There were only four Brits running the inaugural Legends 350: Sam, Claire, Jon and I. Back at the start of the race, amidst the 100-odd runners taping feet and devouring carbs, we'd each spotted one another. Whether it was our British mannerisms, accents or Centurion patches, who knows - but within minutes we were round a table holding a pre-race strategy meeting.

I started by sharing the weather forecast I’d found last week. As I read out the balmy conditions predicted for the days ahead, eyebrows went up around the table. So we pored over my weather app to work out where the discrepancy lay.

It turned out the forecast I’d been using hadn’t been for the Ardennes at all, but rather for a town a thousand kilometres south, on the Mediterranean coast. In stark contrast, conditions up in the Ardennes looked pretty bleak.

Casting around for a conversational pivot, I landed on my choice of running shoe, the Inov-8 Trailtalon Max. But this also received quizzical looks, and a suggestion that it mightn’t be the wisest choice for the terrain. “Certainly, it’ll be muddy, but I don’t think you need lugs that deep… have you brought anything more comfortable?” I hadn’t, of course.

Scrabbling for a topic that wouldn’t expose any more of my ignorance, I very nearly volunteered my nutrition strategy, marzipan - but caught myself in the nick of time. Better, I realised, to leave the sharing to others. “The route” I asked. “What do you all know about it?”

That prompted a lively conversation, over the course of which I learned that we Brits knew precious little about the route, or the Ardennes for that matter. Yet none of us showed the faintest hint of concern.

Instead, there were two stereotypically British traits on display: the blithe indifference of Private Pike, and the fatalism of Arthur Dent. We appeared more than happy to face down the enemy armed with our home-knitted scarves, remarkably versatile bath towels and flasks of hot tea. Which was how I coined my mantra for the race: Keep Calm and Carry Oolong.

And the oolong seemed to be working for Sam. He’d cruised past me shortly after the CP1.5 halfway checkpoint, looking in fine fettle. Given how tight Legends’ cut-offs were, I had expected him to perform a double-quick turnaround at CP2, gulping down his food and heading straight back out onto the trail. I really hadn’t expected to find him still lounging around the checkpoint, sipping a cup of oolong.

CP2

“Hey, Sam!” I exclaimed, giving him a friendly wave across the checkpoint table. I leaned in to whisper “Aren’t you worried about being timed out?” Sam dismissed the question with one of those sardonic grins that Sergeant Wilson was so famous for. I could imagine him responding “Do you really think they’d time us out, sir? Awfully unsporting, wouldn’t you say - especially after we’ve come all this way…”

The other two Brits, Claire and Jon, must be somewhere behind, I figured; chasing down the cut-offs on their way to CP2 even more urgently than Sam and I. Perhaps Jon was channelling his inner Corporal Jones, screaming “Don’t panic! Don’t panic!” - but then again, perhaps not. It seemed I was the only Brit showing the remotest concern for these cut-offs.

I settled into my seat and accepted a vegan curry, which I enjoyed so much I straight away asked for a second helping. Then I followed it with a steaming cup of oolong, and I found myself slipping into the same Lyons Corner House afternoon tea reverie that I’d cautioned Sam against just a half-hour prior.

While nonchalantly nibbling on paprika crisps, I aired my feet and charged my devices, and tweaked my clothing by removing my midlayer. That left just my wafer-thin baselayer and a windproof. It was all I strictly needed in these mild winter conditions, I thought, even moving as slowly as I was.

After 90 slothful minutes indulging in curries and oolongs, it was time to face facts. The clock was ticking, and my Achilles was only getting worse the longer I sat here. Whether I’d even be able to coax it back into action, I wasn’t sure - but if I could, it only had to carry me fifty more kilometres to my red line at CP3, where I would, clearly, have to leave this race.

Eight years of ultrarunning had built up to this moment. Forty-odd ultramarathons, without a DNF. It had all come down to my Achilles heel. The arrow had found it here, in this race, at this moment. I couldn’t change the result, but I could still choose where I fell.

CP3 was where I would execute my strategic retreat. That was how this would end, I decided. At CP3, in the Ardennes, the place where Legends are written.

My plan was set.

Codename: Operation Oolong.

I felt a little chilly wearing only two layers up on the blustery flatlands around Verleumont. A ‘nip in the air’ would usually spur me into a more enthusiastic running pace, but under the circumstances I could only glower at my foot, and my knee, and all my other knackered muscles, themselves mere victims of my stricken Achilles. Feeling cold was a small price to pay to go out on my own terms.

Considering I’d been awake for over 30 hours, it was unsurprising that my eyelids were starting to grow heavy, and my mental acuity was fading. The atmosphere seemed to be shifting too. The sky looked ominous, and the forecast I'd read back at CP2 agreed: heavy rain was fast approaching, which would last for hours, only to be replaced by high winds for the rest of the race.

These didn’t seem like great conditions in which to tackle the notorious ‘High Fens’ after CP3. If only I had some idea what they were like, I’d be able to estimate the effect of the rains. I’d know what to wear, and what gear to pack.

My thoughts drifted back to my drop bag, sagging moreorless empty, offering up only its wet socks and marzipan. Well… I could at least pack more marzipan.

Would there be enough time to sleep at CP3, or was I running too close to the cut-offs? Because if time was tight and I needed to head up and onto the High Fens overnight, that’d be my second night without sleep. Without a sleeping bag small enough to fit in my pack, or a proper bivvy, how might that end? This race hadn’t come close to the arctic conditions of the Winter Spine, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t go on to develop its own, uniquely Legends style of perverse savagery.

After all, that was what Jandalf had intimated might happen. That was why I was here, I supposed. Limping around the Ardennes like a wounded stag, destined to arrive at my inexorable end, up on those barren, enigmatic, primeval High Fens...

Wait a minute - why was I planning for the High Fens? Operation Oolong had me DNF’ing at CP3, long before the High Fens got underway. It had to be the sleep deprivation. I only needed to focus on the here and now.

And right now, the fact was the going was easy, and the route was lovely. I was trotting over forested tracks & trails that could have been lifted from any of England’s green and pleasant lands.

The trails grew hillier and more exciting as darkness fell over the Ardennes. One of them reminded me of a woodland above Stocksbridge, Yorkshire. Despite not knowing where on earth I was within these forsaken forests, I felt at home here.

And yet so helpless. My Achilles had deteriorated to the point where I was struggling to walk. Jon, one of my fellow Brits who’d trailed me at CP2 coasted past now, looking in infinitely better shape than me. I wanted to run along with him, but there was nothing I could do. I had to keep stopping to stretch my Achilles; a tactic that had afforded me crucial minutes of respite earlier on, but was proving completely ineffective now 130km deep into the race.

Down in the town of Trois Ponts I eyed a stone wall, an ideal stretching post. While giving the Achilles a much needed stretch, I spotted another runner approaching. Not keen to engage in conversation at that precise moment, I hobbled off at pace well in advance of him, but he still caught me up in seconds - and he was only walking...

Setting my humiliation to one side, and not wanting to appear unsociable, I worked hard to match his extraordinary walking pace, in order to strike up a conversation with the Dutch runner/walker Jonathan Koutstaal.

I was fascinated to learn that, following his own troubles with injuries last year, Jonathan taught himself how to walk at the mind boggling speed of 9km per hour. To put this into perspective, that’s a 4 hour 41 minute marathon. Which is the average finisher’s time - the average runner’s time - for the London Marathon. In other words, this guy could walk a marathon faster than most well trained runners could run one.

As a particularly slow walker myself, I find encounters with such folks inspiring and infuriating in equal measure. But today, hobble-running alongside the speedy Dutchman, I leaned into the side of inspiration and peppered him with questions about how he’d managed to achieve such an incredible feat. And I decided there and then that I too would teach myself to walk quickly. Or at least to walk at a regular pace. Somehow…

Emerging from our engaging conversation, I was surprised to find myself in the heart of this cosy town on a busy Friday evening. We made for a burger van parked across the road and bought towering piles of chips, devouring them as we strode on, while I contemplated whether these greasy starch fingers were more or less healthy than my block of marzipan. I certainly appreciated the salt.

The Dutchman motioned up a side road, explaining there was a halfway checkpoint up there. How he knew this I had no idea, but true to his word, we found one of Legends’ gazebos at the end. Jonathan greeted the volunteers but cracked straight on, while I collapsed into a chair, desperate to give my Achilles a break. In one hand I clasped my huge tray of chips, and into my other hand the checkpoint team thrust a steaming mug of vegetable soup. I would certainly not die of starvation in this town!

Having juggled my steaming feast between my hands and consumed as much as I possibly could, I hobbled off once more, moving much more slowly than before. Both my buggered Achilles and my bulging stomach played their part in that.

I left the warm lights and night-time energy of Trois Ponts behind, dropping back into the pitch blackness of the Ardennes. Only through the solitary beam of my headlight could I see evidence of a world outside of my own private consciousness.

The trail broke north into Bâleur wood, a hidden gem offering me a glorious welcome: beautiful woodland trails marked with quirky children’s trail signs, bedecked with colourful illustrations of plants and animals. The French texts probably explained the wood’s ecology and wildlife.

I crossed the quaintest of naturalistic, beaver-managed streams, and beamed the widest of smiles, feeling as warm and fuzzy and contented as it was possible for one to feel in this little haven, the Autour de l’Étang du Bâleur.

But, argh - fuck’s sake. Garmin was warning me I’d deviated from the prescribed route. I backtracked, sliding back over the slippery wooden bridge, cursing my Achilles and my knee for their incessant pain. And now Garmin pointed ahead, but there was no ‘ahead’ - there was only dark, dense, impenetrable jungle.

Perhaps I wasn’t exactly where Garmin thought I was. After all, GPS signals are often affected by dense tree cover. I backtracked, but that took me even further away from the GPS track. So I edged this way and that, forcing my body through pine trees, briars and thicket, trying to forge a way forward. It was all impassable, and I was forced to retreat back to the kids’ path, taunting me with its vibrant colours and childish babble.

I followed that stupid path all the way to the west, hoping to find an alternative route north; but alas, that too led nowhere. I backtracked once again, gazing with increasing disquiet at these kids’ signs. Shouldn’t their illustrations show happy butterflies and birds? These didn’t show anything of the sort. Come to think of it, what on earth were these forsaken things? Warped depictions of the eeriest of creatures. Monsters of the jungle…

I was back where I’d started, none the wiser and far more unsettled. But there was nothing for it, I simply had to move forward. So I forced my way through the jungle once more, farther than I’d dared go before. I ducked beneath, leapt over and contorted my body around the wooded thicket; I manoeuvred leafy branches, ripped my jacket out from the grasp of thorns. But now I stood before a truly impassable wall of jungle. Without a bulldozer, there was no further I could physically go.

I rotated 360 degrees, searching for a way out. But in the process I lost my sense of direction, and the jungle wall closed in around me. All I could see was foliage and spiders and thorns right in front of my eyes, as though I had managed to insert myself into the middle of a thick hedge. I barrelled through where I thought I’d come, but that led nowhere - and now I really couldn’t see for leaves. I tried to retreat, but had no idea where I was going. I turned to my Garmin for guidance, but its screen showed one of those kids’ illustrations: an indecipherable ball of red yarn, where I’d frantically sought a way out of this jungle of horrors.

I charged forth, tearing and scraping and clutching as the jungle whipped me, smacked me in the face and tore at my flesh. I veered this way and that, smashing and bashing and jumping and crawling and picking up my headtorch as the motherfuckers cracked my head in again. I’d fucking get them! I picked up a branch, and thrashed my way forward like a man possessed.

I came to a halt and froze, mouth ajar. Leaping out of the blackness was the illuminated face of a child’s doll. It was Chucky from the horror film Child’s Play. He was wearing the widest, most evil, sadistic grin imaginable. His eyes were boring straight into me. I raised my branch.

Rustling stole my attention from the left. People approaching. Chatting. It sounded like runners’ chat? Self-aware now, I glanced down. My legs were scraped and bloodied from the jungle, but I was on a path. It looked like the kids’ path. And ahead of me was a sign, with one of those bizarre illustrations. It wasn’t Chucky exactly, but it bore a close resemblance.

The chatty runners emerged from beyond some trees, speaking in English. “Do you know the way?” they enquired, politely. I explained that I didn’t; that I’d checked out every which direction, but like Hotel California, I couldn’t seem to leave.

Having only just arrived at the jungle of horrors, these runners had no cause to be perturbed as yet, so I left them to enjoy their time with Chucky. Myself, I headed toward the river. I planned to wade across, for I wagered I might have better luck on the other side.

As I lowered myself down a rock face, I glimpsed the faintest of gaps in the thicket. Could it be...? “This way, head toward the river”, I bellowed into the darkness, as I crashed through this most overgrown of paths. I’d made it out. Battered. Bleeding. But alive. Chucky could go fuck himself.

