Part of the preceding days were swept up in my logistics nightmare. I appear to live by the philosophy "why do things simply if you can massively confuse yourself and everyone else?", and I definitely did that. For reasons best known to themselves, the rest of my team opted to stay in Barrow, again, while I thought it would be more sensible to stay near Keswick, that being where the race starts and all. That said, last year I had a wonderful support crew in Irish Heather, and this year I had fellow runner and compadre, Jon, who opted to stay with me, because I booked the accommodation and didn't give him a choice. Come on, seriously, there is nothing "Happy" about a bus that leaves at 4 in the morning. That's the way I look at it. Anyway, I had a 2 day meeting in Cumbria on Wednesday and Thursday, which meant that on Thursday evening, I was car-less in Cockermouth. Sounds like the name of a film. You can have that one. Not, however, friendless, and I had a very enjoyable evening with friends, before making my way by bus and train to Barrow. Needless to say, this took approximately the same time as it did for Jon to drive up from Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. There was a simple reason why I wanted to go to Barrow. Last year, I spent an uneasy half hour, out of telecommunications, at the start of the race with no tag. That wasn't happening again. However, the next part of the logistics were equally fun: we parked Jon's car (when he arrived) near the finish line, and got Chan, our fearless team-captain, to drive us to our B&B. We'd not gone more than 15 minutes when I realised I'd left my phone in Jon's car. So specially downloading an app that allows your facebook chums' comments to be read out to you, and spending hours choosing a suitably distracting playlist, and ordering a spare battery pack for the phone - that all turned out not to matter too much.
The B&B was on the A591, about 2 miles south of the start line. They were totally awesome people, when I'd emailed to ask if they knew the number of a local taxi company, she simply emailed me back and said that as they were working farmers, they'd be up at 4am anyway, and would happily drive us to the start of the race. HOW LOVELY!
This year on the team, we had me definitely running, Chan probably running, Ginny possibly running, Jon wishing he could run, and Dave, Nigel and Suzanne definitely not running. Dave and I were hoping to beat our times, and Chan was pretty confident of beating hers: she had stuck with her walking friends last year, and came in close on 15 hours. I set off on the 5:30 start, determined not to start behind a pack of several hundred walkers this year. I realised quite early on that it was a dangerous strategy: the fact was, those runners were going to easily outstrip me, and then I'd have no one to talk to. Now I also had no music, this seemed more of a threat.
The night before, the rain poured down. Jon and I tried to reassure ourselves that it would probably have rained out by morning, but I was fresh from a meeting where someone had made the comment "Sometimes when it starts to rain in Cumbria, it forgets to stop" and neither of us were optimistic. I also convinced myself that I'd left the lost phone in the pub, and despite there being nothing I could do about it, it was hard to focus on sleeping. 4am came around faster than was reasonable. It wasn't pouring with rain, but it was definitely raining. The traffic was miraculously non-existent, despite my qualms, and although the farmer dropped us off on the wrong side of the road, we escaped being shouted at by the marshals. I wished Jon best of luck, and went to take my place among the runners.
I think having the route in my head, and knowing what to expect, was both a blessing and a curse. In the run-up, it seemed awful to be doing it again, but now, as I saw and remembered, I knew what to expect, and I could plan out in my head how I'd be doing at different points. Again, with no phone, I had no camera, but I was struck once again by the ravaging, rugged beauty of my surroundings.
It was raining, but it didn't matter: I had my cagool on, and I had a peaked hat to keep the water from my eyes. Optimistically, I had my sunnies on top of the
hat. Well, there's no point in not being ready, is there! The running felt comfortable, and I quickly fell in with a young lad called Will who was in the Atkins team. I wittered away to him, and he didn't seem to mind too much. I told him about the flooded roads, and running through ankle height water, as I was pah-ing at the small amount of water we had to traipse through. I can't imagine it made much of an impact, not unless you'd run through it. Duncan Cooke, one of the photographers on the course, took some great pictures of the water from last year, I attach a modest example but if you want to see more (and they are quite funny), check out his flickr stream
here. We had no such entertainment, and had to make do with a modest toe-wetting at most.
Will looked as though he didn't know how to let me down, so I released him and his youthful energy bounded off. However, on Dunmail Rise, I found him walking up the hill, chatting away to his team mate. "Come on, lad!" I muttered softly as I passed him. He apologised to the guy he was talking to and said "I'll never hear the end!" and caught me up. Made me giggle, I thought, I don't know him
that well. His team-mate called "Is that Lizzie with you?" and I shouted back "No, I'm just a stranger!" I was glad to pass the support crew (a) before most of them had arrived, and (b) before they blimmin'-well started frying bacon, which is what they were doing last year. Let me tell you, Dunmail Rise happens at about 8 miles, so you've left at silly o'clock in the morning on a pitiful breakfast (well, it's pitiful if you share my view of porridge), you run for an hour, and then have to pass people cooking bacon. It's not right, and there should be rules about it! (Maybe there are - maybe that's why they weren't - but I think I was quite a bit later last year).
