Feeling like you’re on the coat-tails of those on the shirt-tails of those who are running in a Union Jack flag that’s been converted and stream-lined into a piece of clothing known commonly as a ‘vest’ is a horrible place to be. It’s very easy to just think ‘fuck it, I’ll never make it’.
Confidence begets belief. It is as fragile as a Faberge egg. Or an egg in general, really. The Faberge analogy works best though because of the investment made to get to the ‘coat-tail-shirt-tail’ situation. Anyway, I digress. You didn’t come here to read my thoughts on what chickens push out of their ass.
Knowing which race to target and really go for is a conundrum. It needs to be worthwhile in terms of competition, as in, you want to have the better-than-outside chance that you may win it or place on the podium or place in a certain percentage. Too many good runners, you’ll get spanked and your confidence can falter; not enough/any good runners (and I mean ‘good’ relative to your own abilities) and you can kid yourself that what you’ve achieved was a true ‘statement’, leading to a rest-on-your-laurels attitude, which eventually cements your place in the nearly-rans, condemned to positing advice on internet forums…..or blogs, for that matter (thinly veiled analogy number 2; one-in-six people, statistically, are Chinese; got five friends around you who aren’t Chinese? Probably means it’s YOU! What does that have to do with the “…..or blogs…..” sentence, well, I am that person positing the advice. Always great when you feel like you have to explain your own jokes!!).
Alas, digression.
So you’ve chosen your season’s target race. It ticks all the boxes. It’s a tough, competitive course with a tough, competitive field. On paper the hardest line-up you’ve seen. Those running are maybe just a bit better than you (two are a lot better….but we’ll ignore them), or just a bit slower, but on the day anything could happen; the ideal scenario. You gear your training and thoughts around it. A carrot gets dangled a few months before – it’s the selection race for some such relatively high level event. You start to get nervous as now it’s become a lot of other people’s ‘target’ race.
That’s fine.
Of course it’s fine. They have the chance to enter before the cut-off date just like you, and everyone else, had to.
The cut-off date passes.
An extra day is added.
It, in turn, passes.
A couple of ‘bigger’ names have been added at the last safe moment (or just after the ‘last safe moment’), but that’s fair enough. The race at the front end has gotten tougher but it’s not…quite…insurmountable (remember that those “two” don’t count) if you can just have ‘one of those days’.
It’s the perfect storm. They don’t come around all that often.
So it was with the Scafell Skyrace this year.
The line-up was ominous……
Jon Albon
Tom Evans
Marcus Scotney
Casper Kaars Sijpesteijn
Brennan Townshend
Steve Franklin
John Yells
Hamish Battle
Stu Crutchfield
Steve Birkenshaw
And they were just the ‘established’ names. There were tons I’d not heard of….and it’s always the one you don’t hear that gets you, as the old Army adage goes.
Training had been going really, really well. A couple of races to test the legs/strategy had gone really, really well. I was in a good place mentally. The last hard-ish session before the race was also going really, really well. Running comfortably at a decent canter. Then my hammy started hamming it up. Big time. Three days before the race and walking, let alone running, let alone racing, was problematic. A quick, panicky phone call to Martin was followed by a quick, panicky text to everyone with hands that I knew. Super masseur Jim Davies did his thing and come the day I was at least able to contemplate racing, albeit with reduced expectations of duking it out at the sharp end.
I was awake at 3am on the Sunday morning. Keen, I hear you say. The brown water coursing out of my ah-nooos was ‘keen’ to keep coursing, yes. I’d rather have still been in the schlafen-zentrum of my bedroom. However, the Ring of Stee/all had come early to this household.
Diarrhoea is shit. Literally and figuratively.
My pre-race breakfast was fairly rapidly digested and processed. A quick drive down to the start at Glaramara and a queue for the toilets before the gun (the gun won) followed. I absorbed the early, fast pace along the road and up towards Sour Milk Ghyll, settling in with the wildlings from Lochaber, before sticking in a Bolt-esque burst to get ahead of some keen-beans going up the steep bit next to the beck in the ghyll. I started to go backwards from here, feeling empty and generally pretty sorry for myself. I seriously contemplated sacking it.
