John Kynaston

The last contact I had with John was early this year when he left a comment on a blog post I had just published  -  "Great write up as always Andy. Looking forward to seeing how 2021 works out for you, especially how working with Dave Troman will help you. It will be great to run together at Deadwater but hopefully before that as well." Less than 24 hours later John suffered the heart attack from which he never recovered. The brutal unexpected shock will remain with those of us who knew him for a long time, the hole he leaves in the running community will last longer still. 

I knew John for more than a decade, and though we lived 250 miles apart and rarely met more than a handful of times a year, our friendship worked as though he lived next door. Many others will say the same, John was such an enthusiastic and prolific communicator; it was very easy to stay in touch.

It started I think back in the autumn of 2006, when both of us, from very different athletic backgrounds but neither having run an ultramarathon before, entered the following year's West Highland Way race. No ballot or race for places in those days of course, you just posted an application off to race organiser Dario Melaragni and he phoned you to assess your suitability, a conversation ending something like "Well I think you'll be OK then, just get some training in and I'll see you in June". While I quietly contemplated what on earth I had got myself into, John had already started a blog to record his training, thoughts and ambitions. In a time before established social media, the forums on event websites and blogs of competitors were the only way you could find out about what was going on, but even amongst these John's heart on sleeve attitude was already something a bit different. To an introvert like me, his confidence to share his thoughts with the world whether things were going well or badly was inspirational. 

John was of course a far better runner than me, getting under 23 hours for the West Highland Way at his first attempt and going on to record two sub 20 hour finishes in subsequent years. The race hooked me too though, and what I thought was going to be a one-off venture into the strange world of ultra-running back in 2007 turned into a major part of my life; I met John almost every year after that at both the West Highland Way and the Highland Fling, when he was either running himself or marshalling. I remember a couple those occasions especially. 

In 2011 after 4 consecutive high standard finishes, John set out with a target time of 21 hours. At a pace in line with my normal pedestrian finish in those days of around 26 hours, I was surprised on reaching the Glencoe checkpoint, about 72 miles in, to see him just leaving; he was having a tough time with a bad loss of energy and sore feet. I eventually caught him again and passed him at Kinlochleven. For such a good runner it would have been easily understandable for him to feel it just wasn't his day that year; call it a day and come back in better shape another time. Not John; he slowly and painfully walked it out, never for a minute considering giving up, to finish in his slowest ever time by a margin of about 5 hours.

He reminded me of this when I was sitting on the tailgate of my team's car in the Bridge of Orchy station car park in bright sunshine during the 2016 race. I was chatting with John who was crewing for a mutual friend of ours that year. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself, reflecting that attempting this event less than two weeks after completing the 190 mile Northern Traverse wasn't perhaps the smartest trick I'd ever pulled. I was way down on energy and motivation and maybe looking for confirmation that a withdrawal would be sensible, but sympathy wasn't forthcoming. John pointed out that I'd gone into this with my eyes open and there was more than enough time left to walk to the finish from that point should I choose to do so. Suitably chastened, that's what I did. But a spark was maybe lit the other way too because a couple of years later John ran the Northern Traverse himself.

Other vivid memories of John and the West Highland Way are the wonderful welcome my son (also John) and I got when he and Katrina marshalled at the bonfire at Lundavra as I struggled to a 30 hour finish one year, and the moment he presented me eventually with my 10th goblet at the finishing cermony in 2018, all those years after we started back in 2007.

Though not the media mogul bestriding the ultra-running world that he later became, many years ago John launched a series of podcasts devoted to the West Highland Way. I don't know how many there were eventually, I'm sure hundreds. I volunteered to contribute one in the early days, not realising that once JK got his "producer hat" hooks into you then there would be no escape, ever. I ended up doing quite a few for the West Highland Way series. Then recently when John found out that I was targetting the Hardmoors 110 for my main 2021 race, an event that at this stage of my career it is possible but by no means probable that I can complete, his immediate reaction was "Great, how about doing a monthly interview letting us know all about your journey to get there!". 

John stayed with his local races in Scotland for the early part of his ultra career, but was tempted south to the Lakeland 100 as its reputation and popularity started to grow. Many Lakeland runners have made use of the superb informative videos he produced on his reccies of the course with Dave Troman; by now John's meticulous preparations for his events were beginning to become legendary. His first attempt on the race was in 2012. I was running the Lakeland 50 that year, which used to start somewhat later than it does now, so for most of my race I was catching and passing Lakeland 100 runners. The convention was (and still is) that you give them a word of encouragement as you pass, as they have travelled 55 miles further than you by that point. My mind must have been elsewhere as I shouted a cheery "well done" to the figure I passed just over the crest of Gatescarth Pass, because I hadn't gone five yards past when a "Hey Andy!" wafted back. Of course it was John and we jogged and chatted for a few minutes, before I sped on in my pursuit of a respectable "fun run" finish. John seemed to me to be going well. He finished in 34 and a half hours, a time I would have put down as one of my finest achievements, but he was a bit disappointed. His spreadsheet told him he could get under thirty, so that was what he wanted. Three years later he was back. I was marshalling at the finish line in 2015 and made sure I was there at just after midnight to welcome him home and check him in with just  over 29 and a half hours on the clock. Job done.