I was still feeling confident as I approached Grassmere, even though I knew about the Hill, and started trying to pass a guy in front of me, who had an annoyingly heavy tread, and had sped past me earlier but now seemed to be going much slower, even though he had embraced the run-walk method, he still seemed to be slowing up dangerously early on the course (to my, now obviously expert, eye). Despite my concerns about him, I was having difficulties passing him, because although he was walking at more frequent intervals, every time I neared him, he started running again. (He was plugged into some music, and I don't suppose he realised his impact on me). It was starting to irritate me, when an old guy leveled with me. One look at him told me I was dealing with a K2B pro here, notwithstanding his extremely uneven gait. I asked if he was speed-walking, because frankly, I couldn't really tell. He said, no, he had "an ulra-shuffle". Brilliant. He basically said he didn't pick his feet up at all. The unevenness was down to a pulled ligament, he didn't say whether that was a result of years of Ultras - I guess I was left to draw my own conclusions! I passed him at Grassmere, but I had no doubt which of us would be passing the finish-line first.
As I approached the Hill, I saw young Will again, and his team-mate, who I'd apparently passed on Dunmail Rise - "Hello Stranger" he said. I fell in talking with him, and I liked his style. No messing about on the Hill, he was walking it. "Everyone makes such a fuss of this one" he told me, "but it's not long. There's no point in running it - you can't go fast, and you burn too much energy". I, of course, knew this from my endless research last year, of course, (largely interviewing squaddies - look, someone's got to do it), but I didn't let on. He was enjoying imparting information, and I was enjoying not talking going up a hill, so everyone was a winner. We started running again as the steepness broke, but it was too much for my Peterborough physique (it was not entirely pointlessly that Chan had entitled our team "Flatlands #2") and I was panting and gasping like a fish out of water. "I don't think I can do this," I told my new-found sparring-partner. His response was instant. "Well, you know you can - you've already done it. But if you don't think you can run up this hill - that's simple. Don't. Make a decision, and do it." He seemed reasonably relaxed about his own pace, and walked for a bit longer with me. It made a lot of sense. Making a decision about it meant that I hadn't just failed to run up a hill - I'd simply decided to walk a bit further. It was altogether more positive.
I ascertained that Ben had done K2B 7 times previously, and although he'd done various different times, he'd vowed never to repeat his first experience. It emerged that he'd overdone it early on, and seized up towards the end - but not nearly near enough - he'd had 15 bitter miles of limping pain. "There may have been tears" he told me. (He didn't say whose). I was impressed he'd gone back for more, but here I was. He'd enjoyed it since then, but although he'd beaten his own time, he'd never pushed himself so hard again, and he had no desire to do so.
We talked a bit about our running experience, and he asked me if I was a road-girl or preferred off-road. "Oh no, I'm a road girl" I told him. "Me too" he said, then, laughing at himself, "definitely a road girl, me". He asked if I had deliberately chosen matching gear, which kind of made me laugh, because nothing I own matches, but I was sporting some 3/4 length shorts, a recent acquisition, that have a pink edge on them (I got them because of the pockets!). Now, if you were a girl, you'd have noticed that the pink edge on my running skirt was a totally different shade of pink, and the edge on my baseball cap was in fact, red, but obviously boys don't do shades of colour. I explained about the skirt being as a direct result of paranoia of wearing lycra around my colleagues in the office, and frankly preferring to keep my ass to myself. Although I also mentioned that my dad's take on this, and really, as a psychiatrist, you'd have thought he'd know better than to feed paranoia, was to comment "I think the pink border frames your bum rather nicely". In hindsight, I was inviting comment, although it hadn't been deliberate. "He's got a point" Ben said, then hastily "Not that I was looking".
We started up another hill, which I remembered, although again we walked up it, where I remember running. At about this point, we got onto politics. I was kind of nervous, because like most of us, I'm on safe ground among my own friends, and my left-wing views don't turn any heads, and I just didn't want to start defending my views while running 40 miles. I had, by this stage, divined an ex-army presence, and he clearly worked for a big corporation, so it could go any way really. Somewhat to my surprise, however, he hadn't voted Tory, although his Tory incumbent had retained his seat. He did respect his MP, and thought he did a good job, so he was pretty appalled when he heard of some of the antics of mine. He gave an in-depth analysis of all the reasons why one might vote Tory, followed by all his own for not having done so, during which I gathered he may be slightly more right-wing than me but not enough to matter. All-in-all, it was like tuning into the Politics Show, as I remarked to a marshal we passed. "It's brilliant!" I told him, "just like radio 4!". It took us nearly all the way to the 18 miles checkpoint. Just time to check out his homophobia ratings, I thought, and told him about the incident where my MP had ridiculously replied, rudely, to one of his constituents' letters about equal rights marriages. Again, he passed (my companion, not my MP) with flying colours, being completely appalled that someone in public office could be (a) so offensive and (b) so stupid.
