sheep route and I should have been on the road - I was put in my place with some force by the lady who explained that I was on the correct walkers' route. I failed to wish her a good morning as she trotted up her nice clean access road and I fought my way through to the stile at the bottom of the field - which put me onto the access road anyway. I'd have taken a photo, but I was too busy trying to keep my balance.

The going did improve after that, and I was able to get back into a run to our second and final checkpoint at Cookridge. I stocked up on Jaffa cakes. realised I still wasn't drinking enough, and again kept going - with only 10km to go to the end, I was feeling good.

Coming into Bramhope village, a lad in cross country kit blasted past me - I was in the land of the Brownlee, and they throw children out into the hills here from an early age. He stopped ahead to grab a drink from someone standing waiting for him, during which I trotted past him - and then made me feel even better by blasting past me again and vanishing into the distance.

Still, I didn't have far to go now, and I was still running steadily. The route dropped us down into the Chevin woods that made up the country park, which was a beautiful part of the route. We ran along a forest track, watching some boulderers having fun on a nearby rock. I did stop when three deer with white tails appeared in the woods - I tried to get a photo, but phone cameras really aren't good at zooming.

Out of the woods, and down the hill on the road into Otley - which didn't do a lot for my knees at this stage of the day. I wasn't sorry when the route turned us off though a final field and then into Otley itself, zigzagging through the streets back to the church hall where we had registered. 32.4km in 4:40 - I was pretty happy with that given the terrain. The cheese toasties and tea at the end were exactly what I needed!

This was an excellent event, and would encourage me to do more Punk Panther events - the variety kept it interesting, and the organisation was everything that was needed. You needed to be confident on the navigation side, as the route twisted and turned a lot, but I really enjoyed it. A grand day out, as they say not far from here.