Reprint from "Running Late" June 2014

 This post is a reprint from my old blog "Running Late" which I closed in 2018 and which now refuses to recognise HT links.

THURSDAY, 26 JUNE 2014

West Highland Way 2014 - Stealing a Goblet

When I first got interested in the West Highland Way Race some years ago, the old hands told me that there were always two journeys involved  - the one across the Highlands on the longest Saturday of the year and the one that starts in the depths of the previous winter, the long haul of getting yourself into a state suitable to meet the challenge and toe the start line. This year I didn't get the luxury of the latter one; six months of no running leading to some knee surgery in March saw me back in the running game with a half mile in six minutes on 19th April  -  a date that I hoped would be the dawn of gradually getting back to normal.  The WHW entry had of course been in since last November, and I decided to go for it. Two months would just have to be enough.

The payback for such hubris might well be a good kicking up in Scotland, no more than I deserved you might say, but I reasoned that I still had three things in my favour. First, I was by now an "auld acquaintance" rather than a brash new suitor  -   after seven previous completions I knew exactly what I was getting into. Next, while I had not run through the winter I had continued to walk the hills so had plenty of time on the feet in the bank. Finally, the overall time allowance for the WHW Race is a fairly generous 35 hours - you have the time to walk an awful lot of it if you need to. I was also under no illusions about performance  -  if the thing was going to be done it would likely take a very long time.

Any doubts I might have had about whether this was a sensible enterprise or not were quickly dispelled in the comfort of the now very familiar on Friday evening  - checking into the Premier Inn in Milngavie with Jan, the rest of my support team turning up from their busy lives, John in Manchester and Julia in Reading, the family reunion over dinner, how's it going to go, probably OK but I have a plan, that's OK then.

Down to the registration, lots of friendly familiar faces, the braceletting, chipping and weighing, "Am I really 3 kilos heavier than last year?", superb top in the goody bag, same as the one from a while ago that's been worn all over the world since, then off for a final quiet hour or so before coming back for the start. I could almost recite the briefing word for word by now, but wait, there's a difference this time, the Lord of the Bridge happily informs us that there will be no weather this year!  Then the last bit of waiting, meetings, Aussie Keith "let's get a selfie", hug for Fiona, both of them setting out on their tenth trip up the course, Borkur from Iceland who always said he would come to Scotland and now he's made it.  I won't be seeing much of the usual suspects during the race this year, the plan has to be different.

Then the countdown and we're off.

I've said numerous times that if your main aim is to finish then don't start on a twenty four hour schedule and then have to tough it out when it falls apart, that won't be pretty. I've done it and I know. If a finish is what you want then plan for it  -  so now it's time for me to follow my own advice. I give the team a schedule so we can meet at the early checkpoints without them losing too much sleep, but underneath this the strategy is simple; I want to get to Auchtertyre (50 miles) in about 13 hours or so with the absolute minimum of effort. If that gets done I will  have enough time left to walk to the end if necessary. My tactics are to walk anything that even smells of uphill , to run no longer than two miles continuously without a walking break, and to "run" at no faster than 12 minute miles.

The field takes off ahead of me and I'm soon on my own. I see one or two runners in the open field before the railway, and one support team at the Beech Tree. Otherwise it's very, very quiet. Along the railway line continuous running is easy but the calf starts to get a bit sore now and then and I slow to a walk for a few minutes every mile or so. At the end of the railway I'm used to looking back as I hit the road and seeing a long line of headlights behind, but tonight all is darkness. Two and three quarter hours from the start I chug through the road crossing at Drymen and there is no-one, and I mean not a single person, there. It is as if the race has completely disappeared. Of the 193 starters, I calculate later that I am now in 190th place. It's lonely down here at the back!

The headlamp comes off as I turn into the forest, and I start very gradually to catch and pass one or two other runners. I catch Fiona just as we crest Conic Hill, then cruise down to the Balmaha checkpoint to be welcomed by Davie at the dibber  -  he looks as though he's done his shift and is ready for breakfast. It's easy to find the crew as the car park is almost empty. At 4:19:43 I'm now in 184th place. John and Julia have everything ready and in a couple of minutes I'm away up the loch, saying I'll see them in Bein Glas with 10:30 on the clock  -  three nice steady sections, 2 hours to Rowardennan, 2 to Inversnaid, 2 to Bein Glas.

The midgies are annoying but not biting, the weather is wonderful, dry and cool. At the pace I'm going I really enjoy all three sections, with short stops for the drop bags at Rowardennan and Inversnaid.  But although I'm going slowly, at least I'm starting to see more runners now and feel more part of the event again. I decide to walk all the way from Inversnaid to the top of the hill before Doune Bothy which is surprisingly relaxing  -  no decisions to make about which bits to run! I spend a mile or two with Flip Owen coming out of Inversnaid, then on the crest of the hill before the bothy I catch Adrian Stott; this will be his fourteenth completion of the race, which makes even the ten-time finishers look like beginners. We pause for a minute or two at Dario's Post to wish him well and admire his view. Adrian stops to chat a bit with Karen and George, who we meet sweeping in the opposite direction, and as soon as I'm on my own again my mind wanders off somewhere and I trip and fall over. The only real damage is to the strap on my watch, so I tuck it in a pocket and soon afterwards Bein Glas turns up where I arrive in 10:25:52

In seven previous WHW races with the same crew, we've never missed a checkpoint, but I suppose there's always a first time; I can't find them here. No phone signal for me, so I don't know what's happened. They could have hit bad traffic or had a puncture (that's happened a couple of times in the past) but I don't know. I wait around until after the 10:30 time point which was my planned arrival, and wonder if they are likely to be along in the next minute or two or whether the problem will delay them longer. I've no idea, so a word with the marshals and they're kind enough to allow me to push on, after giving me a litre of water. There are  offers of food from people at the checkpoint, but I have plenty enough to get to Auchtertyre so I thank everyone for their kindness and carry on northwards. A bit frustratingly, less than a mile further up the glen I get a reasonable phone signal and find out that I only missed the team by a minute or two, they had really bad traffic coming up the loch after breakfast in Milngavie. No problem, I'm happy that they're all OK and will see them at Auchtertyre.

I pass one or two more runners on the way up to Auchtertyre, including Carin Goldblatt who's come all the way from Israel to compete. She says she's finding the climbs and the ground underfoot hard, but she's previously done the Lakeland so she'll be OK. I tell her that things get a lot easier after Auchtertyre. The miles pass slowly but easily, except I'm getting a bit more discomfort in my weak right calf, so decide to re-do the taping at the checkpoint. I arrive at Auchteryre in 13:08:14 (about two and a half hours slower than last year!), now in 143rd place. The team are ready and waiting so I stop for a bite to eat, a change of shirt and to wipe off as many dead midgies as possible. I leave my watch with John in the hope that he can fix it before the next checkpoint (he does  -  just another duty of an accomplished back-up crew).