The woods weren’t quite done with me yet. The rain that had been forecast was just getting underway. For now it rolled harmlessly off my DWR windproof, but it would surely build.

I slogged up a notable climb leading to a thoroughly muddy 250m descent. Not sticky mud, or particularly deep mud, but a muck - a particularly gritty muck - that seeped into my shoes, around my socks, encasing my feet with millions of abrasive shards. I ripped off a shoe and tried to scoop out the worst of it, but all I managed to do was smear the grimy mess all over my arms, legs and pack. I left my other shoe well alone.

The next climb was no less mucky. Yet when I broke free from the trees at the summit, I was stopped in my tracks by the vista before my eyes. Out of the vast darkness of forest beneath me, I could see a cluster of vibrant lights: a little Ardennes town. And, shooting across my field of vision, a streak of light: an express train. Both looked so cosy, so welcoming. Like a Christmas postcard, it evoked childhood memories, and sparked imaginings of idyllic worlds.

After this magical moment, I found I was much less bothered by all the gritty muck. I limped quite enthusiastically toward the distant lights of the town, following the lead of the train. I hardly cared if the GPS led this way or not - I wanted to see the town!

The historic tourist town of Coo was busy this late Friday evening. Its hotels and restaurants were heaving, diners sat outside under cover, cars vying for spaces in its main car park. A Legends volunteer pointed me toward the stone bridge over the Amblève river. Signage on the bridge told me I was passing the “Cascades de Coo”. I could indeed hear the sound of a waterfall, but it escaped my vision in the darkness.

It was while crossing the bridge that I remembered Jandalf mentioning there was a self-service food dispenser along the route, and I wondered whether this busy town of Coo might be where I’d find it. Seconds later on the other side of the bridge I found the answer to my question: a Cola-Cola vending machine. It wasn’t a company I felt happy supporting, so I simply smiled and ran past, content at least to have located it.

The route broke away from Coo up onto what was clearly a tourist hiking trail. A series of steep staircases zig-zagged up to a viewing point. No sooner was I up and over this hill, I dropped down into an even larger town, Stavelot. Oozing with history, its cobbled streets were adorned with an overabundance of brightly coloured flowers. The route revealed quaint squares, bars and restaurants, alongside poignant memorials to the ravages of WWII.

One minute I was passing a takeaway, considering whether to stop and buy a non-marzipan meal; and the next, I was stumbling around the ruins of the Abbey of Stavelot, wondering whether I had time to read the signs explaining its storied history.

Now Garmin was directing me off the roads of Stavelot and down onto a tourist trail beside the river. Heaving from rains and melt, its stepping stones were submerged, making this popular trail feel reminiscent of a traditional Legends wade - though still, many times more civilised than last night’s swimming up the Ourthe. The water at least flushed the worst of the mud from my shoes.

Before long I was back on roads and solid trails, crossing off the last few easy kilometres of the leg. Up ahead I could see the lights of CP3: my red line, where I’d committed to DNF.

My right Achilles was wrecked, my heel was knackered and my gait was unbalanced. That’d overloaded half of my leg muscles, triggering opposing compensations which had gone and overloaded the other half.

At best I could run-walk, at worst I couldn’t even walk. Put simply, I was fucked. I couldn’t continue a 350km race in this state. But did I have it in me to do what I’d never managed to do before in 40 ultramarathons, and actually quit?

The only alternative would be to drag myself up onto the High Fens, battling torrential rain and high winds, straining to stay awake, with barely any gear to fall back on when my Achilles finally gave out.

I could feel another one of Sergeant Wilson's sardonic grins coming on.

Do you really think that’s wise, sir?

Having spent hours wading up the rocky rivers of the Aisne Valley with only the sound of rushing water and the light of my headtorch for company, stumbling into a quaint Belgian village was a cause for celebration.

After a couple of minutes trotting up what was presumably its main street, I sighted a Legends Trail banner with a string of bulbs draped across it, offering up a meagre glow. It wasn’t much to behold; but to this sullen traveller grappling with advanced plantar fasciitis, it looked like Christmas at Harrods.

As I entered CP1 I spotted a pile of ten duffel bags waiting to be transported to the next checkpoint, and inside the main room I counted ten runners. Ten bags and ten runners meant I must be in around 20th place.

20th place… I let out a sigh. I’d started off leading this race, until my Achilles detonated like a landmine and I’d started bleeding places. At first it was just the occasional drip, but it was progressing to a major bleed. Given this exponential rate of haemorrhaging I’d be timed out long before I got close to the finish.

The finish… I let out a louder sigh. I’d been contemplating DNF’ing here at CP1, though I didn’t feel so inclined now. I would push on, and try to reach my red line at CP3. That was all I’d intended to achieve at the outset. That was what I would do.

I collapsed into a chair, extending my leg to relieve my Achilles. A few hopeful words attracted an English-speaking volunteer, who kindly prepared one of my dehydrated meals and handed it to me, ready to eat. As someone who’d endured a diet of marzipan for ten hours straight, I really appreciated the change.

While I ate my mind wandered back up the trail, reflecting on the first leg of Legends 350. The course began easily enough, building its undulations to a crescendo at the halfway-point through that muddy, splashy forest trail. But it was the last third that had been really gruelling. A gnarly, technical trek through rocky rivers, which could at times have passed for an aquathlon. The only respite came from those muddy hikes up the valley’s hillsides, that served no obvious purpose other than to knacker my Achilles.

The weather had been favourable though, and lengthy river stretches excepted, the ground had otherwise been runnable. Factoring in water stops at half marathon intervals, overall it amounted to a more accessible first leg than I’d expected, considering Legends’ reputation.

Looking ahead, both CP2 and CP3 legs were little more than a marathon apiece. They were building up to what was, so I gathered, a particularly long and arduous expedition to CP4 across the High Fens. Which was irrelevant for me, given I would DNF at CP3. My Achilles only needed to cling on for two short legs.

My gaze fell to my drop bag, which sagged open, looking quite sorry for itself with so little inside. My two pairs of spare socks were staring at me, so I took the hint and changed into dry footwear, before packing up and heading back outside. It was time to risk my Achilles once more, in the quest to answer Jandalf’s question: Legends, or Spine - which is tougher?

It only took a minute to leave the little hamlet of Ollomont behind and disappear into the pitch blackness of the Ardennes. Yet this was different to before. Through the bubble of my headtorch beam, I could see rolling farmers’ fields, and a gradually descending single track road. This looked far too easy for Legends.

Downhill tarmac presented an ideal opportunity to coast along and make up time, but my stiff Achilles was having none of it. It forced me to walk this eminently runnable section, leaving me feeling immensely frustrated.

After two kilometres of mental anguish, I heard the unmistakeable sound of rushing water. “Oh for fuck’s sake, let this not be another Ourthe river wading trial”, I pleaded with the dark Ardennes. As if responding to my appeal, the route swung a left and tracked a beautiful, freshly tarmacked road running parallel to the river. But this was short-lived, and the wading cycle duly resumed. Drop down to swim the Ourthe, climb back up out of the valley; rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.

Feeling hunger, listlessness and drowsiness beginning to overpower me, I popped a caffeine pill and forced down some more marzipan. I reminded myself that, despite all its challenges, this route was considerably more agreeable than the freezing -18°C temperatures, gale force winds and metre-deep snow of the Winter Spine.

The caffeine kicked in just as the rising of the sun birthed a new day. Finally I seemed to be heading away from the Ourthe to a place where the trails were easy-going and free-flowing. The fact that some of them were free-flowing streams was not unusual for an Englishman.

My foot grew more painful by the hour, but my fresh, positive mindset handled it well. I used my poles to offload weight onto my upper body, and I reminded myself that it genuinely wasn’t that far to CP2.

I had no inkling of it at the time, for the rural road crossing gave nothing away, but the route actually took me within a few hundred metres of the world-famous Achouffe brewery. All I experienced was a mix of runnable countryside trails and flat, tarmac roads that conveyed me through to Dinez fairly efficiently.

It was on the climb heading north out of town where I felt conditions starting to shift. There was a chill wind up here, so I stopped to don a windproof, and my toasty waterproof mitts. My watch explained the cause of the change in circumstances: I had ticked over 500 metres elevation, a height I hadn’t seen since last night.

The sky was off-white, and the pines either side of me appeared dull, and deathly. Up here, my mood flickered with the wind, though never dipping too far. My jacket-and-shorts combination worked in my favour, allowing just enough exposure to the conditions for things to feel fresh & invigorating.

Yet no amount of positivity could help my pace, which continued to suffer in tandem with the pain in my heel. I was struggling through the forests south of Chabrehez when a pair of local Belgian runners caught me up.

Milan Sels spoke English, and explained we were travelling through one of the key battlegrounds of the Battle of the Bulge. Here, Americans and Germans had dug in and rained shells upon one another, while enduring that infamously cold winter of 1944. The mounds and depressions between the trees, he explained, told stories of foxholes and trenches, hacked into the frozen ground by soldiers with axes and blasting caps.

While the pair trotted off into the distance, I paused among the trees, reflecting. Milan’s story had connected many of the feelings I’d experienced over the last few kilometres. I rotated my body full-circle and felt a sudden chill. In a flash, the scene appeared ghostly and unfamiliar to me.

I was surrounded by towering tree trunks, firing as straight as bullets into the sky. They looked inorganic, as black and white as life and death itself. No, these weren’t trees. They were prison bars, confining me within this mausoleum of World War II. My skin prickled, as if sensing the Shining of that bloody December of 1944.

But the bars were irregular - some fatter, some thinner. This wasn’t a prison, it was a barcode. Its vertical lines wrapped all the way around me, trapping me within an immersive hyperreality of consumerism.

A crackly vinyl played in my head: “Get dragged in by the lights of the circus / That make me want shit accidentally on purpose” - Braintax.

Now the black and white lines warped into a vertiginous optical illusion, where I struggled to discern north from south, left from right, up from down. I startled; where had I come from, and where was I going? My Garmin showed an indecipherable squiggle, so I just started moving, setting a course so I could orient myself within this arboreal kaleidoscope.

But a diffuse mist was seeping in-between those previously crisp black and white lines. What was the source of this blurriness, that threatened the grand panopticon of consumerism… was it smoke from the shelling?

A fog of war was encroaching. I could picture deep snow. Frozen foxholes. Strewn corpses. Terrified souls, peering through the trees, scanning for any sign of movement. Senses straining to hear the snap of a branch, the crunch of a foot on ice. The tense calm before the artillery shelling. The devilish game of Russian roulette - playing for an amputated limb; for a slow, or sudden death.

I could see it now. This was no game, panopticon or mausoleum. This was Troy, and I Achilles; hobbled by my heel, waging a war to fulfil a quest I should never have undertaken.

It all had to stop. How can one DNF a war? Flee from fear, becoming a deserter - that wasn’t it. Retire on ethical grounds, becoming a conscientious objector - this wasn’t a question of ethics. Walk away citing strategic or tactical inefficacy, becoming a, a what… a critical thinker? That was more like it.

Is critical thinking in an army wrong?

Privates follow orders unquestioningly, otherwise they get court-marshalled. But experienced officers, they should exercise ever more independent thinking, deciding when to advance, retreat or resign, all the way up to the generals on whose shoulders it lies to set the whole strategy.

“He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight” - Sun Tzu.

When not to fight…

I jolted out of my sleep-deprived ruminations, and was surprised to find my feet had conveyed me to the farthest extent of the WWII-infused forest. Some distance ahead, I could just about make out a square gazebo on the dirt track. A glance at my watch revealed I was 27km into the leg, so I surmised this was probably another Legends water stop.

I trotted up to greet the checkpoint team, where I counted six volunteers and a smattering of runners, including Milan. This looked like more than a water stop, for I could see food, too. I accepted some hot vegetable soup, appreciating its warmth, and this most convivial of escapes from the battlefields, physical and mental.

An English-speaking volunteer gave me a sit-rep. Apparently, the DNF rate they were observing on this inaugural 350km edition of the race was much higher than they’d expected. Given the current retirement rate, they thought that fewer than 30% of participants would complete the course.

I let that sit with me for a minute. 70%+ DNF rates are moreorless unheard of in ultras, outside of special cases like the Barkley Marathons, Cockbain’s most torturous challenges like The Tunnel, or the inaugural running of Winter Spine, when only 3 of its 12 participants finished.

As I received a second serving of soup, I considered why this race would be experiencing such an abnormally high attrition rate. Certainly, the course had been wet and technical at times, but all who entered would have expected as much. Of what was still to come - the High Fens and the Ninglinspo, which most of the other participants seemed to be familiar with - I could only guess.

