Lakeland 50

Aug 1, 2016 · 14 minute read · Comments

So this was it: the second biggest race of the year for me. Complete this and I’d be more than halfway through this year of ultramarathons and have broken the back of the challenge. I knew this would be hard, particularly towards the end as my body began to give up but the last 10 miles in particular were especially difficult as I completely fell apart while struggling alone in the dark trying not to get lost.

Following a pretty horrendous 8 hour drive up to the Lakes we managed to reach Coniston just before 10pm on the Friday night just in time to make kit check. Grabbing my stuff I dashed into the school to go through registration while I left Laura to start putting up the tent in the last remnants of the light.

After juggling all my kit and being weighed to make sure I don’t get an undiagnosed kidney issue from the weekend’s exertions I came back out into the field to give Laura a hand with the tent only to find out that we’d somehow left the tent pegs back at home. Considering it was now pitch black and most people were already in their tents and sound asleep I wrote off our chance of getting a good night’s sleep and resigned myself to a night sleeping in the car. Somehow though someone in a nearby tent happened to have a spare set of tent pegs so I was saved from my stupidity!

As usual before a big race I didn’t sleep all that well but it was somehow made worse by the fact the race didn’t start until 11:30. I wasn’t going to get a chance to sleep in late with being in a tent and the late start would mean more time spent going through the night which in turn would make things slower and thus give me even more time to trundle through the night.

The race briefing was a surprising highlight to the whole weekend with it full of jokes and general reflection on how crazy we all were, particularly asking the crowd about how many people there had told people they were “only” doing the 50 that weekend. More amazingly though was the update on the 100 mile race leaders with the barely believable line “Beth Pascall is currently on track for the course record… the men’s course record that is!” Somehow she managed to absolutely demolish the course record by nearly 3 hours, finishing in a stunning 21:29:36 less than an hour down on the first man.

Bussing over to the start I was absolutely full of nerves as usual but got chatting to a bunch of locals who had all done the course or even the 100 course before and that managed to distract me from what I was going to set out to do to my body over the next however many hours.

Dalemain to Howtown - the easy part

As the clock hit 11:30, hundreds of runners surged out of Dalemain to complete the short loop around the estate to a festival atmosphere. I struggled to not get caught up in the moment of it all and just about managed to keep myself running at a slow-ish pace as I tried to stretch my calf muscles out that have troubled me so badly at the start of most events this year, particularly when I’m carrying a reasonably heavy pack. Despite this I could still feel them creaking away, desperately tight and the usual worries of how well my body was going to cope with the race started rolling through my mind.

Coming off the loop and on to the course proper we merged with some bedraggled looking 100 mile runners who had emerged from the sanctuary of the Dalemain checkpoint, some of them in a particularly bad way. It struck me how hard it must be because unless their race changed drastically all of the people I would pass in the first few miles were likely to miss eventual cut offs for the 100 and time out despite the fact they’d already pushed their tortured bodies for 18+ hours by that point. I’m not sure how well I would cope with that looming deadline that seems significantly harder than a lot of the other races I’ve ran so far.

Reaching Howtown for the first checkpoint I was eager to try and keep moving and not lose too much momentum gained from the little drop in height into the checkpoint but did enjoy the upbeat mood in the checkpoint as I was quickly handed assorted jellybeans and cups of cola by the cowboys of Chia Charge.

Howtown to Ambleside - the hard climbs

Straight out of Howtown is the long climb to High Kop which I didn’t seem to do too bad on and I was generally feeling comfortable and even gained a few places despite my rubbish climbing legs. Reaching the top brought us out onto a long plateau followed by a reasonably fast decent down to Haweswater revealing absolutely stunning views out across the lake.