Again, after eating quite a bit I decide to walk all the way to the top of the hill after Tyndrum. Going up the track after the village hall I catch up with John Vernon. I've spent quite a few hours of ultra time over the years with John, and although he's completed 10 WHW races, this year he's in the alternative "WHW Challenge" which started an hour earlier. We stay together until the creep back under the railway line, then I take off to run a bit and he continues at his steady walk. I run all the way to the stream crossing at the low point, probably my longest continuous run of the day so far, and most of the flat bits from there to the station. I always meet the crew in the station car park before the checkpoint as it's usually quieter for parking. Normally one of them goes down to the marshal to check if there are any kit requirements for Rannoch Moor, but on such a lovely day it's clear there won't be so they haven't bothered. I feel the need for a Coke hit rather than food, so just down a half litre in more or less one go then I'm on the way again. Down through the checkpoint, up the hill for a word or two with Murdo who really should have been running this year, and round to the start of the Moor.

This is without doubt my favourite stretch of the course. The wonderful emptiness of the scenery and the easy going make the miles flow by. I spend a mile or so with Norman Duncan but for the rest I am completely alone and quite happy with that. I relax my rule and jog some of the slight inclines as well as the flats. Compared with the rest of my race, I'm not surprised to find afterwards that this is the section I do by far the fastest relative to the field; I'm 78th fastest across here, compared with well over a hundred on most of the others, and I arrive in Glen Coe in 18:58:34 in 134th place.

Last year I didn't ask for one of the team to run with me until Kinlochleven, but as I arrive at the car Julia is all dressed and ready to go, decision made. A cup of tea, a few ginger biscuits (has anyone else discovered what a great ultra food these are?) and we're jogging down the road towards Kingshouse, just passing Adrian as he arrives at the check point. We walk up the false hill then jog down and round to the bottom of the Devil's Staircase. Then, maybe a just hundred yards or so up the slope, I suddenly feel tired, and I know that things are going to change. It had all been going so easily for so far, then it's like the message has come up on the screen "Sorry, you don't have sufficient funds to complete this transaction."

But that's OK, I almost welcome the feeling. Goblets are not meant to come easily.  The outcome is not in doubt, we have 15 hours to cover 20 miles -  I'm just going to have to work a bit harder for those miles now. We continue slowly but steadily to the top of the climb, being re-passed by two teams we passed in the first part of the stage, then just as steadily down the long descent. It gets gloomy enough to put on a torch just as we cross the footbridge into the final woods before the road. We find John and wander in to the checkpoint. 

I've already decided on the descent that I need a rest, and with no time pressures that's OK. I stretch out in the car with instructions that they will wake me in 45 minutes. After that, a bit of preparation and the stop at Kinlochleven has taken just over an hour  -  not exactly "continuous forward motion" but I feel much better for it. Julia has now done her shift and takes off in the car for a well-earned sleep in Fort William, while John and I set off on the last lap. John takes the lead up the first hill to the jeep track; I say I can go faster than this but he says no, this is the right speed, the deal is to finish at minimum cost. So that's what we do. All along the Lairig Mor we make steady but slow progress. I've been along here wishing the miles away a hundred yards at a time, but tonight it seems strangely OK, I don't mind how long it takes. The only problem is that I keep falling asleep. I'm gone, then the next pace jolts me awake. I try Coke but it doesn't make any difference. No hallucinations, just tired. Eventually I say to John that I have to take five or I'll just fall over. I lie down on the bridge just before the second old house for five minutes or so and it makes all the difference, we're good for Lundavra. The trees appear then we can see the bonfire.

We get a wonderful welcome from the Kynastons, I tell them that it's hard now but we're getting there. I take another five minutes by the bonfire then we enter the home straight. It doesn't seem too bad and there's enough energy left for a "Yes!!" when we hit the fire road at the top of the very last uphill. We start off walking down the road, and our pace is still good enough to take us past another team, but then Sally Nicoll, who I last saw just before Bein Glas, comes by at a sprightly jog and disappears into the distance. It's broad daylight now and as I'm  no longer liable to fall asleep I say to John that he can stop trying to preserve me, so we break into a jog too, which we hold on all the downhill bits as far as Braveheart Car Park.

The final mile goes quickly and then it's done. 29:37:33 for 131st place.  Over 7 hours slower than last year but that doesn't matter. If you'd have offered me this result two months ago I'd have bitten your hand off.

Two weeks before setting out for Scotland I'd come in one evening and proudly announced to Jan that I'd managed to run for four continuous miles at 9 minute mile pace along our local canal. I mention this only because at the finish I learned that this was precisely the pace that Paul Giblin had maintained over the rocks and boulders, gates and stiles, 95 miles and over 14,000 feet of ascent of the West Highland Way. Awesome doesn't begin to cover his performance.

The prizegiving and the session in the pub later that evening were as good as ever. One or two friends said this was their last trip, but I don't believe them. This is just too good to miss. A huge thankyou to Ian Beattie and his organising team for keeping us WHW junkies supplied with our annual fix, and of course to my long-suffering crew of Jan, John and Julia for enduring another sleep-deprived, midge-infested (but this year not wet!) weekend in Scotland.

For those interested, the technicalities were simple. I wore one pair of shoes and socks (Skechers GoRun Ultras and Drymax Ultras) from start to finish, ate about 200 calories an hour, and finished with no blisters and no midge bites. And a feeling that I had somehow got away with something that I shouldn't have  -  I'd stolen a Goblet.

When one door closes....

Running is one of the simplest, purest forms of activity we can engage in. At its most basic you just close the front door behind you and head out. No special kit, knowledge or training required. Just go out and have fun.

I did the traditional bit, running round a 440 yard cinder track in my earlier days, but then drifted off into less constrained pastimes like hill walking, climbing and later on cycling and ski-ing, more "do your own thing" activities. And I'm sure that's how it would have stayed but for two events, seemingly unconnected at the time. 

In early 2004 I found myself living and working in Rotterdam, a long way from the hills and apart from a fairly regular 6 mile cycle commute not doing very much exercise. A colleague in the office said he had entered the local marathon in April so I thought why not and went along too. The 4th of April  -   "04.04.04" as it was billed in the publicity and on the teeshirt  -   was my first organised race for decades. I was approaching 56 years of age. With a really modest amount of training I got round the course in 3 hours and 37 minutes. "Well this is easy" I thought, "a bit of proper training and below 3.30 next time out". But I found that it didn't quite work like that. More like when you first start playing golf, and find that if you have reasonable co-ordination you can make the odd hole in par a few weeks after starting. Persistent amateurs will then spend the next 50 years trying to put 18 of them together (I didn't). It took me at least another six marathons to get below the (for me) magic 3.30, finally reaching my pb of 3.17 a few weeks before my 60th birthday, after which age started to catch up. But in the meantime I had discovered an activity that brought me a lot of pleasure and satisfaction. I still do the odd road marathon, I'm running York this coming October to get a "good for age" ticket to hopefully see me into my third London Marathon.  Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris, New York, you can have a lot of nice weekends in interesting places in this game.

