You don't have to be fast to be fierce.
Horton to Hardraw
I’d eventually had enough of all that rest and joviality and decided it was high time I headed out for a last bout of Type 2 fun. The delights of the Cam High Road were calling, and seeing as how I had no jet pack handy, it was unfortunately going to be a ‘one foot in front of the other’ job. As it happens, I’d actually been looking forward to reaching it, because I knew that was where I’d finally bag my elusive century. I joked a few times before the race that I’d probably be the only poor sod smiling up there, but I figured I had a pretty solid reason to be unnaturally cheerful, so it was perfectly acceptable.
I crossed the bridge and sighed at the missed opportunity to stop at the new-and-improved Crown Hotel in support of its new-and-improved Spine-friendly ownership. I genuinely didn’t know when I’d be back, let alone if. In my imagination, this dream had always concluded once I reached Hardraw, which bumped another summit of Pen-y-ghent pretty far down the immediate to do list. I’m definitely a woman who never says never, but still.
As I moved on to the slow and tedious ascent of the lane leading out of Horton, it felt hot and dry and desolate, as if all the fluid in the world had evaporated overnight. I suppose it was another type of hallucination, sort of the amplification of everything that I was feeling in a form that was light years beyond how it actually existed in reality.
That thought sent my head on a jolly down another rabbit hole, and I was soon picturing the likes of Clint Eastwood popping out somewhere over the next rise, guns drawn, sneering and spitting and threatening. When I rounded a corner to suddenly see a man walking up ahead of me, I didn’t just jump out of my skin, but was properly launched from calm to WHAAAAAAAAAAAT in an instant.
Those harmless hallucinations had clearly morphed into bonafide heebie jeebies. Lucky for me, it wasn’t some angry cowboy, but rather the cheerful-looking man I’d seen back in Horton who had stopped to adjust his kit. Well that’s alright then!
We exchanged greetings, and as he seemed to be keeping the same pace as me, we chatted for a while. I learned he was undertaking the LEJOG while I shared some of my weird hallucinations, including the one with ‘some dude wearing a dalmatian-patterned raincoat’. He grinned and joked ‘maybe I’m a hallucination,’ and I first guffawed before my head exploded with the possibility of it. It was then I remembered I wasn’t supposed to be keeping step with a non-competitor, and reluctantly bade him farewell and wished him an enjoyable journey. I was also sad to say goodbye to that Everlasting Tube of Primula when I managed to eke out one final squeeze and then it, too, was gone. I may have even whimpered when I closed the cap for the last time. What a culinary companion!
The road began to curve gently to the left and the scenery started to look boring and samey. I was sure I’d been walking the same twenty metre section for hours. Despite the tedium, each step was a reminder of how far I’d come, but after another long span of feeling ‘a little bit off’, I felt myself returning to that hideous and frustrated discomfort I’d felt way back on Ickornshaw Moor, much to my horror.
No! Not now! NO!!!!
I was hot and bothered, irritable, hungry but out of easy-to-eat food, and absolutely shattered. The gravel beneath my feet became carefully placed shards that seemed to fit precisely between the lugs of my shoes. I was relieved when a glance at the watch told me I was still well in time, so I decided to stop immediately and solve this latest problem.
Low mood, eat your food.
That Damian Hall mantra had long tattooed itself on to the front of my skull.
I rooted around in my nosebag to find I still had half a bag of posh cheesy biscuits left so shoveled in the lot, happy to be seated and still able to chew it. That was a miracle in itself considering how dry they were.
What next?
My feet are fricking killing me.
Now in Real Life, I am a total ibuprofen connosieur, but this was an ultra, and that was simply not an option. Still, I really needed to shut down the pain receptors telling my brain that my feet were done with every step I took. They couldn’t be done – I had twelve solid miles to go.
Fix it, my dude.
I had twelve miles to go, but I also had a co-codamol in the pack! (I mean, it seemed like a good idea at the time.)
In went the tablet, and I started my ‘allowed rest’ count to 100, after which I’d need to get this show on the road. It occurs to me that when I remember what contributed to my eventual success, my discipline in only allowing the shortest of breaks will remain a firm point of pride.
