My feelings on the starting line of an ultra are always a bit of an odd mixture. On the one hand, there are nerves. On the other, feeling “nervous” seems daft because nerves seem to imply uncertainty, and there is one certainty: this is going to hurt.
To be fair, my nerves at the start of the West Highland Way were fears for the first two cut-off times at Balmaha and Beinglas Farm. I know I can definitely run 40 miles at that pace (let’s be honest- it’s 4mph, more of a brisk walk), but my only other 100 mile success was at the Spine Challenger, which took me a mammoth 58 hours. It seems daft in retrospect, because the Spine is a completely different race (snow, thigh-deep mud, 16 hours of darkness, etc), but I couldn’t help being afraid that somehow it represented the only pace I can do 100 miles in.
Anyway, I had some mild jitters waiting to start at Milngavie, but my biggest feeling was the strange apprehensive acceptance I get at the start of ultras. This is going to hurt, it’s is going to have hard bits, and it’s going to take a very long time. I was excited too, of course. Part of me is just a kid who sees ultras as a big adventure. I get to play outside all day eating whatever I want, what’s not to love, right?
Finally, and all too soon, we were off into the night. 1am is a strange time to start, and I hadn’t managed to get any extra sleep so I knew I was in for some tiredness later, but it was an absolutely beautiful night for it. Lucky really, as I hadn’t thought to test my headtorch beforehand and the batteries were half dead. Surrounded by the solar bloom of some people’s spotlight devices I was absolutely fine, but in the patches where I ran alone, I was more or less running in the dark. I couldn’t face stopping so soon to change batteries, despite spares in my bag, so put up with it and actually rather enjoyed it.
The run to Drymen (where my headtorch came off), and eventually Balmaha, was good and uneventful. I felt decent coming into Balmaha and very happy to see Methini (bundled up against the midgies) waiting with a smile. A big learning point from the Spine had been that I’m not good at eating on ultras, and waiting to see what I fancy at each checkpoint previously resulted in my crew having to make a hundred suggestions and then just bully me into taking something, which isn’t a very fair burden to put on them. This time, I wrote a suggested food for each checkpoint on the cheatsheet I gave my crew (with postcodes and info about each checkpoint) and unless I texted ahead requesting something else, that was what I got. It worked pretty well, and at Balmaha I downed a “liquid breakfast” shake, swapped out water bottles, and headed off without too much delay.
Balmaha 19 miles – 5:11am
The run into Rowardennan, Land of the Midgies, went by smoothly listening to music, and I midgie-netted up and sat down to text my crew an update (they were sleeping through since I could have a drop-bag), then walked on eating a cereal bar under my midgie net. I switched to an audiobook for the slow up-downs from here, and that audiobook worked miracles for me all race. It was a trashy murder mystery and the weirdest thing to be listening to during an ultra, and I loved it.
The “technical” bits either side of Inversnaid were undoubtedly my favourite bits of the entire race. I love fiddly ups and downs, and the boulder scrambling low by the lochside was great fun. I did worry that I would be too slow getting into Beinglas, which dented my enjoyment, but luckily caught up to another runner who reassured me the last four miles into Beinglas became runnable, so I relaxed and enjoyed myself. My running of that last “runnable” section was slower than I’d have liked, but I came into Beinglas at 11:58, an hour before cut-off and happy with that. I had a nice sit down for a rice pudding with M&Ms stirred in, an iced coffee, swapped out my water bottles, and regretfully walked back the way I’d come to make use of proper toilets before carrying on.
Beinglas Farm 41 miles – 11:58am
The best bit about Beinglas in my head was that it marked one more leg to go until I could have a support runner. I’ve never done a race that allowed support runners before, and I was excited at the prospect. This leg felt pleasantly up-and-down, and I seem to remember a particularly fun downhill where lots of others were walking and I was delighted to find my legs and feet happy to run down.
I’ve been doing a fair bit of my training in the Harris hills, trying to keep up with my friend Isi on downhills (and epically failing, always), and in comparison to deep heather hiding rocks and rabbit holes, the downhills of the West Highland Way are plain sailing. By this distance in previous races, my knees and feet have often felt too sore to manage the impact of downs, so it was very satisfying to be running them.
