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Sunday 19 October 2014

Race Review: The Sedbergh fell race: 17/8/14

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There were at least 194 reasons why me doing this race was stupid

At least I'm committed. And almost certainly, I should be 


When will I learn? Seriously; WHEN. WILL. I. LEARN?

"You doing Sedbergh Scott?"
"Yeah, sure" I replied, casually. Of course, I hadn't actually looked at what it entailed as per usual. It's on my club's Runner of the Year (ROTY) list, so I planned to do it. I had meant to recce it a couple of weeks beforehand and it's a bloody good job I didn't, for 2 reasons: 1) I wouldn't have been able to navigate the bloody thing and 2) I would never have done it had I known what it involved.

So for those of you who don't know me (Basically I am talking to spam bots here because only 5 people read this blog and one is my mother and at least one of the others is in my running club) I am a fiercely mediocre runner. In any given fell race I tend to finish just inside the top 3rd. Due to an only recently resolved injury, I am currently around 80% of the fitness I was last year when I set all my road race PBs.  At the Great North Run last year I finished in the top 1% of a field of 40000 runners, but of course, the fun runners that do the GNR cannot be compared to the cross-between-mountain-goat-and-mountain-lion that fell runners tend to be and all of them seemed to have turned up to the Sedbergh fell race to run around the Howgills. In addition, this year Sedbergh was an English championship race so the field was even more competitive than it might normally have been.

Okay, enough of the preamble. Brace yourself, I am going to break with my tradition and show you the profile of this race early in the blog post to give you an idea of exactly why I am about to tell you a story of a very bad day for me, running-wise.

Take note of the elevation on the Y-axis; that's the bit that kills you!

So yeah; 14 miles and 6000ft feet. Bear in mind that the big Welsh mountains are the 3000s- so basically, twice the height of one of those. Why did I not take this as a red flag? Why, why?!

We set off from Leeds in lovely bright sunshine, but I had seen the weather forecast and knew it wouldn't last and sure enough, it didn't. Before long we were all taking part in our own personal ice bucket challenges courtesy of mother nature. A long walk in the pouring rain from the car parking, way out side the village, to the People's hall in the centre meant I arrived with soaking wet tracky bottoms for registration, looking like I'd got lost on the way to my community service.. I was given number 194 and had a "dibber" attached to my wrist. A dibber is a small electronic thing-a-me-bob that you "dib" in at each check point enabling the computer to clock you. At fell races like this, it's important to keep a careful count of the runners, y'know, in case you lose one down a huge slope or in an abandoned mine shaft with Scooby Doo.
We all lined up on the unassuming road next to the hall for the start with most of us already clad in waterproof jackets. Each of us carried the standard kit, mostly in bum bags, consisting of full waterproof kit, map, compass, whistle, emergency food, hat and gloves. In addition I also had an empty collapsible water bottle, food to get me through the run and my mobile in a waterproof bag. I probably should have brought flares too.

I'm in there somewhere, edging my way towards the back
As per usual the race was started with a bare minimum of "to-do" and after a short safety speech, the race director said, "Off you go" in such a casual way that for a second none of us were quite sure if that was the start or not.

Standing around at the start on the brief section of road through the village that the route took gave me a chance to chat to Simon. We looked up at the hill towering above us and we considered the route we would take down it at the end of the race. I discovered that as little fun as that hill looked from the bottom, by the end of the race and over 3 hours and 6000ft later, it would look a whole lot less fun from the top.

Very soon we were staring up at the first ascent, which is actually the toughest of the race as you can see on the profile: from 150m up to 600m. So around 1300ft. I took this slope well, bouncing away, feeling good and powering-hiking; thrusting my feet downwards and putting my hands on my knees for help. This confidence and relatively swift movement did not last....

That's me on the right, looking almost happy. That's only because I had no idea......



Down we looked from the first summit; a mere drop of 1200ft down a grassy slope. I had asked Simon a few days beforehand what he did in long races with big slopes, take it easy or go for it? "Go for it", he had replied. I reasoned that if I went cautiously down this slope it would take so much braking from my thighs that they would burn out pretty quickly, so I decided to take Simon's advice and for a brief moment during this race I was flying. I over-took probably a dozen people and was down the hill before I knew it, but it had cost me. I was already very tired and my thighs were already complaining. This didn't bode well.......

Oh the humanity!

Over the next 10 or 12 miles the ascents and descents began to merge in to one blur of pain and despair. My memories are already fuzzy, so they may well be very mixed up and tumble out in a way that is in no way the correct order, but here goes anyway.......