Most of my conversations with John had naturally been about running, but November 2015 saw us both entered in the White Rose Ultra in the southern Pennines. He was down to do two laps of the 30 mile course while I was content with one. This meant that our chosen pace was pretty near the same for the first lap and we ran almost all of it together. The five hours or so that that it took allowed us to range wider over other topics. John told me of his early career in the East, while I was struggling with strife-torn British industry and helping to run a small engineering business. Since I left my roots in the Midlands much of my life has centred around Merseyside so we had a lot of shared knowledge of the area; I had to confess that we were on opposite side of the Great Divide as I had become a Red when I first moved to Liverpool to start a research degree in 1970. I even discovered that John had been good friends with the guy who had been the pastor at the Evangelical Church a hundred yards from our current house when we first moved there just over thirty years ago. It really is a small world. The only downside of the run was when the event photographer snapped us on the track up towards Wessenden Head with the words "Well done, old timers!"

"Old Timers"

I had a couple of attempts at the Dragon's Back in 2015 and 2017 but never got beyond the mid point of Day 3. I was carrying an injury both times but I think the main problem was that it was a race that just came too late for me, Father Time and deteriorating knees couldn't really be overcome. But John knew all about my attempts and asked me a year or so before the 2019 event whether I thought he could do it. With a sub 30 Lakeland under his belt I was sure he would be fine, but the unrelenting climbing and technical ground on the DB often takes runners by surprise, so I recommended he had a look at as much of the course as possible during the preceding year, so he could plan his training accordingly. I love the territory it goes through so offered to accompany him on any exploration he wanted to do.

Through the summer of 2018 we reccied the first three days of the race over three separate weekends and experienced nearly all the weather that Wales can throw at you. Day 1 was wall to wall blue sky and blazing sunshine. 

Sunshine at Pen-y-Pass on Day 1

Day 3 over Cadair and Plynlimon was generally more "Welsh", misty and chilly with bouts of wind-driven rain at times.

Bleaker weather on Plynlimon Day 3

But Day 2, generally accepted as the toughest day on the course anyway, was, to use a popular term these days, "biblical". We never saw a summit (or much else overall). We battled high winds over Cnicht and the Moelwyns,  got very nearly lost in the tortuous heather-strewn ground north of Cwm Bychan, and traversed the Rhinogs in a continuous downpour, including a thigh-deep wade over the col between the two eponymous summits. On this last outing I was equipped with tough waterproof trousers and a full-weight mountain jacket. John, as always, was wearing shorts.

(John always seemed oblivious to bad weather, it was just something that was part of the day out. One late evening in October as we were enjoying a meal at the finish of the 2016 Lakes in a Day event, when John had just said that his races were now done for the year, I persuaded him to join me at the inaugural running of the Wooler Trail Marathon in late November. On the day of the run there was a hard frost down to the village. All the boggy ground following the Pennine Way along the border fence was frozen pretty well solid. It was about minus 15 degrees as we traversed the Cheviot summit. John was still in his shorts.)

Start of Wooler Trail Marathon - the only shorts in sight

We completed Day 4 of the Dragon's back the following spring and John wiped off Day 5 during a visit to his father-in-law who lived nearby. He then put his plan together, followed it (including a few dozen ascents of his local hill Ben Lomond), and of course completed the race in good style. But I had so much "inside track" knowledge that it was easy for me to win his "Guess My Time" competition on this one!

I could reminisce about other shared moments, from the  Lakleand Trails 100k to the Grand Tour of Skiddaw, from Ring of Fire reccies to the "Beast from the East" Hardmoors 55 and so many more, but I'll leave those to think over in quiet moments in the future.

In a lifetime of climbing and skiing I have learned that you can at some times break all the rules and have a wonderful experience, while at others you can exercise all the diligence possible and still get bitten by the mountains. And so in life itself. One of my grandfathers had a hard early life as a soldier in the Boer War, before taking up a sedentary job as a chauffeur. He smoked for seventy years and his only exercise beyond middle age was to walk a few hundred yards to his local pub for a pint, which he did almost every night of his life. He carried on in good health until his mid-eighties, when he simply just passed away. But I have in the past six months now lost two friends, both fit and athletic way above being just good for their years, in their early sixties. Life it seems is not fair. The only way I can begin to make sense of this is to feel that we should focus not on the years we may or may not have, but in how much we put into those years; we really do need to "fill the unforgiving minute, with sixty seconds worth of distance run".

There was no better example of how to do this than John Kynaston.

RIP JK.