But the volunteer was still talking, so I tuned back in. He explained that we were about 30% down the field. In other words, we were teetering right on the dividing line between those who were expected to finish, and those expected to fail.

This clarified in my mind a significant factor in this race, one that could perhaps explain its crazy high DNF rate: the cut-offs were really tight.

When I thought about it, I’d gotten off to a reasonable start. And while my Achilles had fallen apart, turning my race into more of a run-walk-hobble-stretch sort of an affair, I’d still held 20th place at CP1, and I’d only taken a 45 minute break there. I’d not fallen much further behind since. Yet; already, I was on the cusp of a potential timeout.

I set back off along the trail wondering what it all meant. Since I was planning to DNF at CP3, the fact that I was running up against the clock ought to be irrelevant - but it didn’t feel irrelevant. Having had to chase down cut-offs for the very first time in my life at NC110, and just 4 months later finding myself back in the same situation, it showed just what a bloody mess my body was in.

I thrust the cut-offs to the back of my mind in order to focus on the trail. Cool-yet-reasonable temperatures up on these higher plains were working in my favour, I reasoned. This terrain, the Fanges de Nazieufa, looked like classic swampland, but thanks to the snow and frost, all I had to contend with was slush, puddles, and a cool underfoot ‘crunch’. That, and my sodding heel.

Now the GPS diverted off the path - through where, exactly? There was only tall, dense, thorny bush. Sure enough, Garmin told me I was supposed to hack through here somehow. I needed to find a main road, cross it, and join up with a trail on the other side. So I sniffed around, searching for signs of a path that those before me might have trodden, to no avail. In the end I hacked through the thorns any old how, shredding my legs and windproof in the process.

I was up to almost 700 metres elevation now. The snow was deeper here, chilling my feet and causing me to wonder whether some liner socks might improve comfort on the upcoming High Fens.

Up ahead I could see a forest - the forest of Groumont, which might, perhaps, signal the end of this exposed section. Quite unlike the barcode kaleidoscope from earlier, Groumont felt warmer, cosier and quite welcoming. This could have been Chicksands, or any one of south England’s woodlands. Here the pines were charmingly haphazard, their trunks a deep warm brown, their needles a lively, rich green.

While moving slowly, simultaneously jousting with my buggered Achilles and revelling in the sweet, intoxicating aroma of the pines, another runner caught up with me. He was a local Ardennais, though his English was impeccable.

We struck up an conversation wherein I learned his name was Eric, a policeman who lived nearby and knew these forest trails like the back of his hand. It transpired he was also in considerable pain.

He’d trained well, and had hoped to return to his colleagues with a tale of triumph and redemption. For the first half marathon, everything had gone precisely to plan, until he fell and injured his knee. Naturally, he’d battled on; but after some 80km, valiantly fighting through worsening pain, he’d reached the conclusion that he would have to bow out of the race.

When faced with a disaster like this, it’s only natural for emotion to kick in. To succumb to the loss aversion principle, double-down and push on toward self-destruction, just as Achilles had done.

But Eric wasn’t doubling down. And he wasn’t miserable, or complaining, or searching for sympathy. He was - soberly and maturely - taking his bad luck on the chin, accepting it for what it was, and looking forward to his next opportunity.

I felt impressed by Eric’s stoicism. I also saw the read-across to my situation. This race was where I must learn the lesson of Achilles. I needed to channel my inner Eric, and embrace failure when the time came.

In the time we’d been absorbed in our conversation, we’d descended some 200 metres into the depression of La Fondroule, so now came the climb up out of it. As much as I was valuing our tête-à-tête, this was the right moment to part ways, so we could each focus on managing our respective injuries. I wished Eric the best of fortune ahead, whipped out my poles, and coaxed my embattled Achilles up the sloppy climb toward Lierneux.

The leg ended much as it had begun, rolling over easy-going tracks & gently undulating farmers’ fields. How different this would feel if I weren’t hobbling in pain, I lamented.

My mind drifted back to the legend of Achilles. He ultimately won his battle at Troy, but what he learned afterwards invalidated the entire purpose of his fight. It was a classic pyrrhic victory. The lesson for me, surely, was that I ought to stop here at CP2, and cut my losses before doing any serious, long-lasting damage.

So why did this feel just as impossible as it had at CP1?

My thoughts meandered back to one of my all-time favourite films, the 1983 classic WarGames, where Joshua engaged in Global Thermonuclear War. Through exhausting the possibilities of his training game Tic Tac Toe, he learned that timeless lesson: the only winning move is not to play.

That was all well and good, I thought. The problem was I was already playing. I was laying an X in Tic Tac Toe. I was wielding a sword at Troy. I was blasting a trench in the Ardennes, and I was hobbling around this sodding race.

I didn’t need to be told that I oughtn’t have started this foolish thing, I could well see that now. What I needed to learn was how to stop in the thick of it.

An acrid smell filled my nostrils, and a chemical bitterness coated my mouth. A harrowing wail pierced through all the smoke. Perhaps this was an air raid - a bombardemint d'avions, as the local Walloons would have called it during WWII.

But today I was fortunate. There were no Luftwaffe pilots flying overhead, no 500kg bombs plummeting to the ground, no buildings billowing black smoke. The flares and sirens merely signalled the start of a quaint little foot race, the Legends Trail 350.

The race my Achilles would not allow me to complete, meaning my nightmare scenario was all dialled in: my first DNF, and a concomitant existential crisis.

So when I smiled for the camera, my face contorted unconvincingly, as if I’d spotted a supporter brandishing a sign “Almost there - only 350km to go!”

It took a minute to escape the crowds, for the wailing of the siren to subside, to finally break out onto trails. For my focus to shift back to my buggered Achilles. Though, oddly enough, that felt as though it might be loosening off.

It was; and as it continued to relax, my gait began to flow naturally, my stride opened up, and I found myself flying, euphorically, down this fantastic footpath toward freedom.

After 6 weeks of relentless, Achilles-triggered plantar fasciitis, I knew this respite in my condition could only be temporary, and that I ought to exercise caution - but I simply couldn’t help myself. I leaned into the descents, relishing every leg swing, every foot-strike, my chains of muscles firing in choreograped perfection. My mind was left free to wander the trails and trees, melding with this slice of paradise in the Ardennes.

I was only five minutes into this race, yet I was already experiencing an awakening so profound that it had taken 250 miles to form during my last Spine race: that self-transcendent, wu wei flow-state. An experience so completely ineffable that to describe it would require the transplanting of minds. A feeling of infinite, effortless flow; of presence, of being.

Back in the race, I was in the lead, putting distance between the pack and I. Disappearing into the woods, into the clouds, into the milkiest of ways.

How ridiculous was this? Just minutes ago, I was an injured runner, hobbling, about to DNF, or DNS. And now; a liberated soul, rocketing from clouds eight to ten.

These early kilometres of freedom coasted along on invisible updraughts. I relished every moment, living each second as if it were my last. Yet none of it felt entirely real, as if I were living a dream wending its improbable path through superficially lifelike situations.

Now the path was warping and kinking. The hills steeper. The trail wetter, muddier, stickier. And it may have been with the advent of the mud and the climbs that my Achilles stiffened, and the dreaded heel pain returned.

My pace slowed as my devastating limp began to reassert itself. That dreamy wu wei flow state floated away up into the clouds, leaving me with nothing but the cold, concrete reality of my knackered Achilles heel.

A fortnight ago while running Peddars Way Ultra, I’d suffered a similar, though less profound experience. My strong start abruptly degraded into a debilitating hobble, such that I struggled to finish what was a completely straightforward 80km ultra. So I could well guess what was about to occur now.

First, my quads would overload and burn out. Then the real rout would set in: hip flexors, calves, the works. This was, sadly, the beginning of the end.

My pace dropped further, and then the first runner overtook me. And then the next - but; hey, this was Jandalf the Savage, and he drew alongside for a chat.

Jandalf was in high spirits, and I tried hard to match his mood. After all, my early kilometres of free-flowing freedom had been such an unexpected bonus. Could I not celebrate that gift, rather than bemoan its loss?

But with the continually worsening pain in my heel I struggled to match Jandalf’s pace, and could only watch him glide off into the distance. He looked every bit as sharp and serious a podium contender as his physical and mental preparation suggested.

I paused at the next wooden sign to stretch my right calf, taking a moment to reflect - and reset. Of course, I had fully expected this would happen. But based on my experience at Peddars Way, I’d expected it after 20km or so. Not after just five.

A fog of despondency set in as runner after runner shot past me. There went Atomic Barista - and I should have wished him well, but I remained silent, for I no longer felt capable of speaking with a positive disposition.

The terrain deepened, with denser forests and steeper folds of hill and valley that evoked fond memories of Wendover Woods. I rode the waves, each one a more demanding climb, while evening gave way to a pitch black night. My headtorch went on, and with it, that familiarly unfamiliar world revealed itself.

As if slipping back into my favourite book, I revelled in one of my most bewitching pleasures of ultrarunning. Trails of headtorches wending their zig-zag paths up and down the hillsides. No matter how many times I experience this spectacle, it never fails to trigger in me the broadest and most satisfying of smiles.

Each dot is a fellow soul. While we each endure separately, trapped within our bubbles of consciousness, our dots combine over a hillside to render an image far greater than the sum of its parts. An image made possible only because we share a common struggle, what South Africans call Ubuntu.

Cutting through the silence of the night, the rhythmic sound of my feet, squelching through mud. Occasional swishes as my face brushes past needled branches. My olfactory senses bathing in the fresh balm of pines and spruces.

I would readily have diffused into this forest air, but the pain in my Achilles kept dragging me back to my mental bubble. My mortal battle. My Troy.

After 18km I was released into a sleepy Ardennes town. I hobbled past volunteers manning an unexpected water stop, and did a double-take. Water stops between checkpoints? Nobody had mentioned that, so I’d hauled 2 litres of water this far for no reason.

A slippery, muddy descent ended at a shallow river. At a mere 6 inches in depth this couldn’t count as a ford. But it was enough to trigger a reflection: this race had so far introduced itself incredibly gently. Thinking back to the hints my friends had dropped at our hotel in Liège, what I’d experienced so far could only be the prelude.

The track that led out of the valley was to be the longest climb yet, finally popping out of the claustrophobic forest onto a lightly snowed-over hilltop. Here, the GPS route left the track behind, plotting an anonymous course across a winter wasteland of frosted twigs and branches.

At the extent of the clearing it wasn’t clear where to go, but some jostling through pine trees revealed a tunnel of a trail cocooned deep within the dense maze of trunks and branches. I hobbled along it, wending my way through towering pines, squelching through mud and splashing through water.

A 3km descent through these dark, whimsical woods proceeded uneventfully. But little did I know, I was dropping down to the Aisne river through the Manhay-Érezée sector, along the very line where one of the most decisive battles of WWII unfolded. On this northern front of the Battle of the Bulge, American infantry forces had defeated Hitler’s 2nd SS Panzer Division - curtailing his Western Front advance, and paving the way for Allied victory.

80 years ago, this region would have been unrecognisable. An unimaginable hellscape of exploding mines, anti-tank and artillery fire, entrenched dugouts, and close-quarters combat, supported by brave acts of sabotage undertaken by an army of local guerrilla resistance fighters called the Maquis. It all went down during the coldest European winter for 40 years. A million men, enduring a -10 to -15C freeze, hemmed in by deep snow and ice, hunkering down under barrages of bullets, bombs and shellfire.

It was on this very hillside - the Bois de Pays down to the Aisne - where almost 50,000 of those souls had fought. So many lives cut short; so much irreconcilable evil perpetrated, all because of the demented psychopathy of the 20th century’s most notorious far-right fascist.

I crossed the Aisne, up and over Betaumont - the “beautiful hill”, a high vantage point used by the Americans as a lookout during the war - and at 35km, I dropped down into the sleepy town of Dochamps. Here, I did another double-take as I hobbled past the second volunteer-manned water stop of the race.

I wrestled with the knowledge that I ought to appreciate the luxury of these unexpected hydration points, but I couldn’t help feeling a little frustrated. I was doing terrible damage to my Achilles, exacerbated by the 2kg of water I was hauling - entirely unnecessarily.

Perhaps there would be water stops every 15-20km along the route. Or, perhaps, like the Spine, these few special treats before the first checkpoint were just here to ease us in. To lure us into a false sense of security, and then no more. Who knew? Probably anyone who’d actually taken the time to read the race literature…

At the peak of the next climb, my headtorch beam bounced off a reflective warning sign nestled in-between clusters of snowy pine trees. I interpreted the French as “no entry”, with an exception for “travaux et DNF” - which sounded to me like works and forestry. My alternative translation was that it warmly welcomed runners planning to DNF, which would have been quite helpful if true. So I went with that.

