MDS 2009 - Keith

Sunday, April 27, 2008

What's been happening??

Well another 2 weeks have passed and I've barely noticed. Work and family commitments have dominated my life recently meaning that the training has definitely taken a back seat.

I have mixed feelings about this, with the hectic event schedule that we have just now I know that I have to get a reasonable amount of rest, to allow my body to recover between events, however, when your used to training 4-5 times per week it is odd to cut right down to 1-2 times.

Most of my training has been in the gym where I have been cross training and putting in a few more stretching exercises. I have managed a couple of 8 mile runs on the beach between Monifieth and Broughty Ferry, but nothing beyond that.

I have a small niggling injury at the back of my right knee, I sustained the injury near the end of the Cateran trail race, when my right hamstring cramped quite violently. I don't think this should be a long term issue however recently I've tried to ease the problem by stretching regularly. I've never had problems with my hamstrings in the past, but then again I've never run 64 miles before!!

So what's next?

This Saturday brings, The Maggies Monster Bike and Hike - AKA MY NEMESIS!

What is it?
Fort William to Inverness - 30 miles on a mountain bike followed by 43 miles on foot.
Start at 0700 on Saturday morning and keep going til you finish.

Team hotrunning have completed this event twice in the past. Now just to say, this is entirely a charity event and is not meant to be a race, but then this is team hotrunning we're talking about!!

Year one saw us win the cycling stage, and then saw me completely bonk at about mile 23 of the hike crossing the line with an impressive projectile vomit!!

Year two saw us, attempt to pace the cycle stage and walk/jog the foot stage. However what actually happened was, we crashed and wrote off two mountain bikes, got lost, and I bonked at mile 23 of the hike/run. This time I walked the last 18 miles vomiting every 1/2 mile!!

This year, we are going to be prepared, Seamus and I are doing the entire event, while James will only join us for the first twenty miles of the hike. James is desperate to do the entire event however he has both eyes focused on his up coming British Ultra event so it would be silly to knacker himself on a training event he has completed in the past.

Having picked up so much experience and knowledge regarding ultra marathons over the last 12 months I'm carefully planning my strategy for next weekend. Seamus and I are quite well matched with our pacing and fitness levels. I know this will all be about pace, nutrition and hydration. Slow and steady will win the day. Instead of flying off at the start and slowing drastically we'll probably aim to complete the bike in about 2.5 - 3hrs and then average 4mph for the 43 mile hike.

I'm hoping to get a decent amount of sleep and hydration in this week, however work will probably have the final say in that.

Hopefully the next blog will be an account of a successful Bike and Hike, that will be a first!!!

Monday, April 7, 2008

When Common Sense Prevailed!

On Friday 4 April 2008, prepared and ready to go, Seamus and I set sail for the Highlander Mountain Marathon, this year the event would be based in Torridon on the North West Coast of Scotland. The weather forecast for the weekend was not good and so prepared for the worst weather we took the 4-hour drive north to our campsite.

I was keen to arrive in plenty of time so we could register and pitch our base tent in the field close to the event centre. The scenery is this part of Scotland, like so many other areas was nothing short of spectacular.
The Campsite.


The view from the event centre across Upper Loch Torridon.

Because we had arrived at about 6:30pm we had pitched our tent, registered and eaten by 8pm. With nothing much else to do, we decided to walk the 1.5 miles to the nearby hotel for a light refreshment by this time there were several other runners arriving and most found their way to the hotel.
The beer went down very easily, however because we didn't really know what to expect we limited ourselves to 2 pints and made to return to the campsite.

I guess you could say it was at this point the fun and games began. Scotland is famed for it's varied weather, between leaving the hotel and arriving at our tent, we had clear skies, drizzle, hail, torrential rain, gale force wind and the odd flake or two of snow! This meant that the easy walk back to the tent turned into a run for cover.

I did say that this was the start of the fun, on arriving at the campsite we picked our way through the soaking wet field with our head torches on, trying to spot our tent amongst the 20-30 others which had arrived since our refreshment break. When I looked to where I thought our tent was I saw this pathetic excuse for a shelter, collapsed on one side and blowing about like a poly bag in a gale force wind. With a smile on my face I thought, poor buggers whoever are sleeping in that tent!!
You can probably figure the rest of this yourself?? It took Seamus 3 attempts to convince me that the aforementioned poly bag was in fact our tent. WHAT THE HELL HAD HAPPENED?

Remember at this stage it was windy as hell and the rain was just off the horizontal, we were soaked and trying to get some quality rest before the big event. It was Seamus who spotted the obvious mistake with our tent, no guy ropes. What ropes? Guy ropes. The tent we were using had been supplied by James, in fairness to him he did say to check all the kit prior to leaving, the obvious flaw in that plan was he gave the tent to me to check. I wouldn't know a guy rope if I tripped over one!! (I DO NOW THOUGH!!!!!)

