Down the years I’ve done my fair whack of races. Some have taken place in the evening, some at midday, some all bloody day and night for goodness’ sake. The vast majority however, have been early starts at the weekend. I have always assumed this is so there’s minimal disturbance to the infrastructure and population, and to guarantee maximum recovery time before the pubs close.
I don’t really suffer from pre-race nerves anymore but sometimes I get a brief moment before the start where I question what I’m doing there, and why I do any of this at all. Sometimes with this thinking comes a feeling that I can only draw similarities to a feeling I sometimes had at school when, ironically, I didn’t want to go because we had PE. It’s a kind of doubt-filled vulnerability that tries to persuade me to go back to the car and go home. Not an inner voice telling me I’m rubbish or anything like that, or a negative thread convincing me I won’t finish the race, it’s more a small part of my inner self encouraging me that being in my comfort zone would be better. More often than not, it’s when I know that what I’m about to do is going to hurt. It’s not just in this scenario that it appears. It pops up in other areas of my life too but we won’t delve into that at this moment in time.
One of the funny side effects of this feeling is seeing people milling about who aren’t taking part in the race. They’re supporting someone, or just watching, and they’re wearing a ridiculously comfortable-looking padded jacket, carrying a takeaway coffee, oozing every drop of I’m-in-my-comfort-zone-and-you’ve-got-to-run-a-half-marathon from their very pores. I’ve written at length about comfort zones and what they’re good – and not good – for, and wobbling about more comfortable than Baron Comfortable von Comforterhoffen of the Comfortable Comforters is not my style. But in that moment, with that feeling, with everything ahead of me – I feel jealous. Why don’t I give it all up and have lie-ins? Why don’t I just do one race a year? It was warm in bed. And so on and so forth.
The answer is simple and not surprising.
It’s who I am and it keeps me pushing myself. It’s vitally important. As I lurch forward in age and as, like everything else, I don’t seem to be getting any younger, I need to fight against the constant waves of comfort and keep doing what I’m doing. We all do. For me, it’s running and a few other things that make me slightly uncomfortable at times but are worth doing for the feelings they exude and the long-term benefits for only a brief few minutes of haggling with my other self. For others, it might be something completely different. For the bloke I saw standing in his front garden in his dressing gown holding a mug of tea on Sunday morning as I strode past with 2000 other half marathoners, being up and about at 9 am at the weekend might be his big victory over the chilly whisper of Lord Comfy. Who knows.
I don’t think I’ll end up regretting any of it. There’s not much in life that’s as satisfying as the feeling of achievement when you didn’t want to do it at all. Besides, mincing about holding a takeaway coffee isn’t my remit. No rant about that, I promise. That’ll be for another time, you lucky sods.
There was a sketch show in the nineties that had a character called Unlucky Alf who was an old man, and in spite of his best efforts, he was always befallen by unfortunate incidents. In the later series, he even acknowledged something bad could happen and took special measures to be careful and avoid such mishaps, only for them to happen anyway. His catchphrase after each kick in the goolies of pride was, “Bugger”.
I’ve never considered myself unlucky – until recently. Never one to take myself too seriously, I generally view each incident as an opportunity to laugh at myself and be grateful to be given the opportunity to regale the story to friends, colleagues, family and hopefully get a blog post out of it.
Usually, these things happen every now and then. Occasionally, a couple of things, but nothing major. Then, very much like buses, many come along at once, and, like every good story – and to set some context – we need to go back to the beginning…
I’ve written before about traditions that I have: run every day January, Christmas Day run, ignoring my birthday and weightlifting to the unrivalled genius that is Sir Cliff Richard to name a few. Another one that has emerged since lockdown is taking part in an annual Christmas boredom-busting exercise challenge. The brief is to run or walk fifty miles between Christmas Eve and midnight on New Year’s Eve. Fairly challenging, but it must be completed with a 35 lb backpack and in boots. That ramps things up a bit.