I was well off-trail now, deep in the depths of this dark, towering pine forest. A fast and furious descent lay ahead, through which I launched over fallen tree trunks and slid down moist pine debris, furiously zig-zagging to track the route amidst flaky GPS under the dense tree canopy.

My exploration of this land of dark mysteries proceeded with a growing sense of intrigue. Where I was at any given moment, I hadn’t a clue. My only truth came from the information my senses fed me. A deep roar from vast rivers unseen. Crescendos of high-pitched babbling when streams popped out of the darkness. The cold rush of water as it filled my shoes and washed around my waterproof socks.

I welcomed these streams, because the cold sensation numbed the pain in my heel. Brief respites aside, my Achilles had worsened over the last few kilometres. To compensate, I was overpronating ever more, which was overloading my left quad and right glute.

Concerned over where these muscular imbalances were heading, I slowed my pace further, hoping that moderation now would allow me to progress further later. I calculated I was only couple of hours away from CP1. I’d certainly make it there...

But with each descent into the valley, my couple of hours estimate felt ever more optimistic. The route was becoming genuinely tricky now. Off-piste, over trees, over streams, wading up one tributary of the Ourthe river after another.

I only had two pairs of spare waterproof socks to ration over the whole race. Was it worth investing my time rock-hopping, scrambling along its sheer banks, to limit the time my feet spent underwater? But it felt as though my socks might already be failing and filling with water…

My sour mood reminded me of Ultra Damo’s mantra: “Bad mood? Food!” So I dutifully dug more marzipan out of my vest. Yet as delectable as marzipan is atop a Christmas cake, which those soldiers fighting on the frozen frontlines of the Battle of the Bulge could only have dreamed of; as my sole source of nutrition for Legends, the marzipan was starting to taste less like a treat, and more like a test.

After the briefest of respites passing through the hamlet of Borzée, the route returned to its familiar pattern: hustling along a river, climbing steeply up a hillside, dropping straight back down into the valley; rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. Why did we keep climbing up, only to drop straight back down to the same damn river? Why did we keep dropping down, only to clamber back up to the same damn ridge? Through river wading and squelching, my search for answers, and a decent trail, continued.

My search was rewarded at Le Cheslé: a rocky spur that could have been lifted straight out of the eastern Peak District. I forgot all about my muscular predicament, drinking in every second along this beautful trail like an alcoholic at a beer festival. Each step contained that perfect balance of technicality and comfort; that duality of problem-solving and relaxation. Of meditative engagement. Flow-state.

I willed this wonderful experience to continue, while accepting it wouldn’t. Right on cue, one sharp descent led me back down to the Ourthe, and the slow-motion cyclical nightmare of wading and climbing resumed. I glanced down at my Garmin as a 17-minute kilometre registered on its face, and recalculated the time remaining to CP1. In distance terms, it was just a few kilometres away; but given the terrain, that would easily take three-quarters of an hour to cover.

With every climb, loop-back, rock-hop, and wade, my Achilles signalled that it was done. So this was it, then. CP1 was where I should depart the race, registering my first ever DNF.

I’d run one-sixth of the distance, and gotten a really good feel for the course. Enough to draw a fair comparison between Legends and Spine, to answer Jandalf’s question.

Then I could return to the important task of repairing and rebuilding my Achilles. After all, I was registered for the Summer Spine in only a few months’ time. I didn’t want to jeopardise that, just to say I’d hobbled on a little further.

But as logical as DNF’ing here obviously was, I was starting to feel the same feeling I’d felt many times before, every time I’d tried to DNF. That feeling of hopeless, helpless, inevitability.

And I could start to see the flawed logic of my Legends tragedy starting to play out. I would DNF before CP3… would I?

Did Achilles march on Troy because he’d weighed all his options, and decided that war was the most logical, rational and wisest course of action? No - he rode into battle because his emotions overrode logic.

That couldn’t happen to me. I make my decisions based on logical determination. Don’t I?

While I trudged my bedraggled, painful hobble the last couple of kilometres to CP1, Achilles’ timeless battle over logic and emotion played irreconcilably on my mind.

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Continue reading Overlooking the Ghost Front (Part 3).

As a two-time Spine veteran, I felt I had a pretty good understanding of the race. Simply put, the Winter Spine is one of the toughest races on the planet. To even call it a race is to risk minimising it. In a bad weather year, it’s less ultramarathon and more arctic survival expedition.

And here was Jandalf suggesting that a regular ultramarathon called “Legends Trail”, held on the balmy European continent, might be equally challenging. Or even more so. That just sounded absurd!

But Jandalf is no ultrarunning junior. He’s a two-time Legends Trail veteran, with a decade of mountain fastpacking experience, some properly tough ultras like Pirin under his belt, and some commendable victories on the backyard ultra scene. So there had to be something to his question.

My curiosity was suitably piqued. I told him that, whatever this “Legends Trail” race was, I’d join him there next year - and I would answer his question.

Following another long recovery from Winter Spine, I built back to a reasonable training volume and produced some respectable results over the summer. A couple of backyard ultra wins, my club’s annual ultra challenge, and a second place at SVP100 were among the highlights.

But then I regressed into extremely long working hours. I damaged my ear, earning myself a nasty case of tinnitus. Then I endured one of the slowest and most painful experiences of my life at North Coast 110.

Over its gnarly, exposed 110 miles of coastal trail, Storm Amy’s 65mph winds came within a hair’s breadth of blowing me into the ocean, before shooting tree branches directly at my head.

My dodgy hip flexor - in such a poor state from those long hours sitting at a desk - deteriorated until I was barely able to move. It forced me into an agonisingly slow and painful limp some 40 miles to the finish for second-to-last place, just before the cut-off. After that excruciating experience, I couldn’t even contemplate running for months.

It took until December for me to restart regular training. Legends Trail was in February, just a couple of months away. If Jandalf was right, and this was anywhere near as difficult as Spine, then just 8 weeks of training - starting from literally zero - was not going to cut the mustard.

So I gambled, jumping straight into high volume training without any of the usual ramp-up period. A high risk strategy, but I figured it was my only chance.

The high volume training worked for a while. But 6 weeks later in January, when even longer hours at work starved me of the sleep and nutrition necessary to support my training load, I came unstuck.

My Achilles tendon had been tightening for a few days. During a hill training session with my club, it began to fail - painfully. And after I’d limped back home, it deteriorated rapidly. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t walk. It turned out, I could barely manoeuvre around the house.

With only a month to go until Legends, it was clear. My Achilles was buggered, and I had full-blown plantar fasciitis. I would have to set my Legends ambitions aside, and DNS.

But we were supposed to run as a trio: Jandalf, Atomic Barista and I. Three quarters of our Savage quartet tackling the inaugural Legends 350 together. And I’d given Jandalf my word that I would answer his question: Spine or Legends, which is tougher?

With no resolution to my predicament, I did what I’ve always done in these situations. I regressed even further into my work, pushing Legends Trail far back into the deepest recesses of my mind.

It was Sunday afternoon, two days before my Eurostar to Legends Trail in Belgium. Not only was my Achilles still completely buggered, but I was seriously unfit, I hadn’t researched the race, the weather, or made any preparations: kit, nutrition, drop bag. Nothing.

I hadn't even responded to repeated, urgent requests from the race director to complete his mandatory registration form. What was this race, anyway? I skimmed its website and a couple of race reports.

I learned that last year’s edition of Legends Trail involved 250km of muddy, snowy, waterlogged, off-trail craziness. It sounded like a navigational nightmare, wading through rivers, clambering over barbed wire fences and getting lost in dense forests. And for 2026, the organisers were switching up the route, adding 100km to its distance. So - a 350km off-piste bushwhack through the Belgian Ardennes, with more total vert than UTMB. It sounded fairly serious.

Then I read the mandatory kit list. There was very little to it, which was surprising to say the least. If Legends really was as tough as everyone claimed, how could the organisers demand so little safety gear?

Concerns aside, with only a couple of hours to prepare my kit, I counted myself lucky. There wasn’t time to order any new gear, or even head to the shops. What I didn’t have immediately to hand, I couldn’t take to Legends. It was as simple as that.

To make some sensible decisions, I needed to know something about the conditions I’d face. I picked an Ardennes town at random and checked its weather forecast for the week ahead. The conditions didn’t look too bad at all - quite pleasant, in fact.

So I didn’t add much to my drop bag beyond the barebones mandatory kit. Just some extra waterproof socks, a spare jacket, baselayer and a couple of midlayers. And with that, I wrapped up my preparations for the night.

Late Monday evening after work, I carved out 15 minutes to prepare a nutrition strategy. I usually had plenty of sports nutrition lying around, but to my surprise and mild horror, my stock cupboard was almost empty. At a bit of a loss for how to meet my carbohydrate requirements, I settled on the only sugary thing I had to hand: some half-kilo blocks of marzipan.

I paused, stroking my beard. Fuelling a 350km race entirely on almond paste. This wasn’t something I’d attempted before. Was this sensible... or even feasible?

Was any of this sensible or feasible? My Achilles and my heel had not improved one iota. I could hardly walk. Just attempting this race might make things much, much worse. And I really didn’t want to kick off the 2026 race season with a six-month recovery period. It wasn’t worth it, not for a race I couldn’t possibly be competitive in.

So, between my couple of spare pairs of waterproof socks and my blocks of marzipan, I decided then and there that I would DNF. When exactly, I would leave to circumstances; but the one point I was crystal clear with myself was that I would DNF at or before CP3.

To protect what remained of my knackered Achilles, I would not, under any circumstances, go beyond CP3.

Of course, I’d issued similar ultimatums before, such as when I was ill for UTS. Despite not being able to differentiate between the symptoms of illness, dehydration and malnutrition, I forced my beleaguered body around the entire course anyway, triggering a protracted illness that lasted for months.

Then there was the illness leading up to Cockbain’s Track 100. I was only going to run for a few hours, I said - and to ensure that happened, I only brought a few hours’ worth of food to the track. But even that didn’t stop me. I dragged my starving body around the whole damn thing anyway.

This time, I was clear. I was going to run some of the race, just enough so I could answer Jandalf’s question. And then I was going to DNF by CP3.

CP3 was my red line.

Frankly, considering the state of my foot, I doubted whether I’d even make it as far as CP1.

In Liège, Belgium, I stayed in a hostel with race veterans Jandalf and Atomic Barista - and Frank, a fellow first-time Legends runner. Although, as I quickly discovered, he’d spent a year researching everything there was to know about this race, and was just as prepared as the other two.

As we whiled away the evening playing board games, I began to pick up hints about the course that lay ahead of us.

Ground conditions would be waterlogged, muddy, and swampy. Heavy rain was expected. There was a notoriously exposed section over the High Fens that would be technical, slow and freezing cold.

Then they discussed their kit preparations. Everything they mentioned triggered a realisation that I wasn’t prepared for what was to come.

Gaiters - I’d forgotten to bring mine. A water filter - a rather important piece of kit for a race like this, but it hadn’t even crossed my mind. Spare waterproof socks for each of the five CPs - I’d brought a couple, but not five. Caffeine - I had plenty back in ‘Blighty, but that wasn’t very much use to me here.

Had I read the map? No. Formed a sleeping plan? Hardly - I hadn’t even managed much decent sleep in the weeks before the race. Reproofed my waterproofs? Not since last year’s Spine. Had I prepared home-cooked race nutrition? I thought back to my blocks of marzipan…

Had I at least brought a functional race pack? Only an hour ago, I’d spotted I’d accidentally brought my pack from last year’s Spine. The one whose zippers and straps were all broken.

Winning our second board game did little to lighten my mood. The level of planning and preparation these three had devoted to the race over the past year was eye-opening. And while Legends didn’t sound like Spine-level difficulty to me, it also didn’t sound like the sort of thing one should limp up to with a buggered Achilles, some damaged fair-weather clothing, and one’s body weight of marzipan.

We weighed our drop bags to confirm they were under the 20kg limit. Mine clocked in a smidge over 10kg. Not only the lightest of the lot, but just plain objectively light. Red flag light?

For the Winter Spine I’d spent months buying, testing and refining my kit, and days tweaking spreadsheets to tip my drop bag just under the 20kg weight limit. If Legends was in any sense comparable to the Spine, was rocking up with a half-weight drop bag nonchalant - or negligent?

There was a short traipse back to the hostel from our pre-race evening meal. I hobbled painfully over Liège’s pavements, unable to keep up with the others, eventually stopping to give my Achilles a rest.

Never mind DNF’ing at CP3 or CP1. I was struggling to make it 500 metres across Liège.

Since Legends didn’t start until 6pm, there was ample time to lie-in and ponder what on earth I was doing here. At a loss for answers, I hobbled out for a casual brunch at café Konno. “Better food, better mood” was their claim. Their curried parsnip dish, combined with a delicious decaf, certainly had me feeling more upbeat by the time I left.