Seamus and I dived into the excuse for a tent to try and come up with a plan. His engineering brain kicked in and he quickly removed his shoelaces from his trainers and handed them to me to fix to the outside of the tent. Happy with myself having completed this part of the mission, we then discovered that the supporting poles had not been fixed to the tent by way of the Velcro straps, this meant that the poles were falling all over the place. Becoming more and more frustrated, we both jumped up and made a furious attempt to secure them. It was at exactly this stage that Jimmy managed to snap one of the poles!! Words were used which are not suitable for this blog followed by a ridiculous fit of the giggles as we realised that we had started with a tent and ended with a bivy bag!!

Truly the last straw was after using every bit of kit we had, including a couple of bottles of water, we had managed to erect something resembling a water proof shelter I was closing the outer door of the tent with some difficulty due to the cold and rain, the zip came off in my hand !!@£$£@.

The one good thing about Jimmy being verticly challenged is that if you stand him upright in the corner of a tent he's about the same height as a tent pole : )
First night under canvas, Jimmy is in the corner of the tent leaning on a vertical rollmat which is supporting the corner of the tent.

One of the worst nights sleep in history followed. We also were subjected to a new phenomenon, (to us anyway). Shortly after settling down to try and sleep we heard this distant rumble, sort of like thunder, or a low flying jet. The noise was distant but gradually got louder and louder as it approached. Now, sleeping in the worst constructed tent in history at the head of a deep loch and surrounded by snow capped mountains it's fair to say both Seamus and I were bricking it!! As the noise got closer and closer I decided to go for the, curl up and close my eyes tightly method of survival. As the noise closed in on us the tent was about lifted off the ground and battered about wildly for about 10 seconds before it settled back into the heap it had started in.

We obviously figured out that the noise was the wind travelling along the valley floor aiming right for the campsite at the head off the loch, this happened at least twice an hour for most of the night.

In the morning we reckoned we managed about 2 hours sleep each. We packed up, had breakfast (bacon rolls!!) before getting our racing kit sorted for the next 36 hours. As mentioned in a previous blog the race was an orienteering course around the mountains stopping at a different campsite for the night. Then, on the Sunday we would take a different route and return to base camp at Torridon.

At 0750 we boarded a coach, which drove us to the start line for the "C" class runners. When we boarded the bus we were handed a large Ordnance Survey Map and a piece of paper with (9) 6-figure grid references. We quickly plotted our checkpoints and disembarked at the hotel we had frequented the night before.

This isn't that great a picture, however it's part of the map we had to plot our points onto.

On the top left of the picture you can almost make out the loch where our base camp was. Just below that there is a red coloured S. This was our start point. You can see lots of empty red circles, these were ALL of the checkpoints scattered across the area for the A,B,C,D and score class runners. We marked only those 9 points that we had to visit.

We took our time and planned the best route to the first checkpoint, this went quite well with little or no issues.

This picture shows the start S at the top left, also point 1 and point 2.

This is us en-route to the first checkpoint. Nice weather for it!!

As I said point 1 was quite uneventful, however, point 2 ???

Looking at the map you can see that 1 sits infront of some cliffs. Our options were, straight up and over the really steep cliffs, re-trace our steps back to the snow covered path and walk around the left (as you look at it) up the steep hill to the series of lochs and then down to point 2, or, keep our height and contour around the front of the cliffs (past the number 53 you can see), which would bring us out right at the checkpoint?

I think this is where the lack of orienteering experience really raised it's ugly head. We should have taken option 1, we took option 3. No one will ever know what we went through traversing this part of that mountain, I could probably write another 1000 words on the snow covered scree slopes, the slipping and sliding in our trainers, the decision to come down the hill on our backsides, and backpacks, the decision to go back up the hill, the point of no return, the white fingertips which were the only anchor points to the mountain. Suffice to say Jimmy and I actually shook each others hands when we emerged at the checkpoint in one piece. We also swore never ever to put ourselves in that position again.

We pushed on to checkpoint 3 keen to make up some time. This seemed much easier simply follow the path all the way and the checkpoint was on the right. As we approached the area of checkpoint 3 there were quite a few confused runners. The problem was the snow. It was ankle deep and hid most of the features, including the established path. This proved very costly for us. Previous runners had created a path in the snow which was now well established. However it was not the correct route. As such, a confusion as to where the checkpoint was, was created. The next major learning curve was presented to us. NEVER EVER listen to or follow those runners in front of you, no matter how experienced they CLAIM to be. We found checkpoint 3, other runners were shouting about it being in the wrong place. How could those stupid event organisers have been so daft as to mark the maps incorrectly!! We listened to the runners and didn't stop for a couple of minutes to assess the situation properly.

