Route 27 Ultra Runners

Lakeland 50 Report – 9th Aug 2008

…it was midnight, the rain was coming down in horizontal sheets and the night was lit up by lightening flashes over the fells. There were still 13 miles to cover, the finish seemed an unbearably long way off and too far to contemplate. Sharp stones and rocks battered my feet into submission as I followed the small circle of light home…. 

I travelled up to the Lakes on Friday after a day of faffing. The fells looked amazing as I was driving up, the clarity of the air being excellent. I turned up at Coniston Sports Club, set up the tent, registered, picked up race map and road book, bag check etc and then sat down with a pot noodle and enjoyed the view of Coniston old man. It was a clear, still, warm night, perfect for the 100 runners who had set off at 7 that evening, they were going to have the best of the weather as the forecast for Saturday was grim… 

Managed to get a decent 4 or 5hrs sleep and just chilled out. Re-acquainted myself with the joys of the portaloo…and finally went to the race briefing at 9am, and it had started lashing it down, oh joy.  The start was going to be at Dockray at the 50mile point for the hundred runners and a coach was laid on to take us over. It chucked it down all the way and it chucked it down all the time up until the start. Fortunately they had put up a large marquee so we sheltered in there.

So, eventually, finally, at last we were herded down to the start line and we were off, bang on 12. As usual a lot of people galloped off with one bloke really legging it, it was like he was doing a 40min 10k,  anyway I found out later that he had won…I might try that tactic next time. The field quickly thinned out and I got into a bit of a rhythm. After about half an hour the rain stopped which opened up the views across ullswater. The paths were generally pretty good apart from the odd section where it was through waterlogged fields or cow rutted land. My feet were soon soaked and they stayed that way for the next 18hrs, but no blisters…The sun eventually came out for a bit on the run from Pooley Bridge to CP1 at Howtown. (CP1 14miles in 3:15)

From Howtown the route goes over Wether Hill and down to Haweswater. I passed the first couple of runners of the day on that climb, and btw I walked all the ups….the rain was also back again. I’d been up this area a few weeks before and it was pretty boggy, today it was swamp like right on the col, and this time I picked the right path to drop down to Haweswater. I’d expected the path to mardale head to be a nice runable track, but instead it was a rocky bouldery affair and very difficult to get any rhythm on. At the head of the valley the storm clouds were well and truly darkening. Progress was slow eventually reaching CP2 (23miles) in 6:25, my legs were definitely feeling it at this stage and the soles of my feet were getting beaten up too. The folk at the checkpoints were great, all cheerful and there was a great choice of stuff to nibble on. I decided to ask one of the other runners if she wanted some company for the next section, which seemed sensible as we’d been running together for a while anyway, and it was nice to pass the time away chatting.  

This section the rain really lashed it down and it was pretty miserable, the drag up gatesgarth pass never ending, but eventually it did come but even the decent was rough with the feet getting even more of a bashing. By now the light was starting to fade and as we neared CP3 and took a couple of wrong turns. Time for the head torches. I can’t remember what time we got to Kentmere but we were dripping. Here we were offered pasta and Tea, this definitely refreshed the spirits. CP3 29miles. 

All of the paths now were just like small streams and some of the stream crossings were a bit hairy, as they had become quite fierce. Anyway up and over the Garburn Pass in the rain and clag again and my legs were definitely starting to complain, and the others who we’d joined up with started to pull away. We managed to run some of the sections down the pass and caught up the others again at the bottom. I must just add that the Petzl Myo head torch was fantastic through out….I now knew the rest of the route to the finish and was managing to run quite a bit of it too. Its quite bizarre how quickly you can feel like you’re near the end of your tether and the next minute you’re happily trotting along….how bizarre indeed…

I think it was about 11pm when we arrived at the next CP in ambleside (35miles) and we’d picked up quite a few other stragglers along the way, I think there were 9 of us at this point. It was located in ‘Lakes Runner’ and the chap had music playing, made cups of tea, soup, generally cheered everyone up with his enthusiasm, oh and his tuna sarnies went down a treat. 

As we crossed over to langdale lightening started to light up the Cumbria skies. The rain was again lashing it down again now and as we passed one of the campsites in the valley in the early hours quite a few people were up tying down the tents in the face of the storm. After passing through the checkpoint in langdale I started to think the end was coming into sight with less than 10 miles to go. The terrain was still rough, too rough to run on until the section down to blea tarn.

Eventually we reached the last checkpoint just as a faint light was appearing in the skies. Unfortunately the zip on my waterproof decided to jam on some material and then opened up right down to the bottom. I’d decided to put on a dry thermal for this last bit, but had to knot the bottom of my cag together. There is a rather sadistic sting in the tail to the end of this race with a bitch of a climb up the side of tilberthwaite gill, with some scrambling required to get over a few bits, but once at the top of this there is only another slight climb and then the rocky descent back down to Coniston. What a joy it was to see the sports centre and the finish line. It was over. 

I had a few hours sleep in the tent and then just lay there, unable to move or extricate myself from the sleeping bag. What made it worse was that my clean dry clothes and food were in the car miles away next to the tent and all I had to put on was my wet race kit. But being a well ‘ard ultra fell runner…I donned said wet kit and crawled on all fours to the car and back. I then went for a shower, which took an eternity to get to. And when I was in the shower the only places that were muddy were the bottoms of my legs and I couldn’t reach down that far to clean them. But what bliss it was to stand under that shower.  

17hrs 58mins, joint 19th place out of 41 starters