Come 2pm, another Legends runner, Patrick, kindly gave us three Savages a lift down to the start in Bernardfagne. Volunteers funnelled us through a series of rooms for mandatory kit checks, tracker fitting, and the worrisome medical Q&A. I didn’t want them to spot my hobble and blackball me. So as I entered the room I greeted them loudly, telling some bad jokes and gesticulating my arms wildly to divert eyes away from my feet. Whether they spotted my hobbling or not, they gave me the A-OK to proceed.

With all the formalities out of the way, it was time for us three Savages to don our Longbridge BYU winner’s beanies and snap a photo for the album.

Two hours remained to immerse ourselves in the raucous atmosphere in the race HQ common room.

Filled with Legends veterans and world-class backyard ultra champions, I could feel the tense energy and expectant excitement in the room. This made it all the more difficult to accept my predicament: not only would I fail to finish, but this would be my first ever DNF. I weighed my personal woe against the enthusiasm of my friends, and tried hard to stay on their wavelength.

So I whipped out my GoPro and bellowed toward Atomic Barista: “Give us some advice!” He laughed, knowingly. “Just be ready for four nights outside.”

Four nights… that took me aback. I hadn’t prepared for that. Come to think of it, I hadn’t even looked at the cut-offs. When did the race actually end? I dismissed the question - it wasn’t like it mattered. My busted foot wasn’t likely to get me through the first night, let alone the fourth.

We shuffled outside to the start line within Middle School St-Roch’s pristine central courtyard, among its manicured lawns and 12th century Hogwarts-style buildings.

I missed most of the multilingual race briefing. I was busy wrestling with my Garmin, trying unsuccessfully to get a GPS fix. But this made me no never mind. I was in pain just standing here. I’d hobble off the start line, drop off the back of the pack, and drop out long before the first checkpoint. This wasn’t going to be a performance worthy of a Strava upload.

Everyone began chanting what I presumed was a Dutch countdown. Their words blended into the ghastly wail of an air raid siren, and those around me started moving.

I’m hobbling. Legends is underway. A fact that’s completely lost on my Garmin - not for the first time, the bloody thing’s clueless. It’s fixed just enough satellites to know it’s somewhere in Belgium, but beyond that...

I feel clueless too. I don’t know much of anything about the course. I don’t know about the aid stations. I don’t know about the cut-offs. I don’t know whether marzipan is a viable nutrition strategy. And I don’t know… am I really going to DNF?

Because I don’t DNF. I’m the Trail Explorer. I explore trails - to the bitter end, come heather or high water. That’s my identity. Why would I put that at risk?

Yeah, yeah, I know - I’m answering that question: “Spine or Legends - which is tougher?” But I can answer that now: Spine is tougher, obviously. I don’t need to destroy my identity to answer that.

Destroy my identity…

I don’t want to do that!

What on earth have I done?

I’ve made a mistake.

I need to stop.

But if I stop, that’ll DNF me.

Fuck! How did I get myself into this?

How do I get out of it?

Garmin’s still searching for satellites - it doesn’t know I’ve started.

But the Legends tracking system does.

There’s always a way out.

I just need not to have started.

I need to rewind time.

Where’s the “rewind time” button?

It’s not there.

I’m going to lose my identity.

Help me…

Continue reading The Battle of Achilles (Part 2).

It’s closely related to gamification. As soon as we define and track concrete metrics, we introduce competition, targets, and achievement. Highly motivating factors in their own right.

A strong motivator to reduce one’s climate impact is, to be sure, a good thing. But there is a risk of taking it too far. Of obsessively optimising around only these specific metrics, at the expense of others.

Now; if wider society were also grappling with the same sustainability conundrum, then the discussion of strategies to balance sustainability and quality of life might be an integral part of our national discourse, and answers might be easier to come by.

But when most are principally concerned with personal wealth (completely understandably, given the crisis of wealth inequality and falling living standards); when politicians and academics are still obsessing over GDP, and when laws, regulations, incentives and media publications are principally aligned to profit or populism; then it can feel quite lonely, out on the far reaches of society, wrestling with the practices and consequences of moderating one’s climate impact.

Is this battle sustainable in the long-term - can one really maintain a behavioural divergence with wider society, while meeting one’s own psychological needs?

Lately, I’ve been pondering whether this is a question I will ever need to answer. Because while fascist leaders deploy Orwellian tactics to deny the reality of ecological breakdown, ordinary people are working harder than ever to build-in sustainability from the ground up.

Locally, repair cafes are springing up. Libraries of things are emerging. Freecycling groups, charity and second-hand clothes shops are thriving.

The National Running Show sports a dedicated presentation zone managed by The Green Runners. Even UTMB is improving - this year, one can get a 30% UTMB ballot “boost” by committing to (and demonstrating proof of) greener, plane-free travel to Chamonix valley. They even provide a bespoke travel planning app to help.

In a few years’ time, might sustainability-based entry & financial incentives be the norm for races and events alike?

Will we, in the relatively near future, reach a point when sustainability is a core component of our cultural conversation? When factoring sustainability into day-to-day decision-making requires no societal explanation or justification? When, in fact, it is unsustainability that is met with an inquisitive eyebrow-raise?

If ever I’ve felt confident that such a societal shift is not just possible but inevitable, that time is now.

Travel

Just as I did in 2024, throughout the year I worked hard to keep my car use low; preferring trains, car sharing or journey avoidance wherever possible.

However, my pedestrianism showed a slight year-on-year decline, and I only got on my bike on a handful of occasions. This is largely attributable to more race injuries and long recoveries, not least those from my second running of Winter Spine, and the debacle surrounding North Coast 110. This was all layered atop another very busy year at work that left little time for slow activities.

It’s my goal in 2026 to build a more sustainable work/training regime that will, I hope, demonstrate an improvement across these metrics.

International Travel

For the first time in many years, I didn’t travel internationally. All my races and breaks were local to England and Wales. This was a conscious decision I made to keep my carbon footprint low.

Note this isn’t something I intend to maintain year-on-year, but simply a recognition that carbon is still correlated with mileage (whether that’s travelled by plane, vehicle or train), and that I oughtn’t need to travel internationally every year. As cold, windy, wet and flat as Britain can be, there are still plenty of opportunities for adventure and exploration within the confines of ol’ Blighty’s coastal waters.

Food

For the sixth year running, I consumed a 100% plant-based diet.

And for the fourth year running, while I did still grow food in my front garden, my heart wasn’t in it, and I didn’t make as much of an effort as in previous years.

I still had a good crop of strawberries and runner beans. There was the odd cabbage and head of broccoli, some chard and chillies. And, in a first for me, I did attempt to grow some sweetcorn. But all-in-all, I didn’t make time to give the garden the TLC it needed to produce good crops this year.

Whether I’m able and prepared to commit extra time to my horticultural endeavours this year is a decision I’m deferring until the spring.

Energy

I continue to use a 100% renewable electricity energy supplier.

However, again, this year’s outcomes followed on from my work-life balance. Slightly more time working, slightly less time spent active, and injuries and recoveries alongside required an uptick in heating and energy consumption:

I hope that improving my work-life sustainability balance will produce better outcomes in 2026.

Running

As part of The Green Runners, I am renewing my pledges:

• Prefer local races & training

• Make my journeys by foot, bike, train, bus or carpool where possible

• Track and report my carbon footprint annually

• Be proud of & publicise kit longevity/repair

To address that last point, I’ll sign off on my annual report by updating you on my trusty old Kinvara 12 running shoes.

Still clinging on to life after last year’s patch-up repair job at 3,300km, they have subsequently conveyed me an additional 900km, taking their total to over 4,200km.

To be sure, their soles are increasingly treacherous on slippery ground, their midsole foam has long deteriorated past the point of providing any discernible cushioning, and my repairs to their outers have fallen apart, leaving them as open as a colander.

Despite all this, they still work perfectly as minimalist training shoes!

Will they reach 5,000km by the end of the year? Let’s see, shall we…

Backyards are last person standing events. The idea is to run a 4.167 mile course known as a ‘yard’ on the hour, every hour, until everyone else DNFs. Then, to claim victory, you have to run one final yard alone.

Here’s the kicker: backyards are no-limit events. So long as two or more runners are willing to start another lap, then the race continues, irrespective of the race’s duration or distance. So you’d better have booked enough time off work!

The world record yard count currently stands at 119, which equates to about 5 solid days of running. That’s about 500 miles. An extreme feat of endurance as impressive for the overcoming of sleep deprivation as much as the mileage or mental fortitude.

How long do you think you’d be able to sustain yards for?

The backyard racing format had intrigued me for a while. So when a friend recommended a particular race, the Longbridge 100, I heard them out. It was, they said, an exceptionally well-managed race with a focus on sustainability and community.

Being organised by Darren from 3WordRuns, I could well believe it. Darren’s a co-founder of The Green Runners, and an all-round awesome human who I’d met on multiple occasions before. So I needed no further encouragement and signed myself straight up.

It struck me this quirky race format might also appeal to Jandalf the Savage. It turned out I was right. Jan signed himself up, and even persuaded our speedy wonder-runner, the Atomic Barista, to come and join the fun. That’s how we wound up with a team of 3 eager beginner ‘yarders ready to take on the Longbridge course in the summer of 2024.

In the weeks prior to the race we three enjoyed an unforgettable experience fastpacking across the Pyrenees, accompanied by our audacious comrade Tarp. We chalked up hundreds of kilometres with tens of kilometres of v+. Excellent preparation for Longbridge’s notoriously hilly course.

So on our return to dear old ‘Blighty, we were ready and rearing to have at the Longbridge course. Well... two of us were.

I had managed to run myself into a little bit of a state. A nasty illness that I’d carried around UTS100 had worsened afterwards. While I’d valiantly hauled my infirm body over the Pyrenees, I’d rapidly deteriorated afterwards. And just in case I still harboured any misconceptions about my ability to run a race, I’d also gone and smashed my knee into a rock near Pic Carlit. So I was completely out of action.

Brooding in an air of despondence, I reclined on my sofa, watching Jandalf the Savage and Atomic Barista’s laps tick up on Longbridge’s live tracking system. Barista won the race in style, while Jandalf clinched 3rd place. I felt pretty shit to have missed out.

In the days following, I committed to Darren that I’d make it to Longbridge next summer. I’d make sure of it.

Roll Forward to 2025

I bumped into Darren a couple of times in the months leading up to the race. First at the National Running Show in Birmingham, where he spoke about sustainable racing. Next at UTS, where he passed up his opportunity to run the race in order to mend strangers’ smelly old running shoes for free. I have no end of respect for this purposeful gent.

He asked me how I was feeling about Longbridge. I explained I hadn’t really been training post-Spine, and had lost a lot of fitness. Longbridge was only a month away, and I was only just starting my rebuild. Nonetheless, I noted Darren seemed quietly confident in me.

The rebuild did go pretty well after that. I managed a solid 4 week training block. I even started a taper; though I screwed that up a few days beforehand, by running 75km to London for an anti-genocide protest. Humanity must come first.

I chose to travel sustainably to Longbridge via a sequence of three trains. Without a set of wheels and car boot, I couldn't bring many of the things I’d have liked to, such as a table and chair. But at least I had the basics: food, a few pairs of shoes, headtorches, and an inflatable sleeping mat (just in case...)

Waiting on the platform at Lewes for the last of my three trains, I startled when someone called out my name. This turned out to be Pete, a chap I'd slightly assisted to a 3 hour finish while pacing the Milton Keynes Marathon back in 2023. By the time Pete and I reached Berwick, we’d caught up on our recent races, and had a pretty good idea of each other’s race strategy.

Disembarking onto this rural station platform, we connected with three other ‘yarders, and the lovely Sam, who conveyed us in an electric minibus up to Longbridge Regenerative. A social community of eco-friendly businesses and, of course, this people & planet-friendly backyard race.

Darren, one of the most people-friendly people you'll ever meet, greeted us with a tour of the site’s facilities and its two generous barns. These would form our rest area for the duration of the race.

Within the barns, Darren provided each of us a hay bale covered with a coffee bean sack. This was to be our bed, should we need it. Some runners supplemented their bales with tables and chairs, their nutrition laid out like mini-aid stations. While I wished I could do the same, I had to make do with my inflatable sleeping mat, and the hay bale as a table.

At least, I tried to. For when I inflated my sleeping mat, I found it was so long that wouldn’t fit on the floor without blocking the aisle. I couldn't be bothered to pack it away, so I just shoved it up against the side of the wall. It served either as a bright orange monument to poor planning, or a pretty garish headboard.

I arranged my hay bale so it was half-table and half-seat; hardly ideal, but it’d have to do. I shrugged my shoulders and left for a little explore.

