I just couldn't see it to start with. All these folk out doing virtual challenges to keep their miles up and raise a bit for charities. When "Arctic John" Parkin did over 7000 laps of his back yard to cover a hundred miles I was staggered by the effort and commitment while at the same time thinking "Not for me, no way!" But then the West Highland Way came along again, as it always does at this time of year. This is an event quite special for me, it was my first long ultra back in 2007; the first race after which I said "I'm never doing that again" and was back the following year, an experience I'm sure shared by many.
I hadn't entered this year having other plans (now shelved of course, along with everyone else's), but in spite of the ticking clock I always felt I had time to get back to Scotland for a couple more geriatric rambles up the course in the coming years. And now here was a chance, in the "Virtual West Highland Race", to be part of the thing in a year when I wasn't expecting it, a bonus out of all the adversity if you like. I signed up pretty well straight away.
The concept was simple. You had overall nine and a half days, from midnight on Thursday 11 June until noon on Sunday 21st, to cover 95 miles, an equivalent distance to the full course. Ten miles a day would do it. It didn't matter where you did the miles (different "lockdown" systems were in place in different parts of the UK) or how many runs you took to accumulate them, just get the 95 miles done. It was divided into three "legs" of 36, 27 and 32 miles, each to be reported on SI Entries by Monday night, Thursday night and Sunday noon respectively, so you could see how everyone else was doing. The banter on the WHW Facebook page got up to near the volume normally associated with the real race. In a normal year the race has about 200 starters, chosen by ballot; this year with no restrictions more than a thousand were on the start line.
Even in a "real" ultra race, very few entrants are actually competing with each other, that sort of thing is reserved for a few elite performers at the front end of the field. Motives for the remainder are almost as varied as the entrants, ranging from testing their own limits to just having a nice day out in the countryside with the majority somewhere in between these extremes. With the virtual race you were even more able to fashion your experience to suit your own preferences. I thought for a while about doing a ten mile run each day round our local lanes. I had been doing this sort of thing (although generally only every other day) during our own more restricted period of the lockdown, so was fairly hopeful I could knock out the 95 at somewhere around 10 minute miles. This would give me an overall WHW time of under 16 hours, a time only achieved by a handful of runners over the entire history of the real race! But on reflection I decided I wanted an experience a bit more in line with what the real race offers me personally. I don't have the inconvenience of a job so could use whatever time was required. We were discouraged from attempting the 95 miles in one go, a plan which would have been logistically difficult for me anyway so I decided to do the three "legs" on consecutive days; I would also try and match the height gain experienced by the true course, and run the great majority off road with some knobbly sections where available to replicate the ground underfoot. So although I would have the luxury of a good meal, glass of wine and a comfortable bed after each of the first two legs, I would least have the experience of the climbs out of Glencoe and Kinlochleven with enough in the legs to make them feel a bit more real. I had to get the first leg done by Monday night and wanted to avoid weekend crowds so I decided Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday would be my programme.
Where to run was the next consideration. Ideally I would have gone to one of our local ranges of hills, the Clwydians, which have just about everything needed to replicate the WHW course, but they are just over the border and Wales was still closed to foreigners. My son in Manchester who had also signed up for the VWHW has the uplands of East Cheshire and Derbyshire on his doorstep but for me to get there would involve over an hour's travel each way every day which didn't seem to be in the spirit of the thing just now. So it would have to be on the West Cheshire sandstone ridge, most of which is a 20 minute drive for me. It has the 33 mile Sandstone Trail along the crest, plenty of paths off to the sides and three clumps of hills, Frodsham and Helsby in the north, Eddisbury and Delamere Forest 10 miles to the south and the Peckforton Hills a bit further south again. Travelling along the crest trail really didn't give enough height gain so I planned three days, one at each of the hill sections.
When it came to doing it, the thing went remarkably easily and I enjoyed pretty well every step. I thought I might get bored with the repetitive nature of some of the route. I took a radio along every day but never turned it on, I was happy with my thoughts in the surroundings. The weather was nearer high summer than late June though, misty starts followed by wall to wall sunshine by late morning and temperatures in the high twenties. Then the thunderstorms in the late afternoons and evenings with heavy drenching rain which caused flash flooding problems in many parts of Cheshire.
8am Monday morning saw me parking in the Delamere Forest Visitor Centre, then starting with a gentle cruisy route through the forest of about 12 miles, a sort of warm up on the easy ground as you get to Drymen sort of thing. A bit more aggressive ground was needed next to get over first Conic Hill then all the undulating ground along Loch Lomond to Inversnaid. The height gain seemed to work out if I spent the next 24 miles doing 13 ascents of Eddisbury Hill by various routes and descents. The hill is about 300ft above the visitor centre but fortunately there are five completely separate routes to the top, ranging from about three quarters of a mile to a mile and a half in distance, so by ringing the changes you don't have to cover the same ground too many times. I was walking the steeper uphills and jogging the rest which seemed to translate into something faster than four miles an hour pace, even allowing for the odd checkpoint at the car for drink and jam butties.