That tablet though, not so much. It was astonishing how fast the pain went, but with it, every last bit of alertness I had left.
Shit. Best get moving before that really kicks in.
I popped up as fast as someone knackered and co-codamol’d up can possibly pop, and off I went. I put on my power walking playlist to ensure I wasn’t plodding and got back to that dance-walk pace of easy strides, poles swinging on 1-2 and tapping on 3-4, repeat repeat repeat. I thought I was moving quite well yet again, but the full Spiner who passed me through Ling Gill ascended that climb out like he had wings. I laughed as I watched him disappear over the top and gave myself a stern talking to.
You do you, sis. You are absolutely fucking SMASHING this.
And my chimp genuinely seemed to have scuppered. All I was focused on was the double helping of achievements ahead of me. Unfortunately, this blind optimism dropped my guard so desperately low that when I turned on to the hellscape of the Cam Road, I may as well have been kneecapped with a giant reality stick.
Its eleventy billion varieties of stone immediately woke up the pain in my feet. I growled audibly and grit my teeth. I said all the words you don’t ever say to your Nan.
Then I pulled up my big girl pants, changed the song to Britney Spears ‘Work Bitch’ and pledged that this particular bitch would indeed work.
Bring it on, ring the alarm
Don't stop now, just be the champion
Work it hard, like it's your profession
Watch out now, 'cause here it comes
I knew I had seven miles of this particular discomfort so just got stuck in and charged onward.
And lo and behold…
At some point…
Somewhere
along that road…
At some time on Monday the 15th of June, 2026…
…my dream finally came true.
I had no way of knowing precisely where I was when that 100 miles ticked over, but I distinctly remember grinning and saying aloud ‘surely it’s done now’. I transferred both poles to my left hand, looked to the heavens and waggled my index finger at my Pop with a beaming smile.
We did it Pop. We finally did it.
Sadly, my long-held vision of ‘three digits on the watch’ wouldn’t play its imagined role in this story as my watch had been stopped and re-started four times already and finally gave up the ghost before Horton due to the forgotten charger. I had been long navigating off my OS maps app (not that it was even necessary in the moment) but it wasn’t difficult by any stretch of the imagination to find my way through these miles. And it all felt so weirdly similar to the Ridgeway, where, when you reach a junction and the trail presents multiple options as to which way you can go, the rule is largely ‘where is the shittiest terrain? Yes, go that way.’
This is the Cam Road. It is ALL shitty. Just follow it.
And I didn’t waste any time. I had a race to finish.
An almighty roar stole my attention and I looked up to see an RAF jet absolutely screaming across the sky. It was surprising and majestic and powerful and total perfection. If you would have told me when I first set out on this quest those seven years ago that this symbol of strength and might and power would accompany me at the end of the line, I’d have laughed and said you’re trying too hard.
But it happened. And it was perfect.
Another jet joined the party, and this continued for a reasonably long time in memory, which could be entirely skewed so I’d not dare to guess how many passes they made. I stopped at one point and gawped up at the sky just to take it all in. I checked my phone to see messages coming through very nearly at the pace of those jets, congratulating me for achieving the century, telling me it’s all downhill from here, telling me it’s finally going down this time, I’ve caught the Lanterne Rouge, musing as to whether I had a pint waiting at 6:00 as I was absolutely flying.
Man alive, you don’t know the half of it. It was the energy of pride. The joy of glory. The power of victory. I was about to slay the most fearsome dragon I had met in all my 54 years. I was on the verge of capturing the defining achievement of my life.
And was gifted those bloody jets.
It was absolutely fucking spectacular.
I am a person of many words (if you’ve been following along you will surely know this by now) but I am truly at a loss to define this moment perfectly and only hope for my future self that I have done it justice.
When I was finally able to draw my attention back to the task at hand, I passed the Smiley LEJOG guy sat at a junction having a bite to eat, and in retrospect realise that if I’d actually hallucinated him, it was a particularly solid one, what with the repeat viewing and all.
I reached another junction with its fingerpost, where some lady walkers who were clearly looking for a different trail asked me if this was that. I meant to be polite, but some rude and driven cow pushed some alternative response out my mouth.