Then in the late summer of 2005, my wife Jan and I were sitting having dinner in the Brasserie Nationale in Chamonix, a town we'd visited many times over the years for climbing, ski-ing, and general family holidays. We were about to set off on the "Tour du Mont Blanc" walk, a trip recommended by our daughter who had done it with a school friend a couple of years earlier. We expected to take about 10 days. But as we were eating we were aware that some sort of event was taking place a bit further up the road. We wandered out after our meal to discover that it was the finishing area  for a race, the "Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc". Runners were coming in, one every few minutes or so, after completing our planned 10 day trip in barely 24 hours. The race was in its infancy, certainly not taking over the town as it does these days, no CCC, TDS or any of the other accompanying circus, a fairly low key affair. But I was amazed that runners could keep going over such a distance, 100 miles without stopping. Jan and I went on to complete our tour, with a good meal and a bottle of wine every evening, but I felt I needed to know more about this "ultra running" we had witnessed.

Back home in England after my Dutch posting was done, it seemed that ways in to this strange but appealing sport were hard to find. The internet had got going of course but nothing in the way of what we would nowadays call "social media".  I eventually stumbled on Ian Beattie's blog "West Highland Way Runner" and by the summer of 2007 I had completed my first two events, the embryonic "Highland Fling" and the long established (though I had never heard of it before the previous year) "West Highland Way Race".  To start with I thought this might be something that I would do as a one-off challenge, and once having completed my hundred miles (or very nearly, for the West Highland Way is "only" 95), I would go back to my other pastimes. But the ultra running "community" at the time was very inclusive. There were not many folk in the game and those already hooked were happy to encourage the participation of newcomers. It became much easier to find out about where the events were, and what they were like. And they were a friendly lot, described by my daughter who was watching my progressive immersion from the sidelines as "a sociable bunch of attractively deranged characters who behave as though what they are doing is completely normal".

Ultra running became part of my life.

In 2012 I entered the monumental "Tor des Geants" race, which covers around 200 miles and 80,000 feet of ascent on the hills around the Aosta Valley in northern Italy. To train for such a monster I reasoned that I needed to spend a lot of time walking up hills. Not wanting to make 30 or 40 repeats of my nearest mountain, Snowdon, I decided that I would get to know the Lake District a bit better by climbing all the "Wainwrights" - the fells listed in Alfred Wainwrights classic series of walking guides. I had climbed in the Lakes on and off for years, but living in Chester our local climbing club's spiritual home will always be Snowdonia so the trips weren't frequent. I had also done one or two ultras in the Lakes, including the now classic Lakeland 100, but I didn't really know the area well.

I did my Wainwrights, 28 separate day trips from Chester, 470 miles run/walked, 150,000ft of ascent. It got me round the Tor des Geants, but also generated in me a real love of the Lake District. So much so that in late 2014 we bought a holiday lodge in a secluded park by the lakeshore in Keswick and, despite floods, heatwaves and being situated at the foot of the wettest valley in England, we have spent a lot of time there ever since.

Over the years I have completed numerous ultra events in the Lakes, including three Lakeland 100's and two 50's, five Lakes in a Days, the Lakeland Trails 100, the brutal Lakes 10 Peaks Long Course and the sadly now no longer Lakes 3 x 3000's. Also lots of shorter but still great days out like three Tour de Helvellyns, the Lakes Sky Ultra, the Grand Tour of Skiddaw, the Five Passes, St Begas Ultra and so on. I have enjoyed all these greatly, I treasure the days spent and the people met along the way. But, and this is in no way a criticism, simply a fact, these things require commitment and planning. To secure your place months or even a year ahead, to turn up on the day, suitably prepared and kitted out, to play the game by whatever rules the organiser sets, to follow the route he chooses. And in return you get looked after and the game is made safe.

Maybe I'm just antisocial, but my most vivid memories of these last years however have not been the events, but of the hundreds of days alone out on the fells, when the route was not decided until the night before, or until stepping out of the door, and even then often modified as the day went on and opportunities arose or disappeared. Grisedale Pike, the view from our living room window, before breakfast on a clear summer morning. The Coledale horseshoe late in the day when all the crowds have gone. Back of Skiddaw on a Tuesday in November, when you might as well be on the moon for all the people you'll meet. The long spring days when the daylight increases but the snow lingers on the high cornices for a warm up jog along the old railway to Threlkeld then Clough Head and the whole spine of the Eastern Fells to Ambleside, a well-earned beer then back on the 555. An occasional trip to the "deep south" for a round of the Coniston fells or the Langdale skyline.The map normally stays deep in the bottom of the pack when I go out these days, I know these places.

To travel competently and at a good enough pace in the fells is all the reward one needs. But therein  is the rub. Time is catching up. 

To travel safely you need to be concentrating on the job in hand, not just wondering how much each step will hurt. I've tripped and fallen a few times in recent years and ours can be an unforgiving sport. One summer day three years ago I was near the top of Skiddaw in the late evening, wearing just a teeshirt and shorts, carrying nothing. I missed a foot and crashed in a pile of rocks. I descended painfully and sheepishly, skirting the back of the town to avoid being seen with so much blood all over my legs and nursing what turned out to be an upper shoulder joint dislocation. Since then I've never gone out without at least an extra layer, an emergency bivi bag and a phone. But not a good omen.

I recognised as early as 2017 when I had to pull out of the Dragon's Back that I could manage a day or two of hard mountain travel but no more. The cumulative effect on my knees was just too much. 

A ski touring crash thirty years ago left me with no ACL in my right knee. The ankle in the same leg has very limited movement following a skateboarding misadventure of a similar vintage. Scans first showed the onset of arthritis in both knees about fifteen years ago. I've had a fair bit of cartilege cleaned out, what's left isn't doing much of a job these days.  Through asking in the right places I was fortunate enough to find a knee surgeon and a couple of physios who I believe to be about the best in the business. I've done the rehab exercises diligently over the years. But no one can expect miracles. I've always been quite interested in keeping records, and a look back over my running logs shows that in the ten years since I first completed the Wainwrights, got round the Tor de Geants and committed a lot of my future to the Lake District, I have averaged 43 miles and 5200ft of ascent per week year in year out. And 64 has turned into 74 next month.

I have gradually adapted my speed and gait to cope. But in doing so one starts to lose the essential freedom of movement, the being in the moment, even in the second, that made the game so attractive in the first place. Then one day back in the middle of May this year I ran the Howgills trail marathon. It was a beautiful sunny day and I took the first couple of climbs, which make up the majority of ascent for the whole route, conservatively. Then coming down from the Calf, a long gradually descending singletrack leads out to Bowderdale. At the top I was with a group of runners going at my normal conservative pace, when the thought came quite powerfully into my head, you can do better than this you know. I skittered off to the rough ground at the side then accelerated back onto the track at the head of the group. Then I just took off pretty well as fast as I could go, catching and passing runners as if they were standing still. Two or three miles of pure joy. I knew I would pay later but just for once it was worth it, to remember what it felt like.  Since then most descents have hurt just a little more than they did before and I know which way this is going. 

I finally decided after a short but typical Lake District outing on the slopes of the western arm of the Fairfield horseshoe last night, that I can't do this any more.  When you're judging each footfall not on it's efficacy but on how much it will hurt, it's just no fun. I'm afraid my days as a hill runner are done. While the thought was fresh in my mind I put a post on Facebook and was touched by the support and kind thoughts of so many friends in response. All were wonderful, and typified by the short but completely uplifting comment from Richard Lendon -  "Tough call Andy  -  but, hey, what a trip you've had."