Auchtertyre 51 miles – 3:11pm
After my first weigh-in (no weight change) I joined my crew in the camper van and chatted to Methini about what clothes and kit she might want to bring with her. She’s only got into running much in the last year, although has done lots of long treks and hill walking, so the plan was for her to come on a short stint with me now, for some company, then to join me from Glencoe. Tom badgered me into eating some cheese and other bits and pieces and then we set off.
We did the short stint and I found myself pretty poor company for her- it was a nice, fairly easy section, but I think sleep-deprivation was beginning to kick in. I was also feeling sick with stomach cramps, and wasted time at Tyndrum going to the loo and hoping it would go away. Methini got back in the van at Tyndrum and I went on alone, getting grumpier and grumpier. I managed to miss a turning and find myself at a main road, craning my neck for the right course and luckily seeing runners back up the hill I’d descended so I could rejoin the path without too much panic, but some extra grumpiness.
Bridge of Orchy 60 miles – 6:28pm
As always, running into a checkpoint cheered me up greatly. Not to mention, getting to use a fancy hotel loo. Unfortunately, toilets were featuring heavily in my thoughts by now and for much of the next few hours. Feeling that my bad mood was getting the better of me, I asked if Methini would come with me earlier than planned and do the leg to Glencoe with me. She immediately agreed and we got ourselves ready.
The moor was incredibly beautiful, but I had my head down a lot of the time now, feeling deeply sleepy and tired. Jelly Baby Hill wasn’t as bad as I’d feared, and the music (Star Wars theme if I remember rightly?) floating down towards us brought the biggest smile to my face in ages. I had an orange jelly baby, guessed the flag wrong, and carried on.
From here onwards, I made a big mistake and let myself get into cycles of negative thinking and self-pity. I was only letting myself think of the next leg, the next checkpoint, but even so, the many, many hours looming ahead of me were intimidating, and I kept letting myself ruminate on how sick I felt, how sore my feet were, and it was totally stupid. Hopefully this will be a lesson I can carry into my next race- that if I let myself mope, it just gets worse. It would have been worth an investment of energy to force myself to even pretend cheerfulness, as I think it would have helped lift me out of a fug.
I can only apologise to Methini, who was absolutely amazing the entire time she was with me. We chatted, we walked in silence, she encouraged me to run at regular intervals, and was just wonderful.
Glencoe Ski Centre 71 miles – 9:52pm
At Glencoe, I had another visit to proper toilets (these were blissfully warm- my brief stop at the van was enough to get me instantly shivering, as my homeostasis was starting to go haywire after so many hours on the move). I changed into long sleeves and trousers, which was an excellent decision, and set off in a very strange mood. I felt extremely sick and unhappy, but underneath it was the beginnings of a buzzing excitement- just one leg to go after this! For the first time, I let myself think about actually finishing.
The Devil’s Staircase was where my sleep deprivation, nausea, and self-pity collapsed in on each other into a muddle of pathetic whinging, very slow walking, and general uselessness. Methini walked steadily ahead of me and it was all I could do to keep one foot moving after the other. I whined that I felt very sick, that I was so tired, I just wanted to sit down. Maybe I could have a little sit down on that rock? Methini politely suggested I’d be better off just taking a few breaths standing still and carrying on. I glared at the rock as I staggered past it. It looked the perfect rock for a sneaky snooze.
I started feeling a bit dizzy as well as sick, and the whinging intensified. I asked if we could hold hands, as I was a little worried I might fall over and down the hill (I was less worried about breaking my neck, and more worried that I might then have to climb up part of the hill twice). It must have been like trying to shepherd a large toddler, but again Methini was unbelievably kind and practical. We kept walking and she kept me distracted with (of all things) poetry recitals and tales of her climb of Kilimanjaro. At last, I started throwing up, and the relief was enormous. It was like a fog had lifted and I could suddenly talk like an adult and walk at actual walking pace again.
We were both amazed at this transformation and did our best to make the most of it while it lasted. I was pretty fed up of rocky trail, which I no longer thought was any good to run on, but we made OK walking pace on it, bracketed by a couple of other pairs of runner-and-supporter looking in roughly similar shape (or should I say, similarly rough shape) to us. I’d read so many race reports warning that the descent into Kinlochleven takes at least twice as long as you expect it to, but all this flew out of my head and I moaned constantly that I couldn’t believe how long that descent was taking us! We finally emerged onto road and managed a trot to the checkpoint centre, overwhelmed by relief.
