The runners who are a breed apart
Many people – such as Susanne Finlay – are delighted by the results regular exercise can bring. But once some have got the running bug, they find it hard to stop. They may aim at a local 10km race or take part in a charity marathon. A few dedicated souls, like those gathering today in the car park of a pub outside Halifax, take it even further than that.
The athletes donning wet-weather gear over their running vests and shorts behind the Causeway Foot in Ovenden are fell runners, devotees of a sport that pushes its participants through the pain barrier into a realm inhabited by the most driven athletes on the planet.
Marathon runners earn the admiration of millions by racing over a little more than 26 miles on flat ground. Ultra-runners go further, running several marathon distances with minimal breaks, often across forbidding terrain.
But fell runners are a breed apart. They run up mountains, and down them, and then do it again, and again, and again: it is not just endurance that drives them, but danger. The tougher the challenge, it would seem, the keener they are to take it on.