So, time to take stock.

I'll continue to enjoy the high fells of the Lake District but strictly as a walker. A bit slower on the ups, a country mile slower on the downs. The views and the satisfaction on the summits will still be there whatever the pace. 

As far as ultras go, I can't see myself ever again completing a Sky Race, a Lakes 10 Peaks, a Lakes in a Day, or unfortunately any of the wonderful UTS series now firmly established in Snowdonia. Reality has to start overcoming the dreams. But I'll keep jogging along at whatever pace I can manage on the less rugged events for as long as I can. I'm hoping for another West Highland Way race, I've missed for far too long the way that stunning journey unfolds as you travel north, and I still have a couple of Hardmoors appointments to keep. I'm sure I'll be back on the Pennine Way at some point and I'm intending to collect Lakeland 50's for as long as I can still put one foot in front of the other. My ambitions will go no further than getting to the end in relatively good shape and in the allotted time, no matter how long it takes. In trying to describe the difference earlier today, between what is possible and what not,  the best I could do was to say that if I can choose where to put my feet then I can manage things comfortably enough, but if the hill tells me where I have to put my feet then I'm in trouble. If you do these things, you'll know what I mean.

A realisation, an acceptance, but in the end a plan

When one door closes...

Planning your day on the West Highland Way

Back in 2018 (I think) I made a series of podcasts entitled "A Tourists Guide to the West Highland Way race".  Here is a printout of Part 3, which is about planning your day........

PART 3

Hello again. This is Andy Cole, and, if you’ve already joined me earlier in the year for parts one and two, then welcome to the Tourists Guide to the West Highland Way Race, part 3.

Now old hands will tell you that there are two journeys involved in this event; the one that starts from Milnlgavie railway station at the bizarre hour of one am on a June morning, and the one that gets you to that point from the moment you sent in your entry form back in November of the previous year. In parts 1 and 2 we talked about first setting a plan and then how we might prepare ourselves for the journey up the course, that is, how to get to the start line in appropriate shape for our day out. For some people I’m sure it will have been plain sailing up to now, a nice training plan well on the way to being completed. For others I’m equally sure it won’t have been so easy. Bad weather. Injuries or illness got in the way of what we wanted to do. Family and work commitments had to be met and overall we’re doubting that we’ve put in the time or the miles necessary to make the trip. Well, I’m recording this just over 10 weeks from race day and have recently had a nudge from John Kynaston to get on with it, so hopefully it won’t be more than 8 or 9 weeks from the start that you’re hearing this. So my first message if you think you haven’t done enough is don’t worry, you will almost certainly be OK.

Your entry back in November will have been vetted for previous experience, and if Murdo and the boys let you in they felt you had enough in the locker to do this. Unless you’ve been bingeing constantly since then, that knowledge will be enough to get you home. What I didn’t admit when I set the scene for these talks back in Part 1 was that the last time I had some knee surgery it was in late March of the year in question. I had done very little for some months beforehand, and the surgeon told me I wasn’t to try running until the end of April. I did my first longish run, the 35 mile Sandstone Trail race near where I live in Chester in the first week in June and the West Highland Way Race two weeks later. It wasn’t either pretty or quick, but it was a finish. No, wherever you are now, you still have time to get ready and get this done.

A lot will depend on what you do come race day.

Nearly all ultra runners will have heard of the Spine, a non-stop race held each January along the 268 mile Pennine Way. It’s been won three times by an amazing Czech runner called Pavel Paloncy. Among other things, Pavel is well known for always running with a small towel attached to his pack. Devotees of the Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy will understand. The two guiding principles for the traveller are “Never go anywhere without your towel” and the two words written in large capital letters on the opening page of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy itself……”DON’T PANIC!”.

In the 2016 West Highland Way race I can remember sitting on the tailgate of our car at the Bridge of Orchy station in the bright sunshine, talking to John Kynaston who was that year supporting a friend of ours Stuart Mills. I’d just owned up to John that starting the race little more than two weeks after finishing the 190 mile Northern Traverse event probably wasn’t one of the best ideas I’d ever had. Just over 60 miles in and I felt pretty well done for. Still, I stopped for a while, had something to eat and drink and appraised the situation. It was a nice day and there were plenty of hours left on the clock. I apologised to my crew that they were going to be up a lot later than they had planned on Saturday night, then walked steadily from there to the finish, never going faster than a pace that I could comfortably manage and catching an hour’s sleep at Kinlochleven on the way.

A year later I came to the race feeling quite fit, disappointed that I’d had to drop out of the Dragon’s Back race a month or so earlier with bad knee problems, but confident that this wouldn’t be an issue on the gentler ground and much easier climbs and descents on the West Highland Way. One of my knees hurt for the first fifty miles or so but I had managed to keep on top of it by progressing fairly gently and taking painkillers now and then. I felt relatively good at Auchtertyre so ran quite a lot of the next section from there to the Bridge of Orchy. This was tiring as we had quite a squally headwind that year, but I seemed to be making reasonable progress so wasn’t too worried. I then set out over Rannoch Moor without enough clothes on, no insulation layer under a waterproof top and no waterproof trousers. In a number of heavy showers, combined with the strong wind, I got thoroughly cold and had to run a lot more than I would have liked just to keep warm, with the result that on getting to Glencoe it took a long time to recover and get warm again. On top of this the effort I’d put in was making it hard to eat and drink. Still, I made reasonable time over the Devils Staircase and on the way down overtook Ian Rae who was progressing steadily towards his twelfth finish. But at Kinlochleven it was like someone had just turned the power switch off. I had no energy left at all. I sat in the car for over two hours and felt no better. I wasn’t sleepy and couldn’t sleep. But I’ve got to the finish from here no matter how bad I was feeling, and couldn’t believe that I couldn’t do so again, so I set out. I made the long climb up to the jeep track fairly steadily, assuming that once I got up there all would be OK; it wasn’t. I could shuffle along the flat bits at maybe two miles an hour but the slightest suggestion of an uphill had me almost at a standstill. It was as if I’d used everything I had left on the climb and just couldn’t go any further. To give up at this particular point was very hard but I had no option; I turned and shuffled slowly, with many rests, back down to Kinlochleven, passing two runners who would go on to finish comfortably, Neil MacRitchie and Nicole Brown, as I neared the road.

What I’m trying to illustrate in these two little stories is that however well or badly you’ve prepared for the race, it’s often the decisions that you make on the day that determine your ultimate success or failure. In 2016 I found that I clearly hadn’t recovered fully from a previous event, but by recognising this early enough and changing my plan to allow for it, I was able to get to the finish, slower than I had intended but still with well over four hours to spare, and with another goblet in the bag.  A year later, although I found I was tired from halfway, I believed I was fit enough to keep up a reasonable pace and was unwilling to accept that my planned schedule was no longer possible so I stuck to it for too long without thinking of the consequences. Just one better decision, such as taking the time to wrap up better for Rannoch Moor so that I could take it at a gentler pace, taking a longer break at Glencoe, taking it easier going up the Devil’s Staircase, hanging on a couple of hours longer at Kinlochleven, any of these would almost certainly have saved my race. As it was I continued making bad calls until I had well and truly blown it. I stopped, unable to go any further, a dozen miles from the finish and with 7 hours still on the clock. A pretty amateur effort.