Kinlochleven 81 miles – 3:06am
In the centre, while being weighed I cautiously asked the room if I would be considered crazy for having a little sleep. I’d told myself that sleep is just a waste while the clock is ticking, but sleep-deprivation has a way of digging its claws into your brain until all you can think about is a way to get some sleep. If I had thought I’d get away with it, I’d have lain down for a snooze while Methini wasn’t looking on the hill, but I suspected somehow she wouldn’t have let me get away with it.
Thankfully, the back-of-the-pack runners do sometimes have a snooze here, as the marshals assured me. Feeling I’d been granted permission, I told my crew I needed an hour’s sleep. They agreed I could have a 40 minute sleep and duly set an alarm for 30 minutes. I love those sneaky bastards. I lay down and was instantly out.
When Tom woke me and practically pried me out of the van to get moving again, it was beginning to get light and I felt much better for the sleep, if very stiff. I hobbled across the car park and felt my heart rate rocket up instantaneously. Somewhat alarmed, I waved at my (both medical doctors) crew in their van and they waited. I asked Tom through the open window to check my pulse with that weird Shrodinger’s ultra hope – I simultaneously desperately wanted to finish and secretly hoped I had gone into some terrible arrhythmia and he would pull me from the race and I could just lie down. He frowned and felt my carotid pulse, then waved me away.
“It’s regular, it’s probably fine. See you in Fort William!”
That was that, then. I hobbled grudgingly away, popping my headphones in.
The climb up out of Kinlochleven wasn’t bad. My stomach was behaving so long as I didn’t try to eat or drink anything, but I was confident in my ability to go 14 miles without. I had my trashy murder mystery audiobook and my only job was to put one foot in front of the other.
I did start getting anxious about losing the route here, as the back of the pack was spread out and the way markers were few and far between. I wasted lots of time in this last section getting the map out of the back of my bag, scrutinising my surroundings, even taking bearings, and carrying on for ten feet before doubt crept in again. In hindsight, the course is easy to follow and obvious but I think the lack of sleep and calories was making me anxious and I chose to focus on the route as the subject of my anxiety.
At some point, I spotted a runner and supporter ahead of me and this was exactly the impetus I needed. Keen to keep them in sight, my pace crept up and I gradually caught up. The runner, Stacey, was in the depths of a low similar to mine on the Devil’s Staircase. Her support runner, her boyfriend, was obviously doing a great job keeping her on track, and kindly offered me a variety of foods when I shared her complaint of not being able to stomach anything. Boosted by the spot of company, I picked up my pace. Lundavra got a whoop of joy out of me and I ran through (pausing for a quick photo) and on.
The fire track should have been a wonderful descent. I’ve never had my legs feel so good after so many miles. There was no injury pain, just the expected aches and a few blisters, and I could run a perfectly reasonable pace. Those 4 miles went on forever, though. I started having ridiculous bursts of crying with excitement that I was actually going to finish, then a normal patch, then a sob of “why won’t this ever end!?” would break through, to be replaced by “oh my God, I’m going to get a goblet! I’m going to do it!”, in hectic circles. I ran past a few amused and bemused people out walking their dogs who gave me kind encouragement and ignored the tears.
I hit the road and pushed on, crying and laughing at myself. “Do you know where the finish is!?” I asked a random lady (pretty sure a local rather than a race supporter) sitting on a bench who clapped as I passed, and she very kindly leapt up to catch up to me and point out the very obvious race centre just across the roundabout.
At last, the finish. There was another runner, Joe, just up ahead. I’d spent a fair amount of the race benefiting from running with him and his support and since at this point I was running and he was walking I had no desire to zoom-hobble in and look like I was trying to pip him to the finish, so I slowed and said a delighted hello to my support crew as he finished, then jogged those last twenty feet into a very, very happy tearful finish.
Fort William 95 miles – 32:26:45
Within two days, I was thinking of reasons to run it again. I suspect I’ll be entering the Spine Challenger again in January, and entering the ballot for next year’s WHW too. There’s just something about 100(ish) miles that does something for me- it really, really hurts, it teaches me a lot, and I’m so grateful to be able to do it.
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