“I have mixed
feelings. There’s pride, yes. There’s wondering about whether I could have done
more, safe in the knowledge that I felt bloody knackered when I crossed that
line: and the reality is that I could not, as my legs have reminded me on my
four runs since.
Now, you know and I
know that running 53 miles is a decent challenge. OK: you might not, so please
trust me. You also know I’m not one for doing things by half, so whatever shot
I gave it was my best one. All of which is perfectly logical. But then you also
probably know I like to give myself a hard time sometimes, if only to avoid
complacency.”
I could have written those words over the past few
days. Truth is, I’ve lifted them from my 2014
post-Fling post. This year’s race was different, but the feelings that have
followed less so. Let’s see if I can take you through differences and
similarities in a shorter time than it took me to run those fifty-three
beautiful miles…
Twelve months ago, running The Fling was my defining moment,
the climax of my running age to that point. The oval medal I proudly wore unequivocally
stated I was capable of running 53 miles, of going on for almost twelve hours.
Twelve months on, this same breath-taking race was…
…well, “training run” is disrespectful. To the course,
to the people behind it, to my fellow runners. But my A goal for the year is
the West Highland Way Race, which
follows the exact same route as the Fling, only it carries on for another
forty-two miles. Virtually every run I’ve done in 2015 has been geared towards
the WHW, with the exception of the recent distraction of some marathon training
for the
Greater Manchester Marathon. And, much as I wanted to improve on my 2014
Fling, even this fantabulous race was ultimately a means to an end.
An end a full ninety-five miles from Milngavie where I
stayed on Friday, albeit swapping one Premier
Inn for another
a few hundred yards down the road, just to make it easier to meet Mike, with whom I’d run last year,
his fiancée Sarah and Trevor, who
was returning to The Fling after a year’s absence. All Premier Inns are pretty
much the same: and I say that with glee, as they’re perfect for the traveling
runner. Cheap(ish), clean, good beds, free WiFi, a bath as well as a shower… *end of ad*
Let’s be clear: bigger picture notwithstanding, I was
focused on The Fling and on improving on my debut race. I am incapable of
running races just for the fun of it, for a good deal of the fun lies in the
time. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy the views and the camaraderie, or I’d be
hanging out with the wrong crew: it just means time matters. Some of it is a
matter of time. I run too many training miles for relatively few racing ones to
not run hard when I am wearing a number. The current ratio is 8.75 miles in
training for every race mile, so the latter have to count.
Mike (who introduced me to the Fling last year, telling
me it was “the next natural step” after High Peak 40), Trevor (who’d run it
with Mike in 2013) and I had devised a plan. Or, to be accurate, Mike had
devised a plan: and a detailed one at that. For behind his tutu-twirling,
wand-waving antics (yes, that’s Mike) lies
a master tactician: one who had calculated very specific times of arrival and
departure for every checkpoint to achieve a very specific race time of
9:57’30”. In the spirit of ultrarunning, let’s be wild and just call that
sub-10. Which, to me, appeared as likely for him and improbable for me as his
sub-3 goal for Greater Manchester Marathon, which he duly completed in 2:57’13”
(his spreadsheet said 2:57’57” but he got carried away) and which I,
spreadsheetless (but with a sub-3:10 goal), duly completed in 3:08’56”. So my simple
plan was to try and stick with him and Trevor to Beinglas, and then see how
things went.
 |
| Carrying Mike out of Balmaha. Ahem... (photo by George Furmage) |
Regardless
of the distance, my race plans usually involve sticking with (to?) someone,
either by prior agreement or just because they seem to be moving at the right
pace: and Saturday was to be no exception. We got to Drymen in 1:40’, which for
me represented an 11’ improvement on 2014. Over just thirteen miles, that’s not
insignificant. Not that I realised any of this: I hadn’t studied my 2014 times,
nor had I memorised target checkpoint times. My plan entailed none of that. My
plan was just “stick with Mike”. Which, up to Drymen, I did more easily than
Trevor, who was struggling to shake off a niggling injury. He reached the
checkpoint two minutes after us, but we set off united towards Rowardennan,
fourteen miles up the road, which would offer us the first of four
opportunities to reacquaint ourselves with our drop-bags. They’re bags with
food in them, for any normal people reading this: and mine all featured two
slices of pizza with slices of banana in between them (look, at least that way
it doesn’t get squashed!), half a pork pie and flapjack, with a litre of
defizzed Coke at each of the last two checkpoints. The diet of champions. And
mine, too.
