Charlie started fell running in 2003 and never knew where it would take him. 17 years later he has completed the Bob Graham Round twice, a Ramsay Round and also most recently the Paddy Buckley Round in Wales (all onsight – no prior practice or route knowledge) with his good friend Damian Hall, he has set up a company called Mountain Run, with a highly skilled team of local runners sharing their skills and passion for running in the fells of the Lake District and further afield. They also offer guiding for aspiring runners for the Big Three UK Rounds.
With a love of climbing and always up for a real challenge, Charlie has completed a highly esoteric Lakeland Classic Rock Round, which encompasses 15 rock climbs, of up to VS standard, in the Lakes with 56km and 4500m of ascent, to be completed in 24 hours. Alongside all of this, Charlie is the race director and creator of the epic Lake District Sky Trails ‘Sky Races’ and Keswick Mountain Festival trail races, all based in the Lake District.
Most recently he is has been seen working on the magical Faroe Islands at the Atjan Island Festival, helping delivery a 5 day running festival and 4 mountain trail races. He is now awaiting a ‘proper’ winter in the Lakes to have a go at being the first to complete the Bob Graham Round on skis. Charlie likes nothing more than combining running, climbing and his first love, which is skiing in the Lakes, and can be mainly found on the mountains of the Helvellyn range mixing it all up. His first love in running was the niche sector of Mountain Marathon’s, which to the uninitiated are 2 day navigational/mountain orienteering events where runners are given a map on the start line, with no prior knowledge of the course and spend 2 days running self sufficient around the mountains, camping overnight. This year he was lucky enough to win one of the toughest races in the UK, namely the Marmot Dark Mountains, with Steve Birkinshaw (the previous record holder of the Wainwrights Round and author of There Is No Map in Hell), where the mountain marathon concept is compressed into one long night at the end of January, which he was the original route/course planner for.
Although he loves the Dark Mountain’s event, Charlie is fore-going his place in next years race, as its the same weekend as the National Running Show, and coming to talk about some very inspiring stuff about the wilds of the mountains in the UK.