Now as I quoted the military guys saying back near the end of part 2, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”. You have a plan for the West Highland Way Race and you have prepared diligently, all you have to do is execute it on the day. And if you’re lucky, that will be that, job done. But normally, stuff happens. And when it happens, how you deal with it will be the single biggest factor in the outcome. So in this, the third part of our Tourists Guide, we need to think about how we make good decisions once the race has begun. Let’s look at some of the things that may change the game for us once we have become one of that long, bobbing row of headlamps heading northwards through the night from Milngavie.

First, what could have happened to affect your plan even before the start?  Well, the weather for one. Another race that I’ve run a few times now is the Lakeland 100. It starts at 6pm on a Friday evening and at somewhere around 4pm the Race Director Marc Laithwaite gathers all the competitors together for the race briefing. Marc’s a born showman and it’s always hilarious as well as informative, but most years he makes at least one serious and telling point about the prevailing conditions. In 2014 the Lakes was in the middle of a mini-heatwave; Marc’s message was something like “Well, whatever time plans you have for this event, throw them way right now and don’t think of them again. This year is going to be about survival”. Last year 2017 the district was already waterlogged from several weeks’ rain and more was forecast for the event. The message was again crystal clear “Look after your feet from the start. If you don’t, you probably won’t finish.” This sort of stuff sounds too simple to talk about, but it’s often the difference between success and failure.

Sean Stone’s classic weather briefing for the West Highland Way race, delivered in the station yard at around 12,30 am on race day, normally goes along the lines of “There will be weather, if it’s sunny you’ll get hot, if it rains you’ll get wet, if it’s windy there will be fewer midges”. Sounds a bit flippant but it’s nothing more or less than the truth. The big advantage here with the West Highland Way is that you’re not relying for 100 miles on what you carry on your back. The possibility to meet with your crew at fairly frequent intervals means that you can react to whatever the weather does as you go along the course  - so long as you don’t mess it up as I did last year. The forecast from a day or so previously will give you some idea of what to expect – whether you’re going to need a hat and sunscreen or 4 or 5 changes of clothes, but once you’re under way it’s important that you keep on top of things. In the 2012 race it rained I think pretty well from start to finish. It didn’t seem too bad at first and most people started lightly clad with maybe a light waterproof top. When we reached the bit of road from Gartness to Drymen, about 10 miles into the race, it was under water to a depth of several inches for long stretches and the rain was starting to really hammer down. That’s the way it’s going to be then, I thought. At Balmaha I put on a light fleece under a good waterproof, picked up my waterproof hat and gloves, and kept things that way for the remainder of the race, wet but warm, with plenty of changes of clothes along the way. A lot of runners dropped out that year with hypothermia because they simply hadn’t brought enough warm clothes with them. We know there will be weather. We just need to have enough of the right stuff in the car, and use it when the occasion calls.

OK, you’ve got the conditions dialled and are prepared to face what’s out there. What can possibly go wrong? Well if you’re not careful, the first three or four hours can compromise your whole race. I remember Dario Melaragni, the West Highland Way Race director for many years once saying that this race cannot be won before Balmaha, but it can certainly be lost before Balmaha. What he was meaning is that the first twenty miles contain the easiest ground in the whole race, and it’s tempting to take these at a pace that just takes far too much out of you. Even on a tourist plan it’s possible to get caught up in the enthusiasm, go with the flow and not realise how fast you are going. The thirty minutes you may save by going too fast here can set you back many hours towards the end of the race. The mantra for these first few hours is look at your watch and run your own race. It might feel that the race has gone somewhere else and you’re just running on your own along the trail; don’t panic, for a Tourist that’s how it should be.

Once under way at a sensible pace, another thing that can really mess up your day is if your feet start to fall apart. The West Highland Way is generally a hard surfaced and mostly dry track. You’ll cover lots of stones and gravel with very little naturally wet ground, and this in itself can be hard on your feet. If you’ve done a bit of research you’ll know this and hopefully know what you have to do to keep your feet in reasonable shape for 30 hours’ worth of this type of going. I could do a complete podcast on looking after your feet but the basis of everything and the key things to remember are:

Firstly, blisters come from friction. There is no other cause. If your shoes fit really well there will be no internal rubbing and you’ll get no blisters. If your shoes are less than a perfect fit you may get some.

Secondly, everything gets worse when it’s wet. Wet socks and shoes increase friction, so blisters not only happen sooner but they’re harder to keep under control because all the stuff that you’re likely to put on them to make things better will be adversely affected by the wet.

You should know whether you’re prone to blisters or not from previous races or longer training runs, and by now you should have worked out your system for dealing with them, but here’s where the third and most important point comes in. As soon as you feel anything at all that’s not quite right, stop and fix it immediately. Leave it and it could end your race.

On the Lakeland 100 course there is a long steady climb which goes on for over two miles out of Buttermere, gaining nearly 2000ft of height along the way. But its main feature is that it traverses a steep hillside as it climbs, and the track is continually sloping away to the right. During the race one year, as I climbed this path I was aware of a slight hot spot under my right foot. I knew what was happening; my shoe was not laced tightly enough for this particular ground and my foot was sliding slightly to the right inside it on every step. The solution was simple, stop for twenty seconds and tighten the lace. Except I couldn’t be bothered. I was going quite well and I didn’t want the interruption; besides, it was dark and the path was a narrow alleyway through high bracken with little room to manoeuvre. I would sort it out later. I was conscious of some discomfort but I eventually left it for about 30 miles until I changed socks at the halfway point of the race, an action which revealed a neat blister just over an inch in diameter right in the middle of my sole. I was very lucky, the rest of the race was dry that year so I was able to drain and dress it and carry on to the finish. Had there been any amount of wet ground it might have been a different story. And yet it need not have happened at all. All I needed to commit to was the few seconds to tighten the lace at the right time. Just another example of the bad decisions that runners often make under the conditions of being out for a long time.

So please, if you want a good tourist experience, look after your feet.

The next thing that may not go according to your plan is your nutrition. We talked a bit about strategies in part 2 and by now most people starting the race will have decided what they think works for them, and practised it in other races or at least some long training outings. The two things that might mess with this though are firstly, you’re starting at 1am, and secondly it’s fairly unlikely that you’ll have done a training run that lasted 30 hours. It’s somehow not really surprising if something that tasted delicious mid morning at Rowardennan doesn’t have quite the same appeal at midnight in Kinlochleven. If you are unlucky enough to get to the “I really can’t eat anything” stage, and this is more likely to happen in the later stages of the race, then there are a number of tactics you can employ to get by somehow.

Number one of course is DON’T PANIC. No one has yet died of starvation while taking part in the West Highland Way Race. If you don’t feel like eating anything, then don’t eat anything. If it’s not affecting your ability to keep moving towards Fort William, then keep moving. If your support team or well-meaning fellow runners or bystanders tell you that you must eat something or you’re going to fall apart, then politely but firmly tell them to direct their advice elsewhere. It’s very likely that if you take it easy, slow down a bit and don’t force things for an hour or two then your appetite will return.