The thing about this race is the elevation, obviously, but it's also that so much of the elevation is not gentle, in fact, I'd go as far as saying none of it is, but that could just be my mind playing tricks with me. I do remember looking at the last two slopes and being very glad that they weren't all that steep when on a normal day they would have looked fairly scary.

The Kanadias that I wore (HUGE mistake!) with a number from another race. I remember this as I had to shout out 194!! numerous times

My first clear memory is of going up the second hill and beginning to tire badly, it seemed absolutely relentless and endless. The first of the runners that over took me on the day went past, I would get very used to being over-taken by the end.

Before the race I had been panicking about navigation. Much of the race was not on clear paths, to navigate it without help would almost certainly require compass bearings. Luckily at no point did I lose view of the runner in front (The runner in front changed frequently as more and more people over-took me) At one point, the clag (A fell runners word for mist and fog) had come down, cutting visibility and I could only see one runner in front of me. I felt slight panic and began to push on as he was about to disappear over the crest of a hill. When I got to the crest and looked down, the mist was clear and I could probably see at least 20 runners and I had to laugh at myself for having put in a huge effort to keep the runner in view. I think it was around this point I saw the runner in front take a bite of an energy bar and I decided this was a good idea, however, eating a very sticky energy flap-jacky thing through gasps isn't easy. I know I also stopped at the second stream we crossed and filled my bottle for a drink. I idly wondered if I would incubate something over the next few days and end up with the world falling out of my bottom. (I didn't- but wouldn't that have been the icing on the cake?)

Never do a fell race without proper fell shoes. Duh!

At some point we began to run on a very muddy track that was "Contouring" i.e. we were running around the side of a hill. The adidas kanadias I was wearing revealed themselves as hopelessly, hopelessly inadequate for the terrain. And did I say very muddy? I mean extremely muddy, I mean stupidly muddy, I mean Mud Street in Mud central in the Mud district of Mud city, Mudland. And this was no mere mortal mud, this was the slipperiest mud man had ever seen *this may be slight exaggeration for comic effect; but only very slight* And also at a very steep angle. It wasn't very long before my ankles began to complain about being turned at 45 degrees for step after step after step (45 degrees may also be a slight exaggeration) The path became so treacherous that I could barely stay upright and I slowed to walking pace. The hill to my right dropped away several hundred feet, one slip and I wouldn't stop until I hit the bottom, a broken rag doll. Not for the first or the last time during the race, I moved the feeling of terror to the back of my mind and carried on regardless.
I think it was along this path that Simon passed me in far more appropriate shoes. I knew there was no way I would finish ahead of Simon in a race with over 6000ft of climb, but I had moved in front of him on the first slope and I believe it was around half way that he over-took me. He gave me some words of encouragement that I can't remember now; I'm fairly sure that my mind is trying to block out the whole experience to protect me, but to be honest, I was reasonably pleased to get to half way and still be in front of Simon.

These are my race splits....if you hadn't guessed. And if you hadn't guessed, get off my blog, you're drunk
After what seemed like days the contouring finally finished and I filled the bottle again at the stream in the bottom of the valley, before I looked up at the next horrific slope. My mind began to rebel "OH HELL NO! YOU HAVE GOT TO BE CRAZY!!"I looked around me. There had to be a way out. Where was the nearest road? Maybe I could flag down a truck driver?
As I trudged up this slope my thighs screamed and screamed. Several times I sat down and looked back on the field. I could see 20 or so runners. So many had passed me at this point that I began to wonder if I was looking at the back of the field. There was still at least 6 miles to go and I was utterly exhausted. I could only climb so many steps before needing to stop. I resorted to moments of walking on all fours, more than once I dropped to my knees and shuffled along for a few "steps" People were now starting to ask if I was alright, such was my obvious distress. "Yeah, just dying"
I decided I would drag out my packet of clif shot bloks. I far prefer them to energy gels as clif bloks taste like wine gums as opposed to liquid sugar. One lady of, let's say, advancing years, passed me looking like she was on a nice pleasant day out in the countryside rather than the middle of Hades as we clearly were. I decided to offer her a clif blok which she gratefully accepted and I felt good for a brief moment. But I knew I had to carry on at some point.
I managed to have a chat to a guy next to me who had given me some words of encouragement. Turns out he had done the lakeland 50 only a couple of weeks before and it heartened me to think I had kept up with him for a long way in this race.
As is traditional in fell racing, the route is in the shape of a noose.....