We left Balmaha together, but, as Mike continued in
full flow, I started to ease off. Mike reached Rowardennan (at 27mi, the
halfway point) in 4:24’30”: I followed 1’58” and Trevor 5’46” later. The Fling
gets tougher as you go along, and not just because your legs tire: Conic Hill
(around mile 18) is beautiful but there’s a clue in the name; the section into the
Inversnaid checkpoint (mi 34) is a taster of what’s to come, with the six miles
to Beinglas Farm a torturous and
tortuous sequence of rocks and roots that prevent you from reaching any rhythm.
And, just when you think you can get running again, you hit half a dozen miles
of serious climbs before the welcome sight of the descent towards Kirkton and,
after a flat few final miles, the celebratory section into Tyndrum. But that’s
still a fair way off in this post… sorry!
 | ||
| Running up Conic Hill... there cannae be many better places for a wee jog! (photo courtesy of Monument Photos - one of the many photographers who made their great shots available for free!) |
I’d felt strong for the first twenty miles, the
previous Sunday’s marathon more in my mind than my legs. And I didn’t exactly
bonk out around twenty: I just couldn’t keep up with Mike. I was probably still
overtaking more runners than were overtaking me at that stage (a trend that would soon be reversed, mind), just not at Mike’s stellar
pace. These miles were tough on the mind, which was asking a somewhat
inevitable question: “if I feel like this with thirty miles to go, how am I
going to feel when I need to keep going for seventy-two – given I’ve never run
more than fifty-three before?”
 |
| My drop bags - which self-respecting thirty-summat married father of two wouldn't dress their teddy bear as an ultrarunner for the labels? |
We’ll get back to that question, a faithful companion
along the route. Certainly more so than I was for Mike, who at Rowardennan was
trying to motivate me to stick with him, pointing out how a second marathon at
12’/mi after the first at
10’/mi would see us hit sub-10hr. I wasn’t debating his logic, just pointing
out I didn’t have it in me. Again we left as three, again that soon became two.
But, whereas Trevor had got over his initial niggles and stayed loyally by
Mike’s side, I decided to follow head (and legs) rather than heart and let them
fade into the distance. As Mike shouted back “Don’t let a gap form – keep close!”,
I realised the only way of shutting him up would be to slow down and let the
gap extend until I was out of hearing range. Amazingly, it worked. Well, I
could no longer hear him, anyway.
There are no split times for the Invernsaid CP at mile
34, so I don’t know how big the gap was by that point – although, based on what
I can make out on Strava, it was around four minutes, considerably less than I
would have guessed. I did get a little boost approaching it, when I overheard
someone say it was “just half a mile away”. By that point we’d started our
struggle with the undergrowth, and Rowardennan didn’t feel that far behind.
Which, at 6.5 miles, it wasn’t: I’d just lost track of miles. When I heard that
I did a little jig and found an extra spring in my step, somewhat worrying the
runner who’d shared the information in case she’d been overly optimistic. She
hadn’t.
Mike and Trevor had sensibly kept on going. Based on what I
can make out on my
and Mike’s Strava
records, it was around ten minutes, which seems about right. However, I
cunningly found a quick way of increasing that gap…
…having left the CP lifted by Sandra’s singing arrival,
I fell a quarter of a mile later. I looked a right mess, with grazes on both
hands and both knees: but the worse look belonged to my right eyebrow, which
was bleeding heavily. And no, I hadn’t performed one of “my tricks”: quite
simply, I’d kicked a root. And roots always win. I always carry plasters with
me so a few running repairs were undertaken easily enough: I might not have
been able to see where I’d cut myself, but I could tell I’d stemmed the
bleeding and that was enough for me.
(During this time,
a couple of runners stopped to check I was OK. They both diagnosed it as “a wee
graze”, which indeed it was. A refreshing approach – and one I prefer to a
friend’s suggestion he take me to A&E when I caught my ear on a bramble and
cut it on a run a couple of years ago!)
It’s hard to calculate exactly from my Strava record,
but, based on what I can see and on what it felt at the time, sorting myself
out probably cost me around seven minutes. Add it to the ten I was already
behind Mike and Trevor and you get closer to the… er, ‘mountain’ that would
stand between us cometh Tyndrum.
Let’s be categorically clear on one point: the fall
didn’t impact my running action in the slightest. I had no pain in any bone and
everything was still working as well (or badly) as usual. It just meant I’d
have to reassure a few runners and spectators that I was fine, no matter how
much I didn’t look it. And those minutes spent recomposing myself after the
fall doubled up as a wee breather, so, all in all, I probably felt all the
better for it. I knew this had been a stupid mistake, one landing out of place
out of around eighty-thousand throughout the run. It wasn’t like Manchester
2014, brought to a halt by an epileptic seizure (that’s what my tricks are!):
this was just a fall. OK, so “fell running” takes on a different meaning for
me: so what?