This is the Pennine Way. I’m only interested in the Pennine Way.
I knew I got it wrong from their expressions, but genuinely had nothing left for repair or niceties. I’d been on the Cam Road for miles and was starting to get a bit stabby.
Just before 4 pm, I finally turned off that dry stone Hades on to the swampy delights of Ten End. Much to my surprise, I had caught up to the three runners who’d long been ahead of me. I was moving a little bit like that female Terminator when she’s really enunciating ‘where did he GO,’ and now realise that if old John Connor were actually there, he’d not have had a snowball’s chance in hell in escaping because I was on a proper mission to bring that baton home, quick-like.
As the other runners paused in search of a way to cross a small stream, I looked left and kept moving towards a set of flagstones, eventually slipping past the group. The terrain was soft and muddy and totally runnable and I soon found myself jogging, which had seemed utterly impossible for the endless miles preceding this moment. Still, I was having an inner motivational war that rested somewhere between the fire inside me absolutely raging, and a desperate need to finish so I could finally stop moving. I’d crossed the start line 56 hours earlier. As I type this, it seems completely impossible that I was able to go for so long, yet there was still more work to be done.
For now: down, down, endlessly down. I finally reached a field of golden buttercups, and paused to take a photo. From my marrow, I knew I would want to see this scene again and again – tomorrow, next year, forever. This was really happening and I wanted it to last, precisely as much as I wanted it to end.
What an impossibly contradictory feeling!
I am still grateful for the numbness in my thoughts at the time, because in retrospect it feels as if it would have been too painful to reconcile; had I really thought this through in the moment, it would have wreaked havoc on my head at the most inconvenient time imaginable.
It’s hard to explain unless you have done a race like this. Unless you have pursued something that has pushed you right to the absolute razor edge of your limit, where you are so on the boundary between what is possible and what is impossible that it seems you will lose your senses if you put a foot wrong.
It’s like emotional danger vs. spiritual epiphany.
My words are as clumsy as I am. If you know this sport, you may understand how humbling such a victory feels.
One of the runners caught me up, saying she wasn’t racing me but just wanted it over with. I felt such total kinship in that moment and tried to keep up before deciding that I didn’t actually need to – I realised my heart would rather savour this, so I slid back into a comfortable walking pace.
I spotted a clothesline at the end of the path in front of me, and frowned quizzically at the multitude of tea towels hanging from it, each covered with a photo of Spine Race Kit guru Lindley Chambers in a bucket hat. The styling looked a bit ‘melted’, similar to that old Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas promotional photo.
Or maybe it was just a floral pattern, and I was utterly wackadoo? (I’ll take door number two, Bob.)
As I descended into Hawes, I ignored the line on the gpx in favour of taking a longer but familiar and direct route to the one-way system I knew would take me home to Hardraw. It was more bittersweet than expected when I passed the accommodation I’d hired the first time I ever recce’d this section.
I crossed that road and left Hawes an hour after turning on to Ten End. On hearing the SST calling my name with a congratulations and huge grin, I was struck like nothing else in my life has ever touched me, and the minute I was safely over the road, the weight of what I was about to achieve hit me like a kick to the chest.
I absolutely lost it, ugly crying so hard I eventually could no longer see the path ahead of me. But I knew I had to sort myself out to navigate the bridge and dodge traffic, so I stopped to swab at my eyes. As I got moving again and passed over the bridge, another set of walkers attempted to help – by pointing me towards the wrong path to take into Hardraw.
‘No thanks, I’ll trust my map,’ says I, far more polite than I’d been to those poor ladies up on the Cam Road. Horses for courses I suspect!
Still, I knew very well where the necessary gate was, precisely where I’d pause, how I’d pass through and move across four glorious fields and past one Green Dragon in the final steps of finishing this quest. I reached in my pack to retrieve that beautiful baton, to feel the power of that friendship and all those memories.
I thought about the day I’d finally achieved the full Ridgeway 86 route, where I had struggled so much from the conditions and nearly lost my head before I reminded myself to stop thinking in the future and stay in the moment.
I am here. It is now.
I said it then, but here I was again – not just in a moment. I was in the moment.