This Christmas just gone, I decided I was going to ramp things up even further. I was going to attempt the full fifty in one go. Now, you can do as many runs as you like. It doesn’t matter. As long as you get to fifty in those few days, and can prove it, you get a patch. Not a medal. A patch. It’s very reminiscent of a swimming badge. I don’t mind the no medal bit. I’ve ‘competed’ for participation medals, patches, commemorative towels and, well, bugger all in the past, so it’s fine. Anyway as I was saying, I decided to have a blast at this thing in one day. I’ve seen it done before and assumed it was possible for me to do it. Fifty miles. I’d ran fifty miles last September so I knew I could do it but this would be different. Boots, trousers and a heavy backpack, with a storm on the way.
I used my favourite GPS route-planning app and made a nice single fifty-mile loop, starting and finishing at my front door. Convenient. According to the app, based on my perceived fitness level, I’d be out there slogging away for eighteen hours.
I love the planning stage of things, and took great care to familiarise myself with the route, get it onto my watch, sort out appropriate kit, pack and weigh the bag, dream about the stupendous calories required and in which manner to consume them and from what. It was great. I also needed to decide what day to do it on. With work commitments, family Christmas stuff and everything else, I chose 28th December. It did occur to me not to do it on the 30th or 31st in case, God forbid, I wouldn’t be able to complete it. At least this way, I’d have three more days to swing things back in my favour. This was an invaluable decision, though I didn’t know it at the time.
The day came. I had made a load of sandwiches, got everything ready the night before, and gone to bed at a reasonable time. My alarm sounded at 4 am. Tearing downstairs like an excited child on Christmas morning, I made a coffee, had something to eat, got dressed and was out of the door by ten-to-five. It had been quite stormy in the days leading up to it so I didn’t take any chances and wore my trusty waterproof over-trousers that had served me well since 2012, my army surplus Gore-tex jacket, and my heavy – but waterproof – boots. Hat and headtorch on, off I went.
Initially, everything was great. The moon was up and full, peeking through the occasional cloud. It wasn’t raining and I was warm. The best thing about being impenetrable to water and mud and walking in the dark is that you can’t see what you’re stepping in. Be it mud, or animal mess, it matters not. You can just stride on with unbelievable confidence. Two miles in, my unbelievable confidence took a dent. I realised the eight delicious ham and cheese sandwiches I had made and put in the fridge were very much living their best lives, two miles away, still in the fridge. It was still close to home but too far to go back. I reasoned I could just buy some in one of the larger towns that I would pass through. Bad luck incident one – rebutted.
My Outdoor Christmas Tree
It wasn’t long before incident number two arrived. A couple of miles later, after I had seen my first fellow humanoids of the day, I was walking down a long track on the edge of some fields. The track was fairly muddy and was deeply rutted by tractors on each side of the strip I was walking along. Up ahead I spotted a huge puddle that covered the ruts as well as my path so I had to go around it. This involved a little jump to the side and a jump to get back. On the jump back, my trailing leg slipped a little and I heard a worrying ripping sound. Luckily it wasn’t anything on my anatomy but looking down, I could see it was the sound of my trusty 2012 over-trousers ripping from the crotch practically down to the knee. Bugger. They had clearly been slipping down a little and were hanging lower than advised, and there they went. Irreparable. Possibly irreplaceable. This was a tougher one to take than the sandwich incident and really did feel like a setback. Five miles in and now my trousers were getting damp. But, I’m made of stronger (albeit, damper) stuff and I carried on, muttering to myself and fighting the urge to turn around.
So there I was. Out there in the dark, sandwich-less and getting damper by the minute in the crotch region. My heart lifted when I could see the next village in the distance. One or two cottages had Christmas lights up and it restored my spirit a bit. Through the churchyard, over the fields and the village was behind me. Going great now. Striding on. Still dark and nearly 7 am, I came upon a track and it wasn’t immediately obvious where the path went, then all of a sudden, I saw the shimmer of a galvanised gate hiding behind a bush. Bingo. I’d just about got a hand on it when I heard rustling away to my left, slightly behind me. I quickly realised it was another humanoid. Seeing a pair of feet emerging near me, I uttered a pretty normal morning greeting, expecting the same back. What was said next went something like this:
Me: Morning mate Him: (in an abrasive fashion) What are you doing? Me: What do you mean? (knowing full well what he meant but stalling for time) Him: I mean, (slowly) what are you doing? Me: Out for a walk Him: (wholly unconvinced) At this time of the morning? Me: Well, believe it or not…yeah.