Inversnaid to Beinglas is a challenge I have yet to
encounter anywhere else (fortunately), as rocks and roots combine to prevent
you from establishing any sort of rhythm. By the time I reached the check point
at Beinglas Farm I was 8:15’
into the race, over 29’ less than I had been the previous year. Not that I knew
any of this at the time. What I did know, very well, is that from Beinglas to
the finish it’s just a half marathon. And I can always manage a half marathon.
I don’t care for positions, other than for the
perspective they enable. I’d reached Drymen in 83rd, Rowardennan in
138th and Beinglas in 241st. That, more than anything,
tells you how I was never going to be able to keep up with Mike, who, having
reached Drymen and Rowardennan in comparable 82nd and 133rd,
was the 161st runner to reach Beinglas, with Trevor right behind
him. Their ways would part halfway through the final section, with Mike’s gel-fuelled
burst of speed over the last few miles seeing him cross the finish line in 145th
position, with a time of 10:11’17”, and Trevor following relatively closely
behind, 10:19’37” meaning he clinched 155th place. No sub-10’, but
still fantastic PBs: by a staggering 84’ for Mike (whom I and a couple of other
friends had slowed right down to 11:52’ in 2014 after his debut 11:35’ in 2013)
and by 76’ for Trevor. And, while they were enjoying their post-race soup and
beer, and chatting to other finishers (not least Helen, who came home in 9:13
to win the F40 category by forty minutes!), I was walking my way up hills and
jogging down them, smiling inside as runners passed me. I found enough inside
me to pick up the pace over the final, flat miles, partly hoping my Garmin was
wrong as it had been in 2014, when it recorded the distance as 51.9. But it was
half a mile closer to 53 this year, so any dreams of sub-11 were dashed. I
still made up a few positions over the last two miles, sprinting (no, really!)
over the line in 11:06’08”, forty-six minutes fewer than on April 26, 2014 and just
fifty-five behind Mike.
. . .
Here’s how Strava recorded
the elevation (in solid grey), my pace (light blue) and my heart rate (that’ll
be the magenta line, then): the more dramatic falls in the light blue line
should help you spot the checkpoints (the one with the double fall being
Inversnaid!):
Keen as I was to grab my beer, roll and soup, I had to
make do with water whilst the doc sorted out my grazes. My pain pleased him
muchly, signifying the spirit was doing its job, and I was just pleased to be
plastered up. That’s two years in a row I’ve been deemed worthy of being seen
by the medic: last year it was because the masseuse thought I was cold. Well, I
was: I’d been hanging around too long to see her and hadn’t got round to
putting on my running jacket! Anyway… two out of two… I’ve checked with Mike
and it counts as a streak. Just not one I want to continue!
Both the beer and the soup were worth the wait: I
strongly recommend a bottle of Alba (7.5%?
it didn’t seem it!) and whoever was behind the lentil soup is a genius. Mike,
Sarah, Dave and I saw Trevor and Helen onto the 6pm bus back to Milngavie
before heading to the Real
Food Cafe for proper ultrarunners’ food, Mike and I indulging in a bacon
cheeseburger with chips. Given the contents of my drop bags, this won’t go down
in history as my healthiest in terms of eating!
So how will it go down in history?
 |
| Trust us, Helen - you're chuffin' good! That's why you win stuff! |
Running-wise, as a decent day. Beating 2014 was my C
goal, behind sub-10 and sub-11. The latter was the most realistic, and it’s
quite likely that it was a silly fall, one wrong landing out of 80,000, that
cost me it. But it wasn’t a stellar day, by any means. It was a good kick up
the backside about the training I need to put in ahead of the West Highland Way
Race, for sure: marathon training, with its flat routes and
7somethingminutemiling, has been a bit of a distraction in recent weeks. A
welcome one, to some extent: but now it’s time to head for the hills again,
maybe get in some back-to-back long runs. That was Helen’s advice: and she
knows what she’s talking about, even if you sometimes get the impression she
doesn’t know how good she is.
Experience-wise, it was fab. From meeting up with Mike,
Sarah and Trevor for dinner at Massimo on the Friday (I am always weary of
Italian restaurants in the UK, but this
one I recommend!) to our parting meal at the Real Food Cafe, it was great.
