It all started Christmas Eve 2010. My brother and I were planning which running events we intended to take part in over the coming year and it could be argued we were getting ahead of ourselves. To the untrained eye we both have what could be described as a “runners build”, although at this time my brothers’ belly was looking less like Mo Farrah and more like Phil Mitchell. Although both reasonable runners we were not exactly avid runners. A run here, a run there, it was more sporadic than routine and a long way off from dedicated training which the sort of runs we were looking at would require. The sort of runs we were contemplating were ultra-marathons. This was not our first foray into the world of the ultra, indeed far from it; in fact, some four years had passed since our first ultra marathon adventure had taken us to Buxton, a place that will forever live in my memory as being hell on earth.
We drove to Buxton from Warrington, although not particularly far it took a good hour to get there due to a toxic combination of country roads, motor vehicles and old people. Upon arrival I handed the AA route planner print out to my brother, drawing his attention to the distance that we had travelled to get there. His head dropped and I believe this was the first occasion he uttered the infamous words that have become synonymous with any run we have embarked on since, “What the F*ck are we doing”? Indeed I could hardly chastise him for the profanity and I’m sure you wouldn’t either. He’d just learned that the hour commute was less distance than we had to run that day.
I’ve heard it argued that you have to be crazy to take part in ultra-marathons and indeed maybe so. The general consensus describes an ultra as being more that 30 miles, and this was 10 miles further than that, a grand total of 40 miles through some of the hilliest country the UK had to offer. As we stood at the start line contemplating the hours of sheer pain that were to come, I glanced around at my fellow entrants and, looking back, believe this to be the moment my unbounded distain for the running community was forged. A sea of skin tight, florescent lycra bombarded my senses, pink, yellow, blue, green, all the colours that could be imagined or conceived. I liken the practice of wearing this sort of running attire to that of peacocks strutting their way through an inferior local park zoo. The sort of place where house hold pets such as rabbits and birds are prized into undersized hutches by the local council, placed in the same general area and then unscrupulously labelled a zoo. The sort of place where the strutting peacock becomes the star attraction due to every other animal being so inanely dull. On that cold September morning in 2006, the Peacocks were strutting their stuff in Buxton.
Everywhere I turned I was confronted by a middle aged Peacock discussing their PB and what dietary supplements they can’t live without. Everyone knew everyone else. It could be likened to an incestuous family get together to celebrate the marriage of Bubba to his sister Suzie. They’d all turned out, Uncle Pete with his wife Jane who happened to also be his Cousin and Grandpa Joe with his wife, or is that daughter, Mary Lou. From far and wide the family had converged upon Buxton for this one special day of the year, and my brother and I had front row seats to all the day’s festivities.
The race began without incident and we got into our stride well. In runs such as this it takes a few miles for the competitors to spread out and break away from each other, you may find yourself overtaking someone and having them overtake you some half mile later to take them again shortly after. This practice is not uncommon and can be extremely infuriating. It was during this stage in the race that we encountered a curious woman who had seemingly decided to navigate the 40 miles in what could only be described as a frantic, almost crazed power walk. Her rucksack hung loose on her back and with each step she took it swung franticly from side to side, running the risk of throwing her from the path each time she put one foot in front of the other. She had a stern, steely, teetering on the edge of madness look in her eyes suggested to us that she was in well over her head. As we passed her I pointed her out to my brother and we both laughed. He turned to me and said the now immortal words, “she’s going to get pulled”, and I whole heartedly agreed as we glided past her and started moving up into the hills. How wrong we were.
We made good going through the first 20 miles. As the distance increased, slowly the Peacocks began to disburse, with the talk of PB’s now reduced to a whisper on the wind that rolled over the hill tops into the valley below. As we reached the checkpoint at 24 miles never before had my brothers statement in the car rung so true, what the f*ck were we doing? The pain had now set in and looking to our left we could see the path heading up a seemingly vertical plain into the clouds above. We braced ourselves and moved onward. By this stage we were down to a walk, our legs defying the simplest commands to break into a run. We could see Peacocks reaching the checkpoint below and not wanting to be taken, forged our way forward. It was at this point that I looked back down the hill and had to make a second take. I saw a figure just leaving the checkpoint; they were driving up the hill, head down, bag swinging. I contemplated this figure for a moment. Surly not! Could it be? It’s not possible! It can’t be. It was. My brother was leaning against a fence at this time, a look on his face that was half way between a grimace and sheer disgust that he was actually here in the first place. “Your not going to believe who’s behind us”, I said, “fu*k off”, he retorted, knowing deep down in the pit of his stomach exactly who I was making reference too. He repeated this about four times, glancing back to see if he was the punch line in some elaborate rouse. He wasn’t. Looking back I believe this to have been the final straw for my brother. We broke into a short burst of speed before we conceded defeat and allowed her to pass, the rucksack seemingly taunting us as it swung wildly from side to side.
We struggled on but my brother decided he’d had enough at the 30 mile point. He persuaded me to press on alone and I eventually completed the run a few hours later after enduring the most horrendous 10 miles of my life. On completion I struggled back to the car where my brother was waiting (he’d been given a lift back to the finish point) and we both vowed never to run again, a conversation which has become almost a staple of each event we undertake. As we pulled out of the car park and made our way on to the road we spotted her again, head down bag swinging, making her way home. I was struck by a sense of irony that the woman we had written off so easily at the start of the race (“she’s going to get pulled”) was looking as strong as ever, while we were heading home to lick our wounds, mere shells of the men we were 40 miles before. Bitch!
And so, four years later, here we were. Had we learned anything from the last 4 years of underperformance, ill thought out training, terrible nutrition, horrendous muscular pain and soul destroying hills. No, we hadn’t. Our plan gave ourselves four months to plan, train and organise a run of 184 miles which was going to take 3 days. This is quite a bold idea considering neither of us had run for 8 months before deciding to undertake this challenge.
Well this is the crux of this blog from now on. If you’re looking for training advice, tricks of the trade or tips on improving your PB, you’re defiantly in the wrong place. This blog will chronicle the training, the suffering and the sheer despair of two ordinary people who in one moment of madness decided to take the bull by the horns, and impale themselves on them. In the immortal words of my brother, “what the fu*k are we doing”!