I went on to explain where I had come from, what I was doing and where I was going. I also switched off my headtorch so as not to dazzle the suspicious sod and stepped closer to help create some trust in the situation. Eventually, becoming convinced I was the nutter I was saying I was, he told me I was about to step into his smallholding and the tarpaulins that cover his haylage for his horses over winter had been slashed during the early hours of the morning. Admittedly I looked dodgy. Camouflaged up, massive backpack, creeping around in the dark – though I did have an incredibly bright headtorch on and he did see me coming from a way off, so it added credence to the narrative that I wasn’t up to anything dodgy. He’d basically been a victim of petty vandalism for a few months and claimed to know who was doing it, though he had no evidence. Within minutes, he was showing me around at what had been done. I showed sympathy, asked a few questions, made a few suggestions, wished him a Happy New Year, shook his hand and left him on good terms (I believe). I retrospect, he didn’t have any torch whatsoever and was dressed pretty much in black, making me think the plot twist was that he was the perpetrator and I had caught him in the act. It made me wonder – are people the way they are because of how they’ve been treated, or are they treated the way they are because of how they are? Curious. Either way, the incident consumed my thoughts for the next couple of miles. Right up until incident four occurred.
By now the sky was light and the torch was off. I was making my way across a humongous field that had been divided into small paddocks by electric fencing. The kind that clicks with intent as you approach it. I’ve been done by these a few times over the years, so am always wary. I carefully climbed over a few stiles, making my way along. I swung my leg over one, swung my other leg over and placed it on the ground. As soon as I did, I felt a strong thud go down my leg. At first I thought I’d done something to a tendon or something. Then I realised: I’d been electrocuted. My bag was damp from light rain and had touched the fence behind me while I was preoccupied with negotiating the stile and still processing my encounter with Farmer Giles/The Rural Crime Guerrilla. Luckily it was painless. Unlike incident number five.
This one was more like Unlucky Alf than any of the others. I was gingerly making my way along the edge of a field on a muddy path. Field to the left of me, ditch to the right. Here I was, stuck in the middle. The place to get the most traction was a narrow grassy strip between the path and the ditch. Doing my level best to stay away from the ditch, you can guess what happened. My leading foot went left, the weight of the bag sent my top half right and into the ditch I went. Being still waterproofed up from head to toe, there was nothing to provide friction so I slid on wet grass, head first, into the bottom of the bramble-filled trench, scratching myself silly. Bugger.
You’d think that would be it, and it kind of was. It was just the worst first ten miles anyone could endure. Well, probably not, but it was quite a challenge. It just meant the rest of the day went steadily downhill. I had to stop a mile later after the ditch incident and remove the split over-trousers. I also had to put a plaster on a blistered heel. My boots proved problematic and to use them was a bad decision. I should have known better as they’ve been a problem before. In my first two Fan Dance attempts, they claimed my big toe nails – twice. I used them because they were waterproof and I wanted to take some miles off my Altberg boots. Bad move.
Another Camino sign from somewhere.
After 22 miles I stopped at a church which I hoped would have an accessible porch so I could get out of the wind and cook up some food. The church was locked so I had to brew up the world’s worst coffee and pasta in a graveyard. I took the opportunity to take off my boots and put my trail shoes on which I had packed by strange miracle to make weight. This was a game-changer though it meant wet feet. By then though, the weather was vile, and it was beginning to get dark. I decided to throw the towel in and begin to make my way back home, finishing on thirty-three miles. Going the full distance would have meant being up on the highest ground, in the dark, in a storm. I would like to say if the above things hadn’t happened, I might have been able to finish but who knows.
What it did mean was I had a frantic few days to get seventeen miles in. It went right to the wire with a sunset New Year’s Eve TAB and even included an eight miler in the rain, pushing my boy in his buggy. Definitely desperate times and equally desperate measures. When the patch arrived, I grasped it firmly, knowing fully that I had worked hard and really earned it.
I’m already planning next year’s. All fifty in one go again – fingers crossed my luck changes.
My Outdoor Living Room 