Number two is to use your support team, a facility you don’t have in almost every other race you are likely to run. Don’t just fill your car with stuff that is on your plan, but also with a variety of other flavours too that might just appeal at some point in the race. And if you don’t have what you suddenly fancy on board, there are numerous shops, pubs and cafes that your team have access to along the course that might be able to help. Teams have in past races been dispatched to find sausage rolls, pork pies, milkshakes, various specific varieties of ice cream, snack foods, fruit juices, fizzy water (that was actually one of mine), chip suppers and all sorts of other consumables which their runner hoped might get them another few miles nearer to Fort William.

Number three is to find, if you can, a comfort food that you can turn to in times of maximum distress, that you can eat under almost any circumstances. It might have little or no value as ultra-running fuel but the psychological boost you get when you feel that you’re still treating yourself right is enormous. My own go-to sustenance is tea and ginger biscuits, which have seen me through some sticky middle sections and sometimes even the final 8 or 10 hours of events where nutrition hasn’t worked well for me. This particular combination may make someone else feel like throwing up, that’s why I’m afraid we all have to find our own formula. You’ll get there eventually.

But overall, the key thing to remember is that while not eating enough will slow you down, it’s very unlikely to stop your race.

A factor that won’t affect runners at the front end or middle of the pack, but can become significant when you are nearer the back is how are you doing against the cut-off times. In a long race I was doing a few years ago I was progressing steadily through the darkness of the second night at a time approaching thirty hours from the start, when I was passed by three other runners going at a much faster pace. They appeared to head off into the distance but then one of the torches stopped and turned, and waited by a gate for me to catch up. It was a lady runner who asked if she could carry on with me to the next checkpoint, she was a bit uncertain in the dark and her companions were travelling too fast for her. Of course, I said, but why were you going so fast. Oh, she said, they had calculated that they needed to run most of the way from here to the finish or they wouldn’t make the finishing cut-off. She had decided she couldn’t do that so would have to drop out at the next checkpoint. Well, I’m going to finish, I said, and I may jog a downhill or two but nothing else. We stayed together to the finish, which we made with an hour and a half to spare. Before she encountered me, she and her companions had simply got their sums wrong.

Now this seems like a really elementary mistake to make, but when you’ve been out without sleep for a day or so, these things are likely to happen. And in a race that you’re hoping to finish but may not have a lot of time to spare, having to push hard for several miles to meet an intermediate cut-off, or worse, doing that even if you don’t need to because you got your timings wrong, is a criminal waste of your precious resources. In events like this I think it’s well worth the effort to get the cut-off times really fixed in your brain before the start, don’t rely on just looking them up on the day, and make sure your crew are fully aware of them too so they can put you straight if you start to get things wrong. It might be tempting to try to build up a bit of a cushion early on so you don’t have to think about cut-offs, but in the West Highland Way race in particular this is not a great idea as the earlier cut-offs are the tighter ones, and to build a cushion early on you really have to go faster than is wise for a steady even paced race.

While we are on the subject of timings it’s also worth remembering that as the race starts at 1am, your time on the course will always be one hour different from the time of day; close enough to cause confusion if you don’t decide how to handle it. I think it’s worth agreeing with your crew what timings you are going to work with, either time of day or time from the start, and stick with that throughout, including knowing the cut-offs in your chosen method.  More than one crew has failed to meet their runner at a checkpoint by getting this wrong in the past.

In fact losing contact with your support team is another rare but certainly possible event that can impact your race. I once reached Beinglas about 5 minutes ahead of the time I’d agreed with the team. I hadn’t seen them since Balmaha so it was a few hours back, and when I got to Beinglas there was no sign of them. I tried to phone them but I had no signal. I hung around for ten or fifteen minutes, then decided that I needed to be a bit more pro-active to keep the thing going. Fortunately, I knew the marshals at the checkpoint, explained what had happened and that I had enough food to keep going to Auchtertye. They kindly gave me some water and allowed me on my way. A bit further up Glen Falloch my phone picked up again and I was able to find out that the crew had had a puncture coming up the lochside which had delayed them, and they had arrived at Beinglas just a few minutes after I’d left. The phone coverage along the route is patchy at times, especially with some networks. Ever since then for all UK races I’ve carried a cheap non-smart phone into which I put a Manx Telecom pay as you go SIM card. The Isle of Man regards the UK as foreign country, so this phone picks up all the UK networks, and I’ve never been left out of touch since I started using it.

The final thing I’ll cover here is the one that no-one ever really wants to talk about. What happens if you reach a point during your journey up the West Highland Way course when you simply feel “I’ve had enough of this, I don’t want to carry on.”

I’ve just had a look at the results for the last five West Highland Way races, and the average completion rate is 80%. Now that’s pretty good as far as 100 mile races go, far better than for example the typical 50 to 60 percent finish rate you get in events like the Lakeland 100 or the Ultra Tour de Mont Blanc. This means that a lot more West Highland Way competitors are up to the project that they have taken on, have prepared well and run a good race on the day. But it still means that a fifth of the runners starting out from Milngavie don’t make it to Fort William. Something in their day went wrong.

Now some will have seriously underestimated the task or not prepared well enough, some may have had race-ending injuries on the day, others like me last year will have made some bad decisions. But there will always be a number who will look back at the race from 24 hours later on and think “I could have done that, I really shouldn’t have stopped”. So how do we prevent that happening?

Let’s be clear about one thing. Just because I’ve called this the Tourist’s Guide, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be easy. Just think about what we’re doing here, 95 miles on foot, climbing the equivalent of three times Ben Nevis along the way, in under a day and a half. There are going to be times when may hurt a bit; there are certainly going to be times when you know that life would be much easier if you were doing something else. And at times like this we have to beware of the little voice in our head telling us that to stop would be the sensible thing to do. I’ve already done over seventy miles, that’s a pretty good effort isn’t it?  Certainly nothing to be ashamed of if I stop now. Or maybe I was carrying an injury at the start, I’ve done really well to get as far as I have. Or maybe just that it’s been a great experience even up to here and that’s really what I came for, actually getting to the finish isn’t so important. Or I have a life with other commitments after the race, I don’t want to leave myself damaged for weeks afterwards. You see our subconscious brain is programmed to make things fairly easy for our body, and our conscious brain is only too willing to go along with this idea if we let it. In a fifty mile race we generally know that it will all be over and we’ll be sleeping in a comfortable bed, or possibly drinking in a comfortable pub before the day is out. Double the distance and we know that the discomfort we’re feeling now may go on for a long time yet. It’s an unusual runner who doesn’t go through the odd moment of doubt in a hundred miler.

I’ll suggest two methods of trying to get things back on track, the first is active (to be worked through by you the runner) and the is second passive (to be put into action by your support crew if the first doesn’t work).