The checkpoint at Mardale Head just after Haweswater was staffed by the mighty Delamere Spartans and I got a chance to stuff my face with crisps and cola. I was wary that I was already down on where I wanted to be nutrition wise, having not eaten enough on the run so far but I couldn’t bring myself to grab a sandwich even though I knew I was setting myself up for misery later on as I was going to run of out energy catastrophically. At some point I’m going to have to learn how to force myself to eat during these races if I want to be able to push on to longer events but Lakeland wasn’t going to be the first unfortunately.

At the checkpoint I ran into Giles from Fellsman earlier this year and was happy to see he was looking strong as he led out a group of other mental 100 mile runners up the steep climb to Gatescarth Pass. As I run more and more of these events I’ve started bumping into people from previous races that I either know outright after having spoke to them a lot at previous races or we both work out mid conversation that we did a previous race together earlier in the year or in a previous year. Lakeland seemed to have even more of these than normal but that may just be down to the fact that the field is huge - 1000+ runners between the 50 and 100 mile events. Either way it’s nice to find yourself in familiar company and be able to catch up with what other mental people have been up to and have a think about what events I want to be aiming for in the next few years.

Heading along the fast descent through Gatescarth Pass and down to Kentmere I started to pay more attention to my feet that had been developing hotspots on the balls of my feet since back during the Dalemain loop. I’ve typically had reasonably good luck with my feet and tend to end up with very few blisters from these long races so I figured I had my socks on slightly wrong somehow. Whatever was causing it, unfortunately, was only going to get worse because I already felt too stiff to be able to take my socks off without cramping horrendously and I was worried how my feet would end up if I was still struggling through the event after 16 hours if they were this uncomfortable after only 6ish hours.

At the Kentmere checkpoint - this time staffed by the cast of Harry Potter and Montane - I hopped around, trying to get my Camelbak refilled and get some food on board but I could feel tightness in all my muscles and I knew I didn’t want to sit down or I was going to be in trouble. Grabbing some more cola and jellybeans I stumbled out of the checkpoint already feeling pretty tired. I was a little over half way and most of the climbing from the 50 mile route was out of the way but at this point I was starting to feel a bit down thinking I’d probably struggle to get running decently again from here with how badly I was feeling and that would make it hard to get to Ambleside before dark when I’d been aiming for reaching the Chapel Stile checkpoint or at least making it across Loughrigg Fell in the light.

Stalking out of the Kentmere checkpoint and up the Garburn Pass I tried to snap myself out of my funk and finally got moving a bit quicker on the climb up, overtaking a few people which helped to lift my mood a bit. By the time we got to the end of the climb I was starting to feel a bit better and my legs had loosened up from the cramped mess they were at the Kentmere checkpoint and I got to run with a couple of people on the beautiful trail through Skelghyll Woods down into Ambleside.

The support coming into Ambleside’s circus themed checkpoint was great and I was really pleased to make it there while it was still light especially with how down I had gotten about things back at Kentmere. Laura was there to meet me at the checkpoint which was nice but I could feel the cramp returning to my legs so I hopped around the checkpoint, refilling things and finally grabbing my first bit of real food for the day, half a ham and cheese sandwich. At this point my stomach was about done with sugary rubbish but I was now too tired to really want to eat anything proper either so I had to stumble out of the checkpoint slowly munching on my sarnie as Laura trotted alongside me up towards Loughrigg Fell.

Ambleside to Coniston - the long night

Slowly, my legs started to come back to me so I could get in a bit of a trot every now and then but at this point I was settled with just about reaching my original goal of crossing Loughrigg Fell in the light and then trudging in to the finish as best I could. I wasn’t feeling too bad at this point, all things considered, but I did start to worry about how slow I was likely to go through the evening as the tiredness set in and navigation became harder in the dark.

Jogging gently into the Chapel Stile checkpoint with the roaring fire I managed to switch into some warmer gear for the cold stretch ahead of me but still leaving a few layers in reserve with the warm evening still keeping some heat in the air at that point. I’d been looking forward to the stew all day but, once again, I felt like I couldn’t really stomach any proper food at this point. Disappointed with how bad I’d got my eating again I fumbled out of the checkpoint with a group of other runners keen to push on for a bit and try and get as much running in as possible while I could.

The stretch along Lingmoor Fell out to the unmanned checkpoint seemed to drag and drag. At first I was struggling with the uneven footing in the dark, constantly bashing my toes into smallish rocks or being on the verge of rolling my ankle until I ended up falling off the back of my group. Then I struggled with the cold, soft, boggy ground and being generally exhausted as the night drew on. The stretch to Tilberthwaite just seemed to drag on and on and I was moving so slowly at that point that I was unable to hang on to the back of any other groups as they pushed on past me, further depressing me.

Rounding a corner in the dark, my headtorch suddenly lit up several huge highland cattle roaming across the path. Glancing around me, I realised I was in the middle of a large herd with a calf directly on the path just behind the closest cow. As I slowly stepped towards them the closest cow began to dip its horns towards me to shoo me away while another on my left moved closer to the path and also began to dip its horns in at me. At this point I was cornered by the cows, with nowhere to go and suddenly understanding why so many ultra runners seem to be scared of cows. Eventually another group of runners caught up with me and slowly pushed me through a gap in the herd that I wasn’t able to see with my dim headtorch. I was relieved to be through the cows without any incident but the group that had ushered me safely through then shot off and I was left by myself again.

It’s times like these in ultras where I really struggle - feeling like I’d not eaten enough or trained well enough and just being completely shattered. At this point I’d had a few Shot Bloks, several handfuls of jelly babies and crisps and half a ham and cheese sandwich. Not ideal for the amount of energy I’d extered during the day. And the less said about my training in the run up to the event the better.

If you can get yourself in a group then it’s not so bad as you can rely on others to keep your spirits up a little and then return the favour a few miles or hours later when you’re doing better. But when you’re struggling through by yourself I find it incredibly difficult to break out of a bad funk and it tends to just turn into a bloody minded stumble to the finish muttering to myself.

As I finally trudged in to the Tilberthwaite checkpoint after about 13 hours out on my feet I knew I was in touching distance of Coniston. All that was left was one last big push up the Coniston Fells and then a gentle trot down into the finish. Throwing on some extra warm kit to prevent a reoccurrence of my Fellsman 2014 hypothermia and gulping down one last mug of cola I launched myself up the Stairway to Heaven, actually not feeling too bad as it climbed upwards as long as I could see my feet.

A few hundred metres from the checkpoint as the night rapidly closed in and the batteries in my head torch began to fade I quickly became very aware of how easy it would be to get lost or take a wrong turn by myself. Not overly helped by the road book pointing out how there was a sharp drop into the quarry on my left when I could barely see where I was putting my own feet at the time.

Reaching about three quarters of the way up the climb I was finally joined by a small group that didn’t immediately sweep past me and seemed content for me to pick a line up the mountain and it felt good to be surrounded by voices rather than being stuck firmly in my own head. The extra light from their head torches was good too so we managed to speed up a little bit as we crested the mountain and began to drop down the other side.

We finally made it to some flat, easy trail and the group broke up as people pushed hard to the end. I, on the other hand, was completely exhausted at this point so I just about managed to fall into my odd ultra shuffle to make sure I was going to finish inside 15 hours.

Turning the last corner in Coniston before the school Laura was waiting for me and even trotted in beside me which was a really nice way to finish such a brilliant event. Walking through the school doors to collect my medal and times I was greeted by a huge round of applause with people clapping and cheering as I stumbled blearily into the hall which managed to bring a smile to my absolutely exhausted face.

Overall it was an incredible day out with stunning views across an amazing course with absolutely brilliant people, both the marshalls working all weekend long and the other runners who were all awesome. As hard as I found it with my complete lack of ability at running on that kind of terrain it did make me want to come back some point (when I’m a lot better in the hills and over the longer distances) to have a crack at the 100!