My nose sniffed out Andy's mobile pizza van, La Squadra Della Pizza, which was hidden in another of the barns. Andy had hardly brought the stone oven up to temperature yet, but I couldn't possibly resist, and chomped my way through the most delicious vegan pizza I'd ever eaten while sporting a massive smile on my chops.

During Darren's pre-race briefing he introduced the race's chosen charity, the local WOLO Foundation, and ended with a reminder that one of Laz’s “Big Dog Backyard” bronze coins was up for grabs for the winner.

Then it was time. We each made our way into the starting corral. My friend Jandalf appeared, sporting his characteristically wide smile. He was excited by a night of marshalling at the second turnaround point, followed (hopefully!) by a little crewing for me.

The Slowest of Sweltering Starts

Darren set us all off on our first lap at 6pm. The route immediately passed alongside a craft brewery taproom that looked all too enticing, then began its steep climb up an uneven rocky path, before breaking left onto undulating trail. This was the hottest day of the year so far, and despite being early evening, the temperature held steady at 27°C. The sun beat down onto parched ground, whose trails were dusty and unyielding.

After some descending, the gradient switched to a gradual ascent, while winding through a beautiful valley. A steep hill drew into sight up ahead, at the top of which looked to be perched a little marquee, presumably our first turnaround point. It felt like a strange decision to make us run all the way up there, when we could just as well have continued along the valley. But where would have been the fun in that?

There was a lovely view from the top of the hill. Here a volunteer sheltered from the sun under the mini-marquee. They directed us straight back down the steep descent, which I considered our quads might object to after a day or two.

My plan was to take it very easy on these early yards. So I struck up conversations with other runners to pass the time, covering topics from prior races to heat management strategies. For I could see some were already quite uncomfortable in the heat. When the sun rose on day two, and that midday heat kicked in, I suspected that many of the field were going to struggle.

We passed by the turning to race HQ, wherein I observed we were roughly halfway through the first yard. The logic behind Darren’s route choice became apparent: two almost equal length out-and-back spurs, joined in the middle by the connection to the start, meant we never strayed far from race HQ. It also made it easy to gauge our progress around the course.

The second spur proved just as beautiful, but even hillier than the first, with a big dip followed by a long climb of various gradients all the way up to the second turnaround point.

Under this marquee was housed a handcrafted wooden chest of miniature drawers. On each drawer was written a number. We had to locate the drawer that corresponded to the current yard, and withdraw from it a token etched with the correct yard number (yard 1 in this case). We’d need to present this to Darren at the finish to conclude our yard. No yard token with the correct yard number meant no yard - and a swift DNF.

Wouldn’t it become difficult to remember the correct yard number as the hours and days rolled on, and sleep deprivation kicked in? Time would tell.

The return from the second spur was mostly downhill, and quite rapid. A final left turn took us down the final hill, past the tempting taproom, and concluded with a last little incline back into the starting corral. It felt rather strange accepting applause from a crowd of spectators for completing a 6.7 kilometre jog.

We handed our yard tokens over to Darren, then made our way back to the barns.

I was delighted to find a reclining chair had magically materialised beside my hay bale. Jandalf must have left it for me before setting off to his marshal position. What a star. I leaned back and reclined, sipping Tailwind and knocking back salt tablets. In 27°C heat, maintaining a healthy electrolyte balance was going to be key in this race.

My plan was to smash out the first 24 laps nice and easy, then take stock of the field and build a mental plan for the next 24, or however many it would take. But some questions were emerging.

This was not a flat course. In fact, there were some quite steep climbs, with very little flat to be found. 200 metres v+ each lap - that's nearly 5km every 100 miles. Much more than SDW100, and almost as much as the Arc of Attrition, where a sub-24 hour black buckle is a rare award indeed. I felt sure that not everyone would reach 100 miles on this course.

When I factored in the weather forecast of >30C over the weekend; when I'd already seen many of the field struggle after a couple of hours in 27C, I just couldn't see this race lasting awfully long.

But it was far too early to be thinking about strategy. We set back off, where I kept the pace easy, and the conversations flowing with my fellow ‘yarders. From first-timers to old-hands, weekend warriors to those who’d registered some high-profile successes, and even one about to publish their book. What a glorious summer’s evening out enjoying the Downs!

While one runner had dropped out very early due to injury, our numbers otherwise held steady through the evening. But as the darkness encroached, and we retreated into our headtorch bubbles, our numbers began dropping consistently. I guessed it was the heat. While it was obviously slightly cooler in the darkness of the night, conditions were still remarkably hot and humid.

Come the 9th lap, even I was beginning to feel the effects. My muscles were growing heavy and sore, the hills were growing tougher, and everything felt like a chore. Fortunately, troubleshooting this wasn't difficult: in the darkness, I'd let my electrolyte intake drop off. I had myself righted in a jiffy.

The next thing I needed to sort out was my pacing. Since I’d been running mostly 50-52 minute yards, it left precious few minutes to sort myself out before rejoining the starting corral for the next lap. There wasn’t really enough time to comfortably refill my water bottles, eat, recline, daydream and put the world to rights. I preferred a solid 10+ minutes for all that.

And anyway, I didn't enjoy running as slowly as I was. Doing so required an unnatural, uncomfortable and inefficient gait that just wasn't making me happy.

So from then on, I decided to speed up. And it worked! The joy of running returned, and at the end of each yard I could luxuriate with a nice long rest in Jan's reclining wonderchair. Between yards 10 and 13 I really found my backyard rhythm.

Others on the course were working through their own challenges with pacing. Sergei had been laying down blistering lap times from the outset, so I wasn't surprised to see him bow out fairly early. Stuart, another fast runner with a cracking gait, took over Sergei’s place at the front. Though, again, even despite his most impressive race history (which I could only dream of), I still wasn’t sure how long he’d manage to maintain such a rapid pace given the heat and vert.

I figured a few others were pushing harder than they ought too. I tried to persuade a couple that they might be able to run further if they slowed down a little, but they all seemed reluctant. It's not easy to persuade oneself to run so slowly in a race scenario, I mused.

While there were another couple of folks laying down spritely paces who looked like they might be able to maintain it for a good while longer, with the morning sun rising higher, and the temperature already sweltering on what was, again, officially the hottest day of the year, how would they fare later on with such an aggressive strategy?

Runners were dropping out quickly. I noticed it most in the starting corral. Every yard, fewer and fewer runners remained. It was almost disconcerting - where on earth were they all disappearing to?

It was on yard 15 that our rock-solid frontrunner Stuart appeared to falter. He visibly slowed on the climb to the first turnaround point. Recognising him as my competition, and sensing something was amiss, I tactically overtook and held first position, just to see how he'd respond.

Stuart initially dropped back, as if ceding his place; but seemed to change his mind, and put on a spurt to retake it just before the yard ended. The way I read that little exchange, he was most likely in trouble, and this could be an opportunity to capitalise. For I quietly wagered he wouldn’t like coming second.

So on the 16th yard I overtook Stuart early, put some distance between us and held first place well out front, monitoring how he responded at the loopbacks. This time he didn’t try to catch me back up. I was a little surprised to see him back in the starting corral for yard 17, so I simply repeated the exercise - overtaking early, then holding first place at a good distance. What would he do now?

Stuart didn't join us back in the corral for the 18th yard. I felt I'd neutralised my main competition - which was both empowering, but also disconcerting, only 17 yards in. This was 7 whole yards shy of what I’d considered the real start of the race. Was I getting caught up strategising too early on?

Talking of strategy, this left me in somewhat of a strategic quandary. Should I maintain this faster-than-optimal pace to send a concerted signal of strength? Surely it’d be wiser to settle back into my original plan; keep the first 24 yards super easy, then review…

But slowing down now risked appearing weak; and in the back of my mind, with runners dropping left, right and centre in the heat, I wondered whether I mightn’t just be able to kill the whole race off early.

See, I felt pretty comfortable running at this faster pace, even in the heat. And moreover, my natural gait felt much more enjoyable. Particularly over these glorious, rolling hills.

Would this intimidate the remaining 6 runners into dropping out early? I wasn't too sure about that; but it was a possibility, and I could always reset later if need be. So that was decided, then. For now, I’d pick up Stuart’s frontrunner baton and maintain my pace.

The very next lap, I was absolutely stunned to see half of the remaining field drop out. I hadn't expected that in the slightest. Now there were only three other runners left: Joel, Zoe and Matthew.

This was when I really began to question myself. While I'd been playing games with Stuart, these three had been taking it easy. Now they knew they were in the top 4, what were their intentions? How were they finding the heat? How long were they prepared to go? How experienced were they?

All three were housed in the first barn building, and I the second. So we never saw each other back at base. I could just about hear them murmuring over the wall. Plotting. Scheming. I was missing vital intelligence data. It was those three versus me, and I was running deaf and blind.

n-Dimensional Chess

Jandalf returned from his marshalling duties, and could now help crew me back in my lonesome barn. But I was getting wrapped up in strategic mental gymnastics, trying to play three-dimensional chess: just what were the other three plotting in their self-contained quarters?

Jandalf could see I was troubled, and sagely gave me the same advice I'd given other runners earlier in the day: slow down. Walk the hills.

And I knew he was right. But the thing was, I felt everything was fine as it was, broadly speaking. It was still early; and yet, I could sense this race was, quite possibly, wrapping up.

Joel picked up an injury and bravely started another yard, albeit at a snail’s pace. When I returned from the first turnaround point having not yet crossed paths with him, I found him graciously applauding by the side of the trail. So he was out. Only Zoe and Matthew remained.

Zoe was serious competition, having come in second place last year. But now, after showing such impressive strength and consistency for the whole of the race, she had just started to slow. It appeared something was going badly wrong for her.

Unless, of course, that was just a clever ploy to make me think something was going wrong; so that I'd push harder, and perhaps tire myself out. Perhaps she's playing four-dimensional chess with me, I mused…

But after that yard, Zoe stood back behind the starting corral and smiled, wishing Matt and I well for yard 22. So, she hadn't been playing 4D chess after all. There were only two of us left now.

I had no idea how to play this situation. Matt would obviously be looking to complete 24 yards, and probably 25, so as to exceed 100 miles. But how far was he prepared to go? Would he push to 30? Or 40? Or 50, or beyond?

I scratched my head. I really couldn't read him. He'd just put in a fairly fast last yard for some reason. Had he been playing it cool until now, preparing to drop the hammer when it got down to just him and me? Had he been playing five-dimensional chess? I didn't think so; but I’d no idea what they’d been scheming in barn #2...

As the bell went, and the crowds cheered, and we started trotting, I decided to change things up and adopt a different strategy. I was going to assume the worst: Matt had been conserving energy up until now, and had a prolonged battle in mind. So from now on I was going to be disciplined, follow Jan's advice, and s-l-o-w d-o-w-n. I was in this for the long haul. 50 yards. A hundred yards. Whatever it took.

There was just the question of how to affect a dramatic reduction in pace without appearing weak. And this was where I saw an opportunity. I could mask a strategic slowdown with an information-gathering exercise. So I walked purposefully up the first hill at a pace that matched Matt’s, and led a calm conversation about our lives and places of residence.

What I didn't expect was what Matthew told me next. His legs were in pain, and he wasn't sure what was wrong. He sounded quite tired, almost certainly from the heat, I reasoned. It was clear to me that his race was over. Perhaps not this yard exactly; it might take a few, but for all intents and purposes he was done.

I adopted a consolidatory tone, changing the subject to keep the conversation flowing. But it felt odd. Surely he’d make it to the 100 mile mark, 24 yards? Didn't he want to have a go? Or… was he playing six-dimensional chess with me?

With the first turnaround point in sight, I glanced at my watch and realised after all this walking and talking, I was far behind where I'd ever been before at this point. Slightly concerned we might miss the cutoff, I bid Matt farewell and hurried off to finish the yard. To his great credit, Matt picked up his pace too and followed not too far behind.

Back at base, Jan had laid out an impressive buffet for me, full of the food I would ordinarily have devoured in a snap. But my brain was knotted in strategic spaghetti, and I simply wasn't in the mood for food. I downed simple sugars in the form of Tailwind; for simultaneously the race was almost over, and yet, it was only just beginning.

Was Matt really on the verge of dropping out? That would be unfortunate for both of us, coming up just shy of 24 yards; or, more likely, was he playing a tactical masterstroke, expertly teasing me into a series of fast yards just to wear me down, all the while sitting tight and playing the long game?

I sat there in miserable silence, weighing all the possibilities, grappling with my eight-dimensional chess game, while poor Jan tried his best to figure out what on earth was wrong with me. He whispered that he could overhear ominous overtones coming from Matt's crew in the first barn. Just one or two more yards, apparently.