Even without running the 53 miles together, even finishing (almost) an hour
after those you know, experiences like this always feel shared. And all the
better for that. What I won’t deny is that, as with most races, for the thrill
of discovery is gone when I return. Geography means I hadn’t reccied this when
I stood outside Tesco last year: and, whilst knowing what was coming up this
time helped with the running, emotionally something was slightly different. It
always is, going back.
 |
| Fell running. Again. (Photo by Twirly Boy. As is the next one.) |
So, all in all I loved it. Will I be back next year?
Where you may expect a resounding ‘yes’, truth is the
answer is a more circumspect ‘maybe’. The summer still holds West Highland Way
Race and Devil O’Highlands Footrace in store for me. Hopefully, in 92 days’
time, I will have completed The Triple Crown. Whatever happens on June 20, I
can’t see myself returning to the WHW: it’s a once in a lifetime challenge for
me. Living near Bristol adds a layer of logistical challenges to the small
matter of a 95-mi run, as well as finding a crew, whereas this year I’ve been
blessed with the generosity of Mike and his partner Sarah, as well as his
parents’ – and I didn’t even realise he’d roped them in! Furthermore, whereas
my 2015 focus has been on Ultras, I expect I would like to aim for different
goals in 2016. Whisper it quietly, but a sub-3 marathon would make for an
“obvious next step”, as Mr Wells might say: I debuted with 3:31’ in Manchester
in 2013, two years later I crossed the line in 3:08’. Well, 3:08’56”, so more
3:09’… anyway, you get the gist. I managed that time having spent most of this
year training for a 95-mile trail run, squeezing in some tempo runs nearer
April 5: so who knows, if I were to focus on a flat 26.2 from the turn of the
year… Because I’m not really an ultrarunner. I’m not really a marathon runner,
or a parkrunner. I’m a runner, one who enjoys the different challenges posed by
different distances and different terrains. Although one that, deep down, will
forever consider the marathon distance as the ultimate standard. It has history
on its side.
…anyway, that’s waaay into the distance. That’s further
away than… well, Fort William from Milngavie. Least it feels thus. Hope I’m
right.
Had a nice chat with Stu on the 7pm bus back to
Milngavie. If it’s true (and I firmly believe it is) that all runners are
equal, then Stu is one of those who are more equal than others, having won the
Green Man Ultra around Bristol in 2014 and clocking 9:01’52” on his first
experience of the West Highlands. Not that anything in his demeanour or turn of
phrase gives away his prowess. I would have a similar experience at Glasgow
Airport, waiting for my Bristol-bound flight, when another runner, whom I’d
never met, approached me to discuss the prior day’s race. It was a really
enjoyable, runner-to-runner conversation, until, at my second attempt to find
out his time, one Nathan Montague confessed to a 7:36’. Basically, he’d crossed
the line 3:30’ before me. The conversation was still enjoyable thereafter, it
was just that my jaw hurt a little from how badly it had fallen to the floor.
And I don’t mean in Inversnaid.
In between chatting to Stu on the Saturday evening and
Nathan around noon on Sunday, my fortunes had been mixed. I’d had to struggle
and straggle from Milngavie Train Station to the Bearsden Premier Inn, a
distance that normally would be insignificant but which, after fifty-three
miles of running and a somewhat unusual eating pattern, was not without its
difficulties. The routine of the post-race Radox bath was enhanced by the
consumption of a strawberry milkshake from the nearby McDonald’s, a double
treat: firstly because I’ve been steering away from them since starting to run,
secondly because it meant I could get to a toilet a good two hundred yards
sooner. I then stayed awake for “Match Of The Day” and to faff on social media.
Sunday morning came round a little too soon, quite simply because, having spent
eleven hours running along the West Highland Way, it hadn’t dawned on me that
my windows were looking out to the east – and I’d not taken due care in closing
the curtains! Went out for a 2.7mi shuffle for my 927th
consecutive day of running, reaching the start of the West Highland Way to
ponder what June would hold in store before heading back to realise that my
bowels would still take a while to purify themselves, turning on the TV to
catch the start of the London Marathon coverage and reading more of Richard
Askwith’s thought-provoking “Running
Free”. As this post will have shown, I love running in all its formats, not
least its wildest, away from the cities and into the mountains; but you will
also have seen that I’m a man for technology and stats, which I pore over
before and after runs. Still, it’s a book I’m enjoying: I just wish I’d read
the chapter about the danger of roots a day or so earlier… not that, by Askwith’s
own admission, what he says is anything but common sense!
