This site is for fell runners who enjoy the challenge of running up and down some of the most beautiful and remote mountainous peaks in the British isles. The most important thing for us is that you enjoy our races, give us your feedback and join our band of regular supporters, who come back year after year to run our three often gruelling but definitely challenging classic fell races; the Ennerdale Horseshoe, the Wasdale Horseshoe and the Scafe Pike.
The Fell Runners Association (FRA) often reward our races with championship status: 1997 Wasdale, 1998 Buttermere, 1999 Scafell Pike, 2000 Ennerdale, 2005 Wasdale and 2006 Ennerdale (both British and English championships), 2009 Wasdale and 2010 Ennerdale.
As race organisers, CFRA pride ourselves on our safety rules and precautions. All of our races are graded 'A' by the FRA which means that they're greater than 250 feet of ascent per mile. Both the Wasdale and Ennerdale are very tough races and employ closing times on the early checkpoints to limit the exposure time for runners and checkpoint marshalls. We use radio controlled checkpoints, a tally system (as used by mountain rescuers and firemen) and two independent hard copy record systems for logging runners through. This gives us three different ways of knowing which checkpoints each of our runners have passed, retired at or timed out on. This enables us to be more precise in tracking down any missing runners if problems occur. From 2009 we have also used an electronic timing system which employs 'dibbers' to obtain more accurate and more easily reported checkpoint times, but as this does not provide real time logging of runners passing checkpoints we double up with the tally system and will continue to use this until we have a verifiable real time communication with the electronic system.
Navigational skills are a definite must! This becomes obvious when running in cloud where visibility can be reduced to a few metres. Local knowledge and previous experience are also essential as the race course can be some miles from habitation and weather conditions may be severe.