But that was irrelevant. Matt’s crew must know they could be overheard. They were playing me too. This was twelve-dimensional chess: mind games, ploys, decoys, agents, counter-agents, who knows what was going on. I was in mental preparations for a battle of the ages. A thousand yards! Whatever it took; because in sixteen-dimensional chess, I had to be prepared for every possible eventuality. Perhaps Matt was a world-class elite backyarder under an assumed name. We were truly entering twenty-dimensional psychological warfare here!

"Look strong", Jan whispered as the bell went and I proceeded to the corral. I didn't need telling. I was gearing up for an epic 119 yard conquest, one for the ages. I wasn't going to get played by the most devious backyard racer of all time!

I strutted purposefully toward the start line in the corral, when someone thrust their hand into mine. My eyes firmly on the start line, I shook it and continued. Where was Matt? I was always the last one into the corral. Oh, wait; was that Matt? I looked back around, and realised it’d been him shaking my hand.

"I'm done", he told me gently, with a relieved smile on his face.

Done? Ha! Did he think I'd fall for that old chestnut? In twenty-three dimensional chess, that was such an obvious ploy!

But he remained perfectly still, wearing a look of contented resignation. "Are you serious?" I asked; only half-serious myself, with one eyebrow raised to the sky. He nodded.

"Fifteen seconds" shouted Darren. “ONE MORE LAP!” screamed the crowd, desperately trying to persuade Matt to continue. Confused as heck, my eyebrows still entirely askew, I gradually paced backwards toward the start line, while beckoning Matt forth.

This was only the 23rd yard. Was he really not starting? What about 100 miles? What about the twenty-three dimensional chess…?

"Three, two, one, …" called Darren, as I meekly rotated my body around to face the course.

Matt hadn't been playing twenty-three dimensional chess. Nobody had been playing chess. It was just the hottest day of the year. The heat had taken its toll. And I happened to be the last one standing.

While I ran, I texted Jandalf asking him to bring my Palestine flag to the finish. I'd like to run in with it, I told him. When I returned from the first turnaround point, dropping over the hill beyond the midway marshal, I saw the spectacular sight of my flag smack bang in the middle of the trail, flying proudly in the wind. I ran through it, feeling its powerful symbolism of peace and humanity course through me. And on my return from the second turnaround point I picked it up and ran it in.

This was always how it was going to end, I reflected. It didn't matter whether it was chess or hopscotch. 119 laps or 23. The outcome had been as inevitable as the rising of the sun, or the ebb and flow of the tides. I was flying the flag to the finish.

I was amazed there were still spectators remaining. It's a long time to stand around waiting, even for a single lap. Everyone was really so lovely here. Things seemed a lot simpler now I was back in the world of single-digit dimensions.

Despite its short distance this year, my experience at Longbridge really was ace. It’s got to be the friendliest, most eco-friendly, most community-spirited event I've ever had the joyous pleasure of participating in.

The course was lovely, the provisions at race HQ were second-to-none, the volunteers and of course Darren and family were the best RDs imaginable, and the runners were the friendliest of folks to spend time with. To top it all off, the sustainable, locally-produced, thoughtful finisher mementos, complete with personal touches, are wonderful memories of the experience. Longbridge is a race you will not regret running.

And no chess playing experience is required! In fact, all things considered, it’s probably for the best if you leave your multi-dimensional chess set behind.

Just put one foot in front of the other, and remember the adage inscribed onto the back of 3WordRun’s silver coin: on the first yard, you are never alone, but to win, you have to run one on your own.

This post follows Part 8: To Kirk Yetholm, and The Box.

Cradling the jar of tea in my hands, I gazed down into my tea leaves.

I could see that my why predated Spine 2.0. It predated Spine 2024. It even predated the Legendary Triad itself.

My why began a decade ago, back when I was living life more like an observer than an active participant. Reacting to events, thinking short-term. I was unhealthy, unhappy, and disillusioned. Lost within the Matrix.

The Matrix

Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that our modern way of life, founded in complex societies comprising many millions of people, has lost its way. As a collective we fail to embody the social and egalitarian qualities of our natural human condition, the fabled noble savage of Roman lore.

Instead, our advanced societies exhibit obsessions with the accumulation of status, private property, wealth, power and seemingly inexorable corruption. Rousseau famously lamented that “man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains”.

Orwell was one of the principal intellectuals of the last century to warn of our impending descent into oppression and tyrannical rule. While he defined doublethink, the condition where propaganda trains us to simultaneously hold contradictory thoughts in our minds, Hannah Arendt went on to describe organised confusion: inundation with so much contradictory disinformation that we can no longer discern fact from fiction (here on Substack, you can delve deeper in Life in the Matrix).

Roll forward to 1992, when Steve Tesich described our living in a post-truth dystopian pseudo-reality. Around the same time, the idea of neo-feudalism was emerging. It described how sectors of public life were being consumed by multinational private companies, with a corresponding shift of power from government to corporation that harkened back to the medieval social hierarchies of lords and peasants.

A decade later, Yanis Varoufakis coined the term techno-feudalism, highlighting how this feudalistic monopolisation played out within the domain of technology platforms.

The exploitation of these platforms by modern lords was described by Jonathan Ong and Jason Cabañes, and expanded on by writers like Peter Pomerantsev in their exposures of the global disinformation architecture. This comprises networks of PR professionals using fake accounts to disseminate micro-targeted disinformation, while undermining rational discourse through discreditation and harassment. It laid bare the extent of organised confusion and propaganda in the digital sphere.

Our Matrix today is a rabbit’s warren of stress, poverty, illness, distraction and disinformation, within which it is increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction, good from bad, moral from immoral. With 22% of the UK population now living in poverty, and so many feeling that life is out of their control, it’s easy to become dispirited; to be left flailing around, searching for an anchor in life. Something that can connect us back to humanity, or hope.

“A drowning man will clutch at a straw” goes the proverb. He’s unlikely to clutch for books, scientific papers, or engage in serious political discourse.

Instead, he’s likely to be vulnerable to oratory, lies, propaganda; to be exploitable through the tried-and-tested tactic dating back some 2,500 years, divide and conquer. This tactic has worked so well that, for the past fortnight, even despite Trump’s support tanking in the US, all the UK’s opinion polls have placed the Reform Party squarely in the lead.

The Masters

Who are these divide-and-conquerors, our neo-feudal landlords? The oligarchs, some of whom fund our political parties with donations. Their wealth continues to skyrocket, as Oxfam explains in its latest report: “In 2024, total billionaire wealth increased by $2 trillion, with 204 new billionaires created. This is an average of almost four new billionaires per week”.

Few people truly understand the meaning of a billion pounds, let alone tens or hundreds of billions of pounds. And yet, instead of taxing that wealth so that we might all live healthily, the billionaires are all set to siphon ever more from the poor, so they might grow their wealth into the trillions.

I might need to explain the word “trillion”, for it isn’t a word many encounter in daily life. One trillion pounds is 25 million times the average annual salary in the UK.

The likes of Reform will surely work overtime to convince us this is morally justifiable. That the real reason for mass impoverishment is a few poor people in dinghies, or multiculturism, or “woke ideology”, or “government waste”. Anything but those mountains of money growing up and out of the bank accounts of a small number of neo-feudal lords, breaking through the clouds up into the stratosphere.

Zeus’ plagues upon humanity really flew out of Pandora’s Jar, didn’t they? But if you cast your mind back to Hesiod’s story, Zeus left one thing in Pandora’s Jar. He left hope.

The Search For Hope

Through the ages, Zion has represented hope. Hope for a fabled, spiritual, prophetic utopia.

In the Abrahamic religions this hope relates in various ways to Jerusalem. In modern Christianity it’s used figuratively to relate to the spiritual realm. In Rastafarianism it relates to the hope of building a harmonious society in Africa. In Mormonism it has many connotations, one being the hope of forming a New Jerusalem in America.

For religious Zionists, both Jewish and Christian, this hope relates to the migration of Jewish people to the historical Land of Israel/Palestine. It’s considered a return from exile; making Aliyah, and the fulfilment of biblical prophecy. Some hope this will expedite the second coming of Jesus, and the prophesied End Times.

For many areligious political Zionists, it relates to the hope for the safety and security of Jews who have been persecuted, exiled and genocided through millennia (the English Edict of Expulsion of 1290, the Russian pogroms of the 19th century and the Nazi’s Holocaust in the 20th being just a few notable examples; of which the latter murdered 6 million people, amounting to two-thirds of the European population of Jews).

However, support for Zionism was far from universal. Relatively few Jews supported Zionism at the start of the 20th century. There was particularly strong opposition from Orthodox and Socialist Jews, and assimilation was generally preferred, especially in Western Europe.

There remain many Jewish communities today who do not share this hope for migrating to the Land of Israel/Palestine. Many disbelieve in a Jewish state, with some believing it is only God who can reunite the Jewish people in a Jewish State. Many find the genocidal reality morally indefensible, and some think it antisemitic.

But; it was with Disraeli’s enthusiasm, with the coining of the phrase “a land without a people for a people without a land” (conveniently overlooking Palestine’s population); with Theodor Herzl’s formation of the World Zionist Organisation in 1897, with the UK’s Balfour Declaration of 1917 (staunchly opposed by our only Jewish MP who decried it antisemitic), with the manner of withdrawal from Mandatory Palestine and with the collective failure of the international community to intervene in a peacekeeping (as opposed to settler-colonial) capacity, that the runway was laid for the progressive ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide of Palestinians that we’ve seen ever since.

In 2019, there were 5.6 million Palestinian refugees registered with the United Nations. 1.5 million of them lived in refugee camps run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Since 7th October 2023, almost all the 2+ million Palestinian residents of Gaza have been forced from their homes. Most will be unable to return, since 92% of housing units have been destroyed or damaged, replaced with over 50 million tons of rubble. Well over 50,000 Gazans are documented to have been killed, but as in all genocides the total count is impossible to know. And of the UNRWA workers trying to help the homeless refugees survive, Israel has killed 284 of them, totalling over 400 aid workers in all.

Aid workers like Doctors Without Borders’ Mohammed Al Ahel, a laboratory technician bombed in a refugee camp; Ahmad Al Sahar, a doctor blasted in an airstrike while working in one of the last partially functional hospitals in northern Gaza, and Alaa Al Shawa, a volunteer nurse sniped while travelling in an medical convoy.

Two days after Alaa was shot in the head, Israeli forces returned to Doctors Without Borders’ clinic in Gaza City, to bulldoze their vehicles and partially destroy the medical clinic.

“The basic contradiction in Zionism - the wish to control the whole of Palestine while stating this can be done by a Jewish State - is there because it is impossible without genocide or racialized expulsion”

Haim Bresheeth-Zabner, son of Holocaust survivors

The Hope in Zion

Even amidst so much bloodshed and destruction, I find hope clinging onto life as powerfully as limpets cling onto their rocks. I hear hope resonate through our voices. I see hope etched on our faces. And our actions are its manifest reality.

Hundreds of thousands of people make a monthly pilgrimage to the seat of UK power in London, giving voice to the voiceless in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Be they protesting alone, or representing trade unions, Jewish Voice for Labour, Na’amod, or countless other groups standing up for our common humanity. This demonstration of hope is replicated in cities and towns across the UK, and more widely across the globe.

Charities work painstakingly to document the genocide, render assistance and offer hope to victims in the most hazardous of circumstances. These are not small in number. Oxfam, Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders, The Red Cross, Islamic Relief, ActionAid, War Child, Unicef, Mercy Corps, UK-Med, MAP, Amnesty International, The World Food Programme, Christian Aid, Action for Humanity, The International Rescue Committee, Greenpeace, Plan International, World Central Kitchen and many others. Donors, workers and volunteers alike, united in their vision: a hope for a better tomorrow.

Indeed, many Palestinian refugee families still carry their house keys from the 1948 Nakba, in the hope that one day they might return to their homes.

Hope. It’s what the concept of Zion represents, in different ways for different people. Not a physical place on Earth, but a hope for safety, salvation, freedom from persecution, unity, equality, justice and truth.

In the Matrix, Zion represents hope for people’s liberation from the Machines.

For me personally, I define Zion as the hope for a better future for the whole of humanity.

A peaceful, democratic future, where truth and justice are valued. Where we strive to provide that “safe and just space for humanity” that Kate Raworth describes in her doughnut model of economics. Where we all enjoy the opportunity to live happily, healthily and sustainably.

The Spine and Zion

If Zion is hope that we can strive for, then why, throughout this story, have I equated the Spine with Zion?

The Spine is a microcosm of the real world: honest, truthful, and our natural home. It sits aside from the organised confusion of Big Brother’s Oceania, the Architect’s Matrix, and Wonderland’s rabbit hole.

Nobody said navigating the real world is easy. It’s awash with risks and fraught with challenges. It’s raw, tough; sometimes ugly and dangerous. Battling through sleep deprivation, injuries, ice, bogs and Garmin’s Sentinels. There are few modern comforts, no telescreens or convenient doublethink here. There is only truth, and the truth can sometimes be brutal.