It was the moment because at roughly 6 am, in a bird hide at Malham Tarn, I’d decided that the moment would arrive today. No quarter. LFG. RFP.
Never in my life have I been more glad to be right.
I am HERE.
It is NOW.
There is a song for this.
Knowing how deeply music plays a part in my memories, I knew I needed an anthem to hold this forever. It didn’t take long to choose Fat Boy Slim’s Right Here, Right Now – added to my playlist following a chat with my work bestie Debs.
It’s perfect. It’s utterly bloody perfect. This is the moment. My God, this is THE moment.
I AM HERE. IT IS NOW.
I sent my friends a final selfie with that baton in hand,
and a roar of victory on my face. I found out later that the time stamp on the
photo was a number completely associated with my father.
Of course it was. Could it ever – on any plane of existence – possibly have been anything else?
I put that song on its own playlist and set it to repeat, the perfect tempo to power march over those fields, baton clenched in my hand, punching the air, crying, crying, crying –
(Right here…right now…right here…right now…)
‘We DID it Pop!! We finally fucking did it!!
(Right here…right now…right here…right now…)
Seven fucking years. Seven. We fucking DID IT!!!’
Punching.
Crying.
Gritting teeth.
Positively STORMING over those fields.
And in the background, the vision in my head was undoing decades of self-doubt.
It was as if every step wiped off a piece of a lifetime white board covered in defensiveness, draped in armour. That display I’d been forever scribbling on, adding to, downgrading myself. I erased every ‘watch me’, every ‘do you know what I am capable of’, every pity clap, every head tilt, every underestimation, every misinterpretation...
I didn’t need them anymore. I had finally proven this to myself.
(Right here…right now…right here…right now…)
Just before I reached the gate into the final field, I turned the music off – I needed to hear the world.
I needed to join the world.
A checkpoint volunteer met me at the final gate and as I paused to look around and take a deep breath, I was still wiping the tears away. I told her I’ve been trying to finish a 100 miler for seven years and my dream has just come true. She says stop, I’m going to get her crying, then implores me to run it in.
Yes.
Yes, of course!
I’ll run it in. Because I’m a runner.
And 57 hours, 21 minutes and 49 seconds after I began, it was over. One hundred and eight miles.
Last timed location: Finish.
I only went and DID IT POP!!!!!
Fists raised in victory. A grin absolutely pasted across my face, the fatigue and emotion quietly, gently, softly resting beneath it.
And so many people cheering.
I’m third last, and there are SO many people cheering. It is impossible and it is marvellous.
Then I’m getting a hug. And a medal. And a few photographs, from that familiar cameraman in that familiar purple jacket, whom I’d last seen on Pen-y-ghent, which was surely a thousand years ago by now.
And in my heart:
This is what 57 and a half hours on the move, on a
mission, feels like.
This is what 108 miles on 2 and a half hours of sleep
feels like.
This is what holding on to your grit and fire and
determination despite the odds being endlessly stacked against you for seven
years feels like.
This is the Spine Race.
There are winners and there are slower winners. This race has no losers. We are all family.
And we are all warriors.
Because you don’t have to be fast to be fierce.
__
Cold blooded like the world outside that made me
Shine bright from the fire that it gave me
Breathe in, think it’s time to write my story now.
Bloody knuckles, got 'em banging on my chest
Tunnel vision, people say that I'm obsessed
I'm a warrior, I am not like the rest
And I won't back down –
It isn't in my blood to surrender
I won't break, I'll remember who I am
In the face of my fears –
It isn't in my blood, I'm relentless
I don't quit, won't forget this
And my pain is what got me right here –
It isn't in my blood.
__
- Fat Boy Slim, Topic, Marco Generani: Right Here, Right Now - Rework
__
All blogs in this race report:
Prologue:
Here we go. (Pre-race)
Let the
Games Begin. (Edale to Torside)
Keeping
the Faith. (Torside to Hebden Hey)
Just
a matter of time. (Hebden Hey to Lothersdale)
All
hail the underdogs. (Lothersdale to Malham Tarn)
Back
on top in June. (Malham Tarn to Horton)
You
don’t have to be fast to be fierce. (Horton to Hardraw)
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