I finished the day feeling pleased at having covered 36 miles with no ill effects (other than the normal feeling you get after covering 36 miles and a fair bit of uphill on foot). The rain didn't start until I was back home, but the quantity that came down made me a bit suspicious that the following morning the trails might be a bit "softer".
The other niggle I had was the height gain. I don't have a watch with an altimeter these days as I rarely see a use for one, so I had calculated the height gains for my planned days using the OS Route Creation app. But I've recently started using Strava and initially I was quite surprised to find that when my watch, Garmin Connect and Strava have finshed talking to each other (or whatever else it is they do in the one and a half seconds between pressing "save" on the watch and my phone going "Ping, your run is ready to view" - I'm always so impressed with this modern technology stuff) that Strava produces a total elevation gain for the run. I guess it does this by plotting the run recorded on some sort of map background with height information. A nice feature but the problem was that the figure I was being given by Strava at the end of the day didn't agree with the figure I had calculated on the OS map at the start. I was short of 300 feet. My day was supposed to be a 5100ft gain and Strava would only let me have 4810! Now as all the boys will tell you Strava is the oracle, if it doesn't happen on Strava it doesn't exist, so I had to find a way of getting that 300ft back; not only that, but I would have to assume that I would have to add another 300ft into each of the following days too. So another three ascents of the ridge went into the now revised plan.
I was off a bit earlier on the Tuesday not being constrained by an official car park opening time, as I was parking by the roadside near another set of hills, the Peckforton group. I had chosen these for the middle section because they have enough rocky and rooty tracks to give some idea of the deteriorating lochside north of Inversnaid, and more rocky and aggressive climbs for the big ascents out of the north end of the loch and up to Auchtertyre, plus some suitable cruisy bits for the easy ground from Tyndrum to Bridge of Orchy. I was stiffish for the first mile or two but soon eased into the day with 7 ascents of Bulkley Hill and 7 of Bickerton Hill, with some easy ascents around Burwardsley and Peckforton in between and afterwards. The ground underfoot was dampish for an hour or so but the moisture soon burned off into another hot hot hot day. My route only allowed 2 returns to the car so I was carrying a lot more drink around today, but I still finished feeling I'd put in a good enough shift without pushing things too far. I just about beat the rain back to the car
The day was rounded off nicely when I discovered I had made up the ascent deficit of the Monday and was now nicely back on track. I'd listened recently to John Kynaston's interview with Shane Ohly, Dragon's Back Race Director and winner of numerous mountain marathons. One of his top tips for a multi day event was "Sleep is not critical, getting rehydrated is far more important, don't go to bed until you know you have replaced everything you've lost during the day". I found this principle worked really well for me over three hot days and it's a bit of learning I won't now forget.
My original plan for Wednesday was to park again at Delamere and run the 8 or nine miles along the Sandstone Trail to the Frodsham and Helsby hills, do some ascents there then come back with a final bit of ascent in the forest. This would work for the easy running over Rannoch Moor, the ups and downs from Glencoe to just beyond Kinlochleven, the long gentle bit of the Lairig Mor and the final hills before Glen Nevis. But the weather forecast was not great; it was going to be another hot day but the afternoon storms were projected to arrive much earlier today. I thought about it the night before and in the end wimped out. I would do my laps on Eddisbury hill again; this would allow me to keep some really heavyweight weather gear accessible in the car should I need it to complete the miles, which I was determined to do by the end of Wednesday (and in the face of the latest forecast, as early on Wednesday as possible).
I was there just as the car park opened and under way. If someone had told me six months ago that I would set out to make fifteen consecutive ascents of this hill and enjoy it I would have thought them crazy. But the brain is wonderfully adaptable and miles seemed to float by all day. I had a concerning moment around 2pm when I had only three laps still to do, when the sky went very dark and rumbles of thunder started to roll around. It started to rain. But then miraculously the gentle, slight smell of burning rain that you get on these occasions and you have a fair idea of what's coming next, didn't get heavier but simply stopped. The sky brightened and half an hour later there was no sign of a storm at all. I celebrated by making my final descent to the finish the fastest mile of the week.
It really is daft all this running round in circles. But somehow quite uplifting.
Monday, 36 miles, 4810ft
Tuesday, 27 miles, 5760ft
Wednesday 32 miles, 4680ft
Total, 95 miles, 15250ft. The West Highland Way, 2020.
No comments:
Post a Comment