I took on some food (remind me to do a post on what I learnt about nutrition through this race) earlier than planned (all good though as I’d carried an extra sachet for just’in) and it hit my system, and stayed there, at just the right time. The final hundred metres up to Green Gable were taken at something more resembling race-pace and I managed to bridge to, then pass, two of the pre-race favourites Casper (Lakeland 50 CR holder and uphill monster) and Marcus (GB-athlete and Berghaus Dragon’s Back winner, 2017). That did the head some good as well as the body.
The trot down Windy Gap and round under Gable was beautiful. The best single-track in the Lakes? I reckon so. I managed to latch on to a couple of the wildlings, John and Hamish, going up the Corridor Route onto Scafell, which went ok, save for a quick poo and vomit break halfway up. Yummy.
Feeling lighter, and knowing that I like techy stuff, I was able to stretch out a bit on the run towards Bowfell, eventually catching back up to Hamish (who fucking FLEW up Scafell) at Ore Gap. The run down the Great Slab was…..great. The trot along the climber’s traverse and down The Band was also, pretty good. I was keeping food down now, which was heartening; getting stronger with each step, so when I got to the feed station at Stickle Barn it was just a case of chucking an empty soft flask at my step-Dad, grabbing a new one, dib-dibbing and doing one.
Going up Dungeon Ghyll to Harrison sucks. I was rude to a photographer. Sorry. Catching a glimpse of 4th and 5th was a big boost. They weren’t that far away and resisting the temptation to blast after them there and then was a bigger test of willpower than trying to maintain some solidity behind my sphincter.
My awesome wife and mega Mum were waiting for me with a proper food drop at the Stickle Tarn dam, which went like a Formula One pit-stop:
Me: “You got those jellys and sachets?”
Esther: “Here.”
Me: “Did I only pack one soft flask?!?!?”
Esther: “Looks like it.”
Me: “Well, you can fuck that off then…” – chucking one of the sachets back at her. What a dick. What. A. Dick. And her, what an angel, to put up with such a nob-head. Stress, huh? It does funny things.
Marital bliss shelved for the time being and 5th place was getting closer. Last year’s second place, Brennan. His was a carbon-copy of my race the previous year, in exactly the same place. Going off like a rocket and running out of steam for the longer-than-you’d-like run-in from Stickle Tarn to Ambleside via Silver Howe and Loughrigg. Another poo break (involuntary) at an inopportune time gave him another decent lead, but crucially a back to aim for. I’ve got to say that I really admire the race plan that he had, going off with the big dogs and trying to take it to them; it’s a bold strategy that ultimately failed, but it’s a positive marker of things to come I’m sure.
The dude in 4th seemed long gone, but then every now and then there’d be a glimpse from a higher point or where the bracken was less dense.
Maybe, just maybe.
Silver Howe summit came and went, finally seeing off the super-strong running of Brennan, and now with the mirage-like figure of ‘Mr 4th’ no longer a wispy haze, it seemed like it could be game on. Luckily I was going a bit faster than him on the run towards Loughrigg (the last bastard climb) so I slowed slightly to match him and recover, taking on a jelly, before the eat-your-knee-caps gurn up the smallest summit in the entire race, though something that felt like the Travellator from Gladiators. Taking a leaf out of Nairo Quintana’s ‘6 faces of pain’ I cruised past ‘Mr 4th’ trying to look like I was just out taking in the air like a top-hatted Victorian pensioner.
Inside I was screaming. Who knows what my poor ass was feeling like. The fire had numbed it, counter-intuitively.
I fucking hammered it down from Loughrigg to Lilly Tarn (as ‘hammered it’ as you can get after five hours of running and the ‘runs’) and held on for 4th place, which was nice.
Photos: only a couple on here……Nairo’s, dunno who did that one, soz and the ‘sunnies’ one, taken by the talented Jamie Rutherford….chapeau, sir!
Lessons learnt:
- Never say never.
- Run your own race.
- There’s some super sound folk in running.
- (see picture below…….)
Another great event from Charlie and the Mountain Run guys. It showcases the best that the Lake District has to offer. Yes it’s not strictly skyrunning but it’s as hard a race as you’re ever likely to do anywhere in the UK and is up there with the best running that Europe has to offer (albeit in my limited experience of racing on the continent so far).
Tomorrow we go again.