Around 11am, I was picked up by Marco, an Italian friend who left Bologna for Glasgow some years ago, who took me to and welcomed me into his house in the West End for lunch. It was all very Italian: no fuss, just an extra seat at the table for a lovely home-cooked meal. His Glaswegian wife (whom he met in Italy) Lyndsay cooked it, but at least Marco and I had stopped to get some fresh bread… It was great to field some easy questions from their young’un, Callum, about the run, before Marco kindly drove me to Glasgow Airport. Slight scare at security, as I’d forgotten to take my Swiss Army knife out of what was now the check-in bag… but they let me go buy an envelope and stamps and post it back to myself. Now I just need to hope it turns up. It’s been a week, after all…
Around 11am, I was picked up by Marco, an Italian friend who left Bologna for Glasgow some years ago, who took me to and welcomed me into his house in the West End for lunch. It was all very Italian: no fuss, just an extra seat at the table for a lovely home-cooked meal. His Glaswegian wife (whom he met in Italy) Lyndsay cooked it, but at least Marco and I had stopped to get some fresh bread… It was great to field some easy questions from their young’un, Callum, about the run, before Marco kindly drove me to Glasgow Airport. Slight scare at security, as I’d forgotten to take my Swiss Army knife out of what was now the check-in bag… but they let me go buy an envelope and stamps and post it back to myself. Now I just need to hope it turns up. It’s been a week, after all…
Will I be back in Milngavie in April 2016? Probably
not. Will I be back on June 19?
You bet. You bloody bet.
Sure, there were times when I considered cancelling my
hotel booking and not bothering making travel arrangements for later in the
summer, as, quite honestly, I’m only running Devil O’Highlands to seal the
Triple Crown, given the logistics of it for me. But then I fell. I fell and I
got right back up. I kept going, getting stronger. When I checked mileage
around mile 48, I felt good, and put in a decent final five miles into “By The Way”. Equally, I knew
perfectly well that, what in April is the “five miles to the end” point, cometh
June represents the halfway mark. But then I won’t reach Drymen in 1:40’ in
June, nor in 2014’s 1:51’. I will sit down and calculate some indicative times,
but I won’t allow my legs to be slave to them: I just want a clue, not least
for my crew’s sake.
I’ve never started, nor found myself in, a race without
the firm belief that I’d finish it. I don’t expect that to be any different
between 1am on Saturday, June 20th and whichever point I cross the
line in Fort William on the Sunday. That’s neither arrogance nor a façade: it’s
the way I have to be. If, then, things don’t go to plan, so be it. But it would
take a seizure, an evil route or an unfriendly stone to deny me my dream: all
are possible. But none are predictable. I can but predict what little I can
control. And, over the next fifty days, I need to do the best I can on what
little I can control. That comes down primarily to training and diet. Well,
training: I’ll just be sensible with my diet and increase awareness in the
final fortnight, but not being able to cook in a family with two young children
options are limited. But that’s OK: means that, from a WHW Race perspective, I
just need to focus on my training. Just.
Does that mean upping mileage? Probably not, given I’ve
been running an average of ten miles a day to date this year. What it will mean
is a review of my weekly routine, with the introduction of back-to-back long
runs and a few more of 50k training runs. At least those mornings are getting
brighter, so heading out to run 50k at 3am should be more enjoyable than it was
when I did so twice in the space of fifteen days back in February. As long as
the mornings keep getting brighter, my runs will become more enjoyable, and
hopefully I’ll get stronger. And, once these beautiful days start getting shorter
again…
…well, quite frankly, I don’t care what it does then!
. . .
Time to bid ye farewell. Maybe I’ll meet you in some nondescript car park around a midsummer night’s midnight, maybe I’ll bump into
you on Twitter, Facebook or Strava. Maybe you ran The Fling with me, maybe you
were one of the awesome marshals or supporters, or maybe you just wanted to
read what it was all about. Regardless, well done and thanks: you got to the
end. No doubt many DNF’d.
Finally, thanks to Mike and Trevor, for sharing the
experience; to Sarah, for her boundless unselfishness in coming out to support us;
to Johnny Duncan, for organising the best races (but for his new role as Devil
O’Highlands race director I may not be going for the triple crown…); to Sandra,
for her singing at Inversnaid; to those who stopped to check how I was, to
those who asked, because they weren’t to know I was fine; and to Stu and Nathan
for the chats. Neither was obliged to reassure me about running the West
Highland Way Race. Both did. Thanks.
And one last goodbye…
…to the West Highland Way. See you in fifty days’ time, on June 20. When, more than ever, it won’t be just about the running.