The event organisers were correct, WE were wrong, this meant we descended 1/2 way down the mountain in the wrong direction, worse still we could now see the path we wanted to get on to but we were looking over a shear cliff face and had no way of getting to the path. Having wasted another 1.5 hours we opted to head back to the top of the mountain and try and figure out what went wrong. This was really soul destroying, the rucksacks we were carrying with our tents/sleepingbags/food/cooker etc etc were becoming heavy and the last thing we wanted to do was have to climb the same mountain TWICE!

By the time we came to the top of the mountain the weather had closed in and it was a white out. It was so cold and the wind was blowing the ice/snow straight into our faces we had little time to stop. We walked to checkpoint 3 and then in the direction we thought the path should be. As we crested that part of the hill we found ourselves on the edge of a massive cliff face with a few hundred feet of void straight in front of us. We turned around and returned to a large rock for some shelter. It was fair to say we were becoming rather hacked off.

It was exactly at this point that a woman with a dog wandered into view. "What the hell was she doing here in this weather??" If she was here, she probably new the way down? I ran in her direction waving my arms about like a right prat. When I spoke to her she said that she was part of the mountain rescue team organised by the event management team. She had been there for about 3 hours and had already sent 4 runners off the course. I could have kissed her! We asked her for directions to the path and she pointed to a dip 30 meters from where we had been standing. As we walked towards the dip the weather lifted slightly and here was this well-established wide path all the way down the mountain.

As we trudged down the path we talked to each other about what we had been through and what lay ahead. We knew that the other checkpoints were across other mountains of a similar stature. Because of this and our previous experiences as well as the fact it was now 2 pm with another 6 checkpoints to try and find, there was no way we would risk being in the mountains at night. We abandoned the race. This is the first time I've done this but it was undoubtedly the correct thing to do. This however didn't stop us, running/walking the 18km's into the overnight campsite. We pitched my tent, an ultra-lightweight job(with guy ropes) got some hot food and had a couple of pints of beer (Supplied by the organisers).

It was so cold however, the kit we took with us served us proud and in no time we were toastie in our tent. When we woke in the morning we saw 3 inches of snow surrounding the tent. Some runners were just starting Sunday's stage but given the number of tents scattered about the place we knew several of the competitors had taken the same choice as us.
This was one of the mountains surrounding our campsite the photo was taken on Sunday morning.

We packed up our kit and informed the organisers that we would not be continuing. We then yomped it back to Torridon, about 16kms away. The route was by road and forest path and had some of the best views yet. We later discovered that we were amongst 17 teams that didn't start on Sunday. And as far as I can figure not 1 team from the C class finished the entire route. Only 1 C-class team completed the Sunday route, however they had failed on the Saturday section. I guess I don't feel so bad now!

As we approached the Torridon base camp and my car, the mountain we had petrified ourselves on the previous day, came into view so we took several pictures.
We traversed from right to left (as you look). You can see the "Shoulder" of the hill of the left hand side. We traversed at this height across the face of the hill and around the back. Not reccommended!!

We collected our car and drove to Inverness for a night on the lash, we thought we deserved it!!

What next??

BRING ON THE MAGGIES!!!!! Third time lucky : )

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Next!!

So less than a week and a half after the 64-mile ultra my thoughts are well and truly fixed on this weekends Highlander Mountain Marathon.

For those not aware of this event, it takes the form of a two day orienteering race, run over the north west highlands. Based this year in Torridon, (approximately 60-miles north of the Kyle of Lochalsh), the event kicks off at 0730hrs Saturday morning and will see myself and Seamus compete in the C-class rating. The classes are A- Elite, B-very good, C-good, D-Basic, Open class - Beginners.

We travel up to Torridon on Friday afternoon where we will pitch our large tent at the base camp. First thing Saturday morning we will pack our rucksacks including lightweight tent/sleeping bag/cooker/food/clothing and as we leave the start line the organisers will hand us a map of the area along with about 10 -12 six figure grid references, these references correspond to the checkpoints we have to visit across the surrounding mountains.

It will be up to Seamus and I to plot the checkpoints and determine the best route to visit all of them within the alotted timescale. This may sound straight forward, however as neither of us have any orienteering skills, Seamus is half blind and I'm half knackered from last weekend this may be easier said than done!!

We must finish the route by about 1700hrs Saturday night by which time we have to return to the campsite. We will pitch our lightweight tent and have some food. An early night will probably be the order of the day, as first thing Sunday morning we do exactly the same thing, only across a different route.

I've purchased some water proof socks as my feet are still recovering from the 64 miler, I've also bought some freeze dried meals, a map case and a variety of different food. We must remain self sufficient from Saturday morning through to Sunday evening, it should be a good starting practice for what we shall eventually experience in the desert.

On that note, this years MDS is now on day 3. This years race is the longest in the events history and from the times that are being posted from the British contingent it would appear to be a tough route. There has been quite a lot of feedback from the competitors who all agree that it is tough, but an amazing experience. Only 12 months left to find out exactly what they mean!!

It's quite reassuring to look at our "Just giving" website and see the totaliser sitting just below £19000. A big thanks again to all those who have contributed.