If ever I have any thoughts of stopping in an event, the question I ask is what exactly is going to happen over the next day or so. I focus precisely on how events will unfold. Yes, it will feel great to  stop,  maybe get a shower,  have a sleep.  The support team will be sympathetic, supportive. Then I’ll wake up with the knowledge that I didn’t finish. The event may still be going on, runners will still be finishing.  I’ll have to meet and congratulate those who did. Will I have the courage to go to the prizegiving. How will I explain my decision to stop? What has all the time that I have invested in this enterprise over the past months been for? I find that this sort of talking to will normally get me focussed again.

But what if you go through this process and you’re still convinced that you can go no further?

James Thurlow is the Race Director  for several events including the 190 mile Northern Traverse, which doesn’t allow support teams. In such a long spaced-out event any runner dropping out is reliant on the checkpoint marshals to get them back to base, and James’ briefing to the marshals (which he also explains to the runners before the start of the race) is very clear. So long as they can physically make progress, no runner is allowed to drop out on entering a checkpoint. If they say they want to stop, they have to remain in the checkpoint for at least two hours; food will be available. They then have to carry on out onto the course for at least one kilometre beyond the checkpoint; if at that point they still say they want to drop out, they get a lift home. It seems a pretty good system to me, one that has prevented numerous premature DNF’s, and maybe one you might think of agreeing with your support team before the race.

So that’s about it then.

Stay comfortable in the weather, go at a sensible pace, look after your feet, eat what you can, keep aware of the time and in touch with your crew, and don’t give up. And then you should have a successful, satisfying, and maybe even enjoyable day or so the West Highland Way.

See you in Milngavie.

So how hard is your race?

This is really just a bit of fun but it may have a bit of practical use as well, if anyone is contemplating a race and wants an opinion on how hard it is compared to another that they may have already done.

So I have attempted to evaluate a few of the races that I have done over the years and then put them in a "graded list" of how difficult they are to complete.  I have always operated at the more modest end of ultra events so my "most difficult" race is a relatively easy undertaking by modern standards, but I would be interested to know how some of the popular more difficult events compare. 

I'll start by explaining the factors I used to try and make a comparison, and how they affect the chance of completion, then go on to my list at the end. I have only included races that I have actually completed under race conditions, or for just two  where I know the ground extremely well and have done a comparable race on the course. Also, I have included two races (the Mercian Challenge and the Lakes Traverse) which I have not done as themselves but completed within the time allowed when doing their "parent" races (Offas Dyke and the Northern Traverse respectively). I have excluded non-UK races as I haven't done enough to make good comparisons, and winter races (Dec-Feb) held in mountain regions, because they present completely different challenges and are not really comparable.

So here we go, first the factors I considered:

1. Time of year

Not guaranteed, but in general and on average there are months when the weather will be kinder, and that will make your race easier. You will have less mud and wet ground underfoot, carry less kit, do generally less faffing and need less regrouping time in checkpoints. How much of the race a "completer" will have to face in darkness is also a factor which increases difficulty.

2. Length

Obviously, all other things being equal, a longer race is harder than a shorter one. But other factors may sometimes be more important than length.

3. Height Gain

Again obviously, the more uphill you have, the harder it gets. But how much uphill is there? The race director will tell you how long the race is, and apart from an odd one or two percent no-one will really disagree; satellites are pretty accurate for horizontal positioning and plotting.  But he will also tell you how much ascent there is, and the figure he gives you will depend on what system he uses to measure it. For reasons which I won't go into here, all the systems (Strava, Garmin, OS, Trace de Trail and so on) use different algorithms, mapping systems and accuracies, so can come up with wildly different estimations of height gain. What I have done to get a common comparison is to plot all the races I have considered on the OS map system, without using the "click to trail" feature (which again changes the result but is only available for routes in National Parks), as accurately as I can, and then use the OS height gain estimation. This means that some of the figures you will see won't agree with what the race is advertised as, but they will at least all be comparable with each other.

4. Rate of Climb

This is important. If your race gains 10,000ft over 30 miles, that's a different game from one gaining the same height over 50 or 100 miles, in terms of how much ground is likely to be runnable. I have just taken a straight average here, total height gained divided by distance travelled. The purists may not agree with this but again, it gives a good comparison between different events.

5. Ground Difficulty

It's easy to get bogged down (no pun intended) here with subtle differences, but it is clearly easier to run on a road or well-gravelled jeep track than over a boulder field. I have kept this simple with a three grade rating. Grade 1 is a route which includes lots of ground where you can run steadily without looking at your feet, grade 2 is where you will regularly need to look where you are putting your feet and make fairly frequent adjustments to individual stride and foot placings, grade 3 will contain significant sections where you will be using your hands.

6. Longest Distance between Food Resupplies.

This makes a diffence to difficulty because as the distance to food resupplies goes up, obviously the amount you have to carry with you increases, but also your options for choice goes down. With regular well stocked feed stations you can make choices as you go, as mood and appetite varies. Without them you have to live with your pre-made choices for much longer periods. The easiest situation for the runner is if the race permits a support crew, I have just noted these as "SC" in my table. At the other end of the scale are events where you have to go for days with what's in your pack. Some events allow competitors to access shops, cafes, pubs, etc along the way, which obviously mediates the distance between resupplies, and I have indicated these. Other events ban the use of such establishments.

7. Time Allowance

The physical nature of a course and access to support points goes some way to define the undertaking. But the over-riding factor that makes a race easy or hard is the time allowance you have to complete it.  The Lakeland 100 follows a route that many middle-aged ramblers would be happy to complete in a week or ten days; cut the limit down to 40 hours and around half of the (hopefully) trained ultra-runners setting out on the course fail.

8. Minimum Average Speed

This in theory is the overall difference divided by the time allowed, but it doesn't always work like that. Some multi-day races have the same time allowance for days of different distances, and some continuous races have intermediate cut-offs that demand you go faster over some sections than the overall average. The figure I have given is the highest speed you will have to maintain for a significant proportion of the race to meet cutoffs. This gives an idea, especially important in hilly events, of how much you will actually have to cover at a running pace to meet this average speed.

I've also added a couple of bits of post-event data which I think contribute in some way to the comparisons of overall difficulty. These are (a) the current race record, where I have been able to find it, and (b) the percentage of the starting field which finished. For the the latter, I have just taken a snapshot of the result of all events in 2019. I could find an average but it would be a lot of work and probably doesn't give you much additional information.

In arriving at a ranked list I haven't attempted to build an algorithm. This has been tried by people more competent than me, but they throw up silly anomalies because evaluating and weighting the various factors is so complex. I think an overall judgement having done the events is at least (and possibly more) accurate. But of course, other runners who have done the events may come to a different conclusion, and that's maybe part of the fun.

I have also included a few events in the table below my ranked list. I know the ground very well on these but have either never attempted or never completed them so can't really make a judgement on their rank. I would be interested if anyone who has done them could help out here. Note that the figures for the Dragons Back are in its current 6 day form which is much harder than previous years.

So here we are!

* = you can use shops, cafes, pubs, etc

Deadwater Double

I really didn't intend to go back to Deadwater, having had a great experience at the 2018 event, but sometimes these things have a way of just drawing you in. So I thought rather than just relate what happened this year I would try to reflect a bit on my race, and on the race itself, in comparison with my earlier visit.