But to live well, as Aristotle would have put it, requires exposing ourselves to discomfort in our quest to seek the truth. It requires our presence in and understanding of the real world. Thus, we can only forge a path to Zion by exploring our most difficult trails, and finding our Way among them.

The Pennine Way is our most difficult trail. So, the Spine; it’s not just the Pennine Way, it’s a Way to Zion. And just as we understand the journey is the destination, then the Way is the goal. Peace, freedom, truth; the Way is Zion.

My Way to Zion

A decade ago, I recognised the need to build a framework to guide my life. Running was the first step I took along that journey. It rapidly improved my fitness, health and happiness, giving me a solid foundation upon which to build.

I felt it necessary to push myself to run longer and longer distances. Half-marathons, marathons, 50ks, 100ks, 100Ms and beyond. And if not further I’d go harder, higher, colder, hotter, more technical. All the while I was searching for something: direction, purpose, that elusive why.

The further I pushed myself, the more the training and racing demanded of me. To progress I needed to develop more aspects of my being and my character. Fixing longstanding health problems, refining dietary practices and sleep patterns, sharpening my mental resilience and defining my purpose. I turned to writings of philosophers ancient and modern to guide me in constructing a life philosophy I could take pride in.

This combination of physical and mental refinement is what got me to the start and ultimately the finish of Spine 2024. An event so overwhelmingly difficult that I knew I didn’t want to run the Spine, or anything harder, again.

That meant I’d reached the end of my running journey, and with it, my journey of transformation. I was proud of how much I’d grown, but I sensed there was plenty more to learn; and with no bigger challenge, no next destination, I couldn’t see a Way forward. It threw me into disillusionment.

I needed to unearth that underlying why. I needed to grasp it, feel it, internalise it, and live it. I couldn’t think what else to do other than run the Pennine Way again.

At the start of Spine 2.0, I experienced complete confusion as to my purpose in the race. But all the time I was asking the wrong question. Instead of asking why I was rerunning the Spine, the question I should have asked was why I ever ran it in the first place.

Why had I ever run Dragon’s Back, or the Arc of Attrition? Why had I run a marathon, or a local Parkrun? Why had I ever laced up a pair of running shoes to start with?

Why

My why was my need to find my Way. My vision. My philosophy. My Zion.

My framework through which I could understand the world and act purposefully within it.

Aristotle would have thought my passive existence a far cry from his goal of eudaimonia (living well). To him, a life well-lived came about through noble pleasures - those that are virtuous, enduring, independent. He argued that intellectual and moral virtues, developed through study and practice, offered the path to happiness. To arete, human excellence.

Stoics like Epictetus and Aurelius emphasised behaviours in accordance with nature and reason, predicated on respectful social relationships and self-control. To them, happiness came by striving to live a virtuous life.

In eastern philosophy, Daoists thought the objective to live in harmony with the Dao; the underlying order, nature itself. Their concept of wu wei, effortless action or flow, comes about by acting in synchronicity with our nature.

Whichever philosophies we adopt, adapt or formulate, the power of a life philosophy is in its capacity to help us find our Way to inner peace.

But this doesn’t mean entirely disconnecting from the Matrix, with all its suffering, wars and disinformation. Far from it. A life philosophy worth its salt empowers us to be active participants in reforming it, while recognising what we can and cannot control.

While we cannot control outcomes, stop wars or rebalance the wealth of billionaires, we can act within our own capacities. For example:

• Educate ourselves: set aside time to read books, and switch news sources to independent media

• Support democracy: choose parties that promote democratic reform (the Green Party being our primary option in England), or independent candidates

• Engage: join local political groups, form People’s Assemblies, work with pressure groups, support local groups like food banks, write to our MPs

• Spend locally: choose local, independent produce, and where possible, reuse rather than buy

• Be curious, and speak the truth

The Matrix can’t sustain a “post-truth” dystopia without our acquiescence.

It’s our decision to scroll through social media, or read a book. To buy from Amazon, or a charity shop. To drive, or cycle. To consume BBC News, or independent media. To watch TV, or contribute to our local community. To stay silent in the face of disinformation, or to lodge a complaint with the regulator. To go to the cinema, or to a protest. To make excuses, or to act.

“It always seems impossible until it’s done”

Nelson Mandela

“To live your brief life rightly; isn’t that enough?”

Marcus Aurelius

The Jar, The Monkey and The Why

I sit here with my tea jar, reminiscing on my Spine journey, feeling a deep sense of satisfaction with my newfound sapience. That monkey crashing cymbals is a very distant memory, at least 268 miles away. Instead, there is a peace, assuredness and unity that comes from my own personal philosophy.

That wu wei flowing descent from Auchope Cairn still flows within me.

I’m retracing my steps alongside the River Aire to Malham. Revelling in the pitch black ceiling over Sleightholme Moor. Leaping apprehensively over deep bogs. Bathing in photons atop Cross Fell. Fracturing my hand on the ice. Learning brain chemistry in Keld’s Winter Tearoom.

Stumbling upon the Flintstones’ car. Sleeping behind a peat mound in a gale. Delighting in meeting the shopkeeper from Mr. Benn. Breaking trail through waist-deep snow. Dancing on the Cheviots. Leaning into the Helm Wind. Connecting with the wizened mosses.

And I recall so vividly how I wrestled with those confounding questions: why did I swallow the red pill?

Why did I rerun the Spine?

In The Republic, Plato tells the Allegory of a Cave.

Imprisoned and shackled within a dark cave, only able to see a theatre of shadows cast by unseen actors unto the cave wall, these prisoners have no reason to believe there is any worldly reality other than the shadows cast before their eyes.

When one of the prisoners is released and shown the theatrical setup, he is confused and disbelieving. And when he is dragged out of the cave and shown the outside world, his eyes are immediately blinded by the light.

At first he instinctively recoils toward the safety of the cave. But on second thought, he musters his courage, turns back toward the light, and allows time for his pupils to constrict. And he begins to see the sun, and the earth, and life for what it really is.

Now he must tell his friends the whole story.

The humble story.

The story of a jar.

And a monkey.

And a why.

Last year, my late evening stop at Byrness had been a simple, utilitarian affair, where I’d been furnished with a bowl of instant mashed potato by volunteers valiantly straining to keep their own eyes open. I’d expected similar this time around, but instead I was welcomed in by a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed team who had everything arranged down to a tee.

There was hot vegan chilli ready and waiting for me, which was just delicious, and I really do mean delicious: a standard of cooking that matched my friend Jandalf’s level of culinary prowess. That was washed down with a delicate, flavourful coffee, and throughout I was given time-checks at a regular internal so I could comfortably plan my departure within the 30 minute limit. I couldn’t have asked for more, and felt so very much better when I departed.

Now it was time that played on my mind. The data on both of my watches was up-the-creek, but my best guess was that I was 20 hours behind where I ought to have been. In which case I was staring down the barrel of a Saturday finish; well outside the window I’d planned for, and potentially a problem for my logistics. I couldn’t remember when I’d need to checkout from the hotel I’d booked in Berwick-upon-Tweed, nor when my last train home was. Would I even have a way home?

So I needed to get a move on. There was no time to pop into the church for a sleep, though this left a bitter taste in my mouth. The church was one of those things I’d missed experiencing last year.

Conflicting Memories

I had jolly good fun on the slightly scrambly climb up Byrness Hill, despite wearing far too many clothes for that level of exertion. I expected a fierce wind at the top, which there certainly was at first. It howled past my ears so violently that it gave me a headache. But to my surprise, when I climbed further up Houx Hill toward Ravens Knowe, the wind cut out and a calm settled over the Cheviots. It was rather pleasant up here now.

And that became the rub. It shouldn’t have been.

I remembered most vividly what I’d experienced last year along the first stretch of the Cheviots to Hut 1, and it hadn’t been anything like this.

Last year, I’d run this in the dark, in horrible weather, over ground covered in snow and ice. It’d been hard to get a good read of the lay of the land, but it’d felt utterly remote, and inhospitable, and alien. Infuriatingly complex to navigate, with its multitude of divergent trails and trods. And I was quite sure I was high atop a mountain, standing proud of all the low-lying land around it.

But what I could see on this mild afternoon bore no resemblance to any of that. For a start, the Pennine Way trail was obvious. There was a line of flagstones snaking into the distance. In these conditions, it literally couldn’t have been any easier to navigate without Mr. Motivator bounding alongside me screaming “You feel good! You’ve got this!”

And then there was the geography. I wasn’t all that high; not yet anyway, at the southern end of the Cheviots. This was more of a fell ridgeline than a mountain. There were valleys either side, and parallel hill ranges beyond. It was visually impressive, but in a calm, gentle, soothing way. Like High Cup Nick without any of its rocky crags and brooding shadows, and only its sweeping curves.

It did look remote though, with absolutely no signs of life. I struggled to find a single tree. That aside, the landscape looked friendly and accessible. This wasn’t at all what I’d experienced last year, in the dark, in the midst of the weather and the arctic temperatures, and the snow, and the ice.

Wasn’t this what I’d come back for, to get a true feel for the race? Perhaps. But surely not like this. I knew what I’d experienced last year, and this felt worryingly close to a contradiction.

An Afternoon Stroll

I set it all to one side as best I could. Right now, the going was easy. “Too easy!” I bellowed on autopilot, while grinning from ear to ear. But the fact was I was knackered. My left Achilles was wrecked from the bogs. My feet were in agony in my tight-fitting Cyklons with their torturous gaiter zips. My left knee was intermittently flaring up, and I couldn’t shake this incessant ‘Spine cough’.

So without any bad weather to push me along, and while starting to recall that I did indeed have a second train booked for Sunday, I simply shrugged my shoulders, listened to my body, and slowed to a walk.

While slightly dispiriting, it gave me a chance to reconnect with the outside world. I fired off a message to Steve, shot some video logs, and fielded social media. When all that was done, I settled down to the business of contemplation.

“I feel quite pleased with what I’ve done, in terms of building a better picture of what happened last year, learning more about the Spine itself, and the people who run it. You get some really quite interesting people doing this race (present company excluded) - some really quite accomplished athletes, mountaineers, climbers, all sorts.”

“There is an inherent appeal to a big challenge, as people see the potential for personal growth, learning, new experiences, stories; all that interesting stuff that we don’t tend to get if we just go for a regular run, or sit in front of a TV watching Netflix. That’s a big draw for people: to live life, and experience new things”.

Rocking the Cheviots

My journey over the fells proceeded quite uneventfully, with the only excitement being my vain attempts to locate Hut 1 on the horizon. But all the while, my situation was unravelling. It’d been 30 hours since I’d last managed some meaningful sleep; my only sleep, in fact, aside from those 9 minutes dozing in a bog. And over the past five and a half days, I’d only slept for about 3 hours in total. Perhaps I ought to have caught some z’s in that church, I reflected, as my eyelids began their all too familiar routine of edging their way closed, uncommanded.

This was doubly frustrating because I was beginning to recognise some of the features of the trail from last year. That was where I’d sprinted and leapt across sketchy ice sheets on my frenetic mission to bring back medics from Hut 1. In that little dip, I’d skidded off the ice. That was where I fell, and there I’d taken the wrong turn.

It was all here, all the the little twists and turns and climbs that brought memories flooding back. Gosh; it all looked so very different today, in the light, with no wind, or cold. What had been a survival situation back then was just a pleasant afternoon bimble today.

But my eyes kept closing, ever more frequently, and they became harder to re-open. I couldn’t continue like this.

I thought about breaking out the sleeping bag and bivvy. After all, while there wasn’t any shelter here, the weather conditions were absolutely fine. I could happily sleep out in the open. But the hassle of unpacking and repacking my gear didn’t appeal one iota. Instead I resolved to try to manage the situation to Hut 1, where I’d take a short nap.

How best to navigate this level of sleepiness? I tried caffeine, but that had no effect. So I broke out my phone, wherein I was entirely baffled to find I had some limited phone signal (was nothing as it was last year?) I fired up Spotify and found a playlist of 90s rock classics that I hadn’t heard in decades. In no time I was transported back to the heady days of my youth, singing my guts out on the Cheviots, safe in the knowledge that no other soul would have the misfortune of hearing my tone-deaf screeches.

Many of the songs had such an innocent charm. Youths expressing their basic frustrations and desires amidst an out-of-kilter world. It was honest and genuine in a way that seemed lost in so much of the modern, mass-produced music developed to a standard formula. That’ll only get worse with increasing use of AI, I reflected. Genuine, heartfelt human art seemed at risk of becoming a rare commodity.

But even blaring tunes, singing at the top of my lungs and contemplating the downfall of human culture was not cutting the mustard. I still had a couple of kilