Roseland August Trail - Black Rat

Aug 14, 2016 · 9 minute read · Comments

Pretty much the opposite weather to the last time I was down in the South West for an ultramarathon and yet still made much, much harder by the weather. This time struggling through 7+ hours of sapping heat as I climbed up and down the South West Coast Path from St Anthony Head, across the bay from Falmouth, to just outside St Austell.

Getting to the race HQ early on Saturday morning for registration and kit check we were rewarded with an absolutely stunning sunrise:

At registration we were given the map for the course which was amusingly simple - just keep the sea on the right, if you haven’t seen the sea for a while then you’ve probably gone wrong and if the sea appears on your left then you’re definitely lost!

So we hopped on the buses to the start at St Anthony Head and got to glimpse Falmouth across the bay. One of the other runners had done the Plague Rat the year before and mentioned about how nice it was to get to the halfway point and see the early sunrise reflecting off Falmouth before turning around and running back the way he’d come. As nice as that sounded I’m not sure how happy I would be to have to turn around after 30+ miles and run back the exact same route I’d just plodded along for the last however many hours.

St Anthony Head to Portloe - an easy start

Starting off down the narrow and very crowded path it was already starting to feel hot despite the early hour and I resolved to trying to keep the pace slow and comfortable even during the runnable sections so that I didn’t struggle too badly in the heat. Despite that, the first 7 miles were all pretty runnable and felt easy so the pace naturally picked up a bit where possible and I started to get overly confident thinking that I might have a chance of going under 7 hours despite the heat.

A couple of hours in we finally got a bit of cloud cover and even some really light, misty rain that would have been perfect for running in to keep the heat down. Unfortunately that all dried up after only a few minutes and the clouds all parted to leave a pretty clear sky and the return of the baking heat.

Slowly but surely the amount of climbing began to pick up and more and more of my time was spent walking, trying to pace myself along the course and not get carried away with there still being a long way to go. Speaking to locals and people that had ran the race before I was specifically warned about the last 5 miles that were full of sharp, stepped climbs and drops that would be hard on my legs by the end of a long day out in the sun. Taking all that in to account and trying to calculate worst case scenarios for the last few miles I was now starting to think I could be outside 8 hours which goes to show just how quickly things can change in an ultra considering I’d only recently been thinking about a potential sub 7 hour finish.

As the morning wore on I began to struggle on the hills, both going up and down, even though my legs didn’t feel too bad, more just general tiredness, probably from Lakeland two weeks ago. Because of this I was unable to settle into a good rhythm for any long period of time so it meant I was running by myself for the vast majority of the day.

Running in to Portloe, I managed to grab a few cups of water to try and make the water in my Camelbak go a little further before having to refill it and we managed to get away from the crowds of the 20 mile race start with about 15 mins to spare. I then got to spend the next 10 minutes distracting myself trying to roughly work out when the front runners would come past with their fresh legs (and the fact that the front few would be a lot fitter than me!).

Portloe to Megavissey - hills and heat

About half an hour later the Red Rat race leader came haring past about 3 miles from Portloe well ahead of the next couple of twenty mile runners, launching up and down the hills of the South West Coast Path. Impressed by how quick he was moving, particularly on that terrain in the heat I pressed on but now stopping to open gates for the front few runners of the shorter race as they gained on me.

Unfortunately about a mile later as the course came out into an open field and climbed up the side of a large hill I came back across the original leader of the Red Rat, collapsed on the side of the hill, struggling with the heat. I guess he completely underestimated how hard the course was going to be on the day and unfortunately paid the price early on. Having DNFed out of Fellsman back in 2014 and being absolutely gutted not to finish a race I wondered if being at the sharp end of the field changes your priorities a lot more so that giving up 4 miles in to a 20 mile race isn’t as bad as long as you went flat out for a chance of winning it.

Coming in to Gorran Haven, the White Rat start, I just about made the checkpoint as the 11 mile race began in the town below so I quickly paced around, trying to refill my Camelbak and was reasonably happy that I was drinking a lot more than normal at ultras but still thought it might be too little with how hot it was. Coming out of the checkpoint I knew I just had to get caught up to the tail end of the White Rat race and then I could slowly pick off the slower runners as I went, giving me a bit more encouragement to keep going.

After leaving the checkpoint I started feeling a dull pain in my lower back and after putting up with it for a couple of miles realised that I’d stupidly put my Camelbak bladder in the wrong way round so the nozzle at the base of the bladder was digging into my back. Realising that this was going to get quite uncomfortable pretty quickly I stopped to correct it and somehow managed to dump the bladder into the dust as I flailed around. Once that was finally sorted I managed to get running properly on some of the runnable sections and back to enjoying the day.

Chasing down the tail end of the White Rat runners was a nice incentive to keep pushing especially as I was struggling to keep up with most of the Black Rat runners who were around me - presumably because they had set off at a more realistic pace or were, of course, just better than me on the hills.

Reaching Mevagissey I had a really strong feeling that I had been there before. As I was running through it, it slowly dawned on me that my mind was confusing it with the harbour in Cassis that we had visited at New Years but even after realising that I was unable to shake the feeling that I was actually in the harbour of the French town. At that point I realised the heat was probably getting to me a lot worse than I’d thought and I wasn’t coping that well at all!

Mevagissey to Porthpean - last struggle to the end

Coming out of Mevagissey and going up the hill there was a runner lying on the floor with a few other runners trying to help him. I went on ahead to pass a message on to the marshalls in case they were unable to get through with phone calls but, with my own deteriorating state, I started to worry if I’d overcooked things and I was going to blow up spectacularly before the finish.

About 28 miles in I suddenly realised that my hands were tingling sharply. Glancing down I saw they were hugely swollen which when I’ve had it before (both times at the Fellsman) has been an indicator of dehydration. I quickly finished off my remaining water but was conscious that I was beginning to worry about the fact that my hands were hurting from the tingling and swelling and that I had to make sure I controlled myself a bit and not give in to panic. Not having any other good options available I decided that elevating my hands might allow the swelling to come down a bit and so proceeded to shuffle most of the remaining 4 miles with my arms above my head, constantly clenching and unclenching my fists. Not surprisingly this attracted quite a few comments and must have looked a pretty ridiculous sight!

Now that I was aware of how dehydrated I was I also realised that my heart was racing even when I wasn’t pushing all that hard so I tried to force myself to slow down even on the runnable sections. Arriving at the final mini checkpoint I was feeling very light headed and close to fainting. I managed to get abut half a pint of water but was very conscious that the marshalls seemed to be low on water and there were going to be some people (particularly the Plague runners) who were going to be in an even worse state than me so I decided to move on and just get it over and done with.

Cresting the last, brutal set of steps not long after that and knowing that the finish wasn’t too far away I tried to get more of a shuffle on, picking up the pace so that I could get running for the cameras of the last hundred metres to the finish line and pretend that I was almost like a real ultra runner:

After that I got to lounge around the beautiful sunshine, gazing over the Cornish coast and applauding the hundreds of other runners who came in over the next couple of hours. Lazy afternoons in a stunning part of the world, recovering from an event that pushed me pretty hard somehow seems to make all the suffering worthwhile.