Rainy start line briefing

1. My own performance

I was a late starter into ultra running, completing my first event 14 years ago when I was 59. I reached some sort of respectability by my mid 60's, for example completing the Lakeland 50 in just under 10 hours and the West Highland Way in 22 and a half, but since then there has been a steady decline in my performances and these days I am very much a back-of-pack "completer" rather than concerned about any particular times. So I approached Deadwater in 2018 with completion as my only goal. I got to the end though it was touch and go at times, and this made me feel I needed to find a few ways to make things easier this year being three years older. I could improve a bit with kit and food but not much, the difference would have to come from race strategy. It occured to me that while the long days in 2018 had taken me a long time (on the longest I finished less than an hour before having to start the next day), I had plenty of time left in the evenings of the shorter days. So I should really take the shorter days, particularly days 1 and 2, easier, to leave more "in the tank" for later in the week. I was too indisciplined to carry this out to best effect. I was only about 20 minutes longer on Day 1 (though still came in last place) and 80 minutes on Day 2; I could and should have taken longer, though the weather on these days was not great giving no real incentive to hang around. The other tactic I decided on was to slow down or rest whenever the going felt tough, and not to bother too much about the time unless the next day's start became pressing. I knew from many continuous races that I can go for two or three days without significant sleep if necessary.

Overall the race went well for me. I never felt really tired except on the final two or three climbs of Day 4, and this was probably because I did the last 10 miles or so with another runner (Bev) at a pace faster than I would have sustained on my own. But also towards the end of Day 4  I was conscious of a pain on the top of my right foot. I assumed it was rubbing on the tongue or top edge of my shoe, but found it was due to a swelling from some sort of bite. This got progressively worse over the next two days, swelling much more, showing signs of infection and causing sensitivity at the skin and discomfort when flexing the ankle. Advice from the race medic Chris was that the best tactic at this stage of the game would be to carry on to the finish then get it looked at then. He examined it again before Day 6 and took my temperature halfway through the day to confirm this was still the best approach. With the benefit of hindsight this proved absolutely spot on. Any attempt at treatment before the finish would have had very limited benefit and cost a lot of race time. (I actually started on antibiotics the day after the finish and three days later they have only just started to have some discerible effect). It just made Days 5 and 6 a bit painful.

My total finish time was 82:13:33 compared with 81:08:37 in 2018 so I was pretty pleased with that. Without the insect bite I would certainly have done a better time than 2018 (for example Day 6 this year took me three and a half hours longer than in 2018), though the fact that I didn't have to use any "race time" for catching up on sleep this year was also significant (this is explained a bit further on).

2. The rest of the field

There were 20 starters and 16 finishers, at 80% a far higher completion rate than previous years.  Times can't be compared directly with 2017 because part of the course that year had to be omitted because of really bad weather, but comparison with 2018 (18 starters and 10 finishers, a 55% completion rate) shows that the class of 2021 came to the event much better prepared. There were some seriously good runners at the front in 2018, three of them beating the 2021 winning time, but not much quality beyond that. The 5th place time in 2018 would only have got 12th in 2021, showing that a feature this year was good performances right through the field.  I think this year will give prospective entrants a much better read on what to expect in the future. Good, competent, and "good enough" times for the race, and sensible targets for each day are getting much better established.

3. Course diffences

There were two course changes this year from 2018.

The first added a mile or so and a couple of hundred feet of ascent along Hadrian's Wall onto Day I to the new Camp 1 location at Winshiels rather than Haltwhistle. It then added another couple of miles through fields to Haltwhistle the following morning. This made the course longer overall, but coming between two of the shortest days I think made very little difference to the overall undertaking. I also felt the mile along the Wall added to rather than detracting from the race experience.

More significantly, Day 4 the "Long Day" had to be reduced by 10 miles to around 50 miles, with these miles being added back into the start of Day 5, again due to an enforced campsite relocation. At the outset this seemed to make the event intuitively easier, but there were plusses and minusses. It meant the route itself was different and more arduous for a couple of miles. Instead of the mostly easy-angled steady ascent taken by the Pennine Way from Calderdale to Stoodley Pike, the new route took a steep footpath up from the valley for several hundred feet to the overnight stop (actually a camping barn for this night), followed by a direct and more-or-less pathless ascent of steep side of the Pike first thing next morning.

For runners capable of completing the original Day 4 (Horton to Littleborough) in say 20 hours of less, I don't think the change was particularly significant. For those like me who are not, the difference is that the sleep you get (for me never likely to be more than 2-2,5 hours on this particular "overnight") could this year all be taken at the campsite so not in "race time", rather than after the following morning's start when it just adds on to your Day 5 time.

I'm sure the debate will continue on this one.

4. Weather

Weather can significantly affect your enjoyment of an event like this. It's more than just whether the actual running is pleasant or not, but much more about management of kit. Even if it's dry, stuff gets wet  -  shirts from sweat, socks and shoes from wet ground and so on. In good weather you have some chance of getting these dry again, in bad weather almost none. I think on average the weather in 2018 and 2021 was about the same, generally poor at the start and improving towards the finish. We had a drier day through the Forest in 2018 but a much bleaker day over Cross Fell, and Day 5 along the canals was really baking. I found the canals much easier this year in spite of having a sore foot. Runners have different tactics for dealing with the wet, I spoke to two who had brought clean socks for each day (to be binned at the end of the day). That's something I might think about for multi day events in future, though RD Richard has a penchant for finding routes which take you through some wet ground early on each day, so the benefit may be more psychological than real. We didn't have the continuous bad weather experienced by the 2017 race, so for that we should be thankful.

5. Atmosphere

What was really noticeable on both years I have done this event is that it was a really happy experience from start to finish. All the runners and support team were supportive and friendly throughout, there were no moaners, prima donnas or drama queens, everyone just got on with things and helped each other when they could.

This was true even though the support team, with just one or two exceptions, was completely different in the two years I ran. Even the systems varied, for example this year we chose our overnight tent companions at the start and stuck with them through to the finish, whereas in 2018 tent occupancy gradually developed through the event such that the faster guys (earlier to bed and later to rise) got together and slower people did the same. It didn't seem to make any difference to the ambience overall.

I can only put this down to the unobtrusive but clearly super-efficent way Richard runs the show.

Whether this atmosphere could be maintained with the maximum possible entry (50 starters), where getting to know everyone else on the journey would be much harder,  I don't know, but I would hope it could.

6. The future

This is an event that deserves a future. It provides something that you don't find much in UK ultras, a really significant challenge that doesn't require a lot of running ability to complete. This genuinely is one where so long as you keep your head in the game and look after your feet, you'll get to the finish. Over the three years it has run, 34 people have now completed Deadwater, and I hope that all of them give it as much publicity as they can over the next year or so to make sure that 2023 get a big entry list and so becomes another success.

So to all my fellow runners and all the support staff on this year's event, a sincere thanks to everyone; it was a pleasure and a privilege to share your company along the way. Experience shows that somehow, the majority of us will stay in touch, I think Deadwater does that to you.

As for me, well 2 years is a long way away just now. But I did say last time that I wouldn't go again. I feared that after such a good experience in 2018 that 2021 might be an anticlimax. It wasn't............

Deadwater 2021 Finishers and RD Richard Weremiuk