I haven't yet mentioned how wet we all were at this point. It's all very well wearing fancy, expensive raceshell running jackets, but nothing stops rain like that getting in and "breathable" material, isn't breathable, not really. Sweat soaks the inside and a lot of the time I was moving so slowly that I was getting cold.
Three times during the race I had to stop and empty an entire bog full of mud out of my shoes as well as enough gravel to cover a decent sized driveway. Each time I sat down I got soggier and soggier to the point my mind invented a new condition- Trench-bottom- and I wondered if you could die from it. It certainly felt like I was well on the way anyway.

Mummy, Mummy, please make it stop

With a mile or two to go it was taking all my, determination, all my stubbornness, all my strength, all my pig-headedness not to just give up and sit on the ground crying and rocking backwards and forwards. As it was, I was spending some time at the side of the track, bent double with my hands on my knees reflecting on my poor life choices. Very early in the race the young men had over taken me, then not long after the men my age had over taken me, then the women started to over take me, then the older men started to over take me followed by the really old men. Then finally, as I willed my legs to carry on whilst still bent-double, the old women started to pass me. I saw one such lady catching me up. My competitive spirit had long since deserted me; I couldn't have given a monkey's nuts who finished in front of me at this point, just as long as I could stop running/stumbling along in this ridiculous race. The lady was a veteran 65 (I know this as I looked her up after the race) and as she passed she gave me a look of sympathy and said "You alright, love?" before mountain-goating away after I mumbled a "Yes, fine". My humiliation was complete.

I had to laugh at a very dark moment late on in the race. I looked down at my watch and saw it was showing 21km- the half marathon point, and the time was showing as 3 hours 11 minutes- which is my road marathon PB. I was literally completing this race at half the pace of my best marathon. This should have been an encouraging thought considering 6000ft of ascent but it really wasn't.

Now my watch ticked over to the 14 mile mark- where the race should have ended, but somehow I was still on the course. At the very least I considered that it meant that it couldn't last much longer and lo and behold, the final descent down into Sedbergh appeared and it looked HORRIFIC. A massive 1000-odd-foot down a very steep grassy hill. Few people, if any, made it to the bottom without spending a large amount of time on their bottom. With my thighs screaming I knew this was going to be painful. So I sat down on the hill and stared at this thing from my nightmares, wondering why I had done this thing to myself. Then I made a large mistake, I tried to bring my knees up to my chest. Every muscle in my legs cramped painfully, so I quickly straightened them again. I tried to bend my legs again with the same painful result. Ok, so my legs no longer wanted to bend. Fair enough.
I tried to decide on the least painful method of getting down. First off, walking. Nope, too much thigh-braking; very painful. Running? Nope, also too painful. I "settled" in to a sort of weird, half walking, half bouncing, half running, erm, thing. It was still painful but there was no way of getting down that wouldn't be. Debi and Naomi were lurking halfway down this hill with Debi's camera. Vanity took over and I tried running to look athletic and like I still had something in the tank.......... I failed
The expression on my face in these shots tells the story





Debi was not supposed to take this shot of me having a rest immediately after I had passed her...

The painful ending

After what seemed like another million years I reached the bottom of the hill for a short road section back to the finish which I was soon mercifully able to see. Most runners at this point had finished and were milling around the hall and I entered the little gazebo that was the finish line to absolutely no fanfare, not that I expected any. It took all my concentration to get my waving, shaking arm to drop the dibber attached to my wrist in to the machine to record my final time, which all-told was 3 hours 27 minutes, the longest run I had ever done in my life, a full ten minutes slower than my slowest road marathon. I limped painfully to where my bag was in the hall and collapsed on the floor wondering if I would ever be pain-free again. I made the mistake again of trying to bend my legs and was greeted by the same crippling cramp. Changing out of my sopping wet clothes was another painful challenge and soon I just laid full length on the floor. I think I remember eating some food, high sugar stuff, probably Kendall mint cake, basically anything I could stuff in my mouth before I came over all Yorkshire and desperately wanted a cup of tea, but there was no way I was likely to wait in the long queue. Luckily it didn't take Debi and Naomi long to get down to the hall and Debi queued for me.
A while later, in to my hand was placed an amazing shining, golden chalice. It contained an elixir of wondrous liquid that swirled like a whirlpool in my eyes. It had the restoring powers of 20 hours sleep, a belly-fully of roast dinner and a pacman power-up pill, to-wit, a polystyrene cup of tea. A tiny percentage of myself began to turn human again.
This was on the toilet door. It even managed to raise a laugh from me

I dragged the girls off to the nearest pub so I could have a pint and tell them all about my terrible experience which they seemed to enjoy far too much and for some very odd reason they appeared surprised when I answered the question, "So, you going to do it next year?" with a very resounding, "F**k, no!"

The soreness in my legs took 10 days to pass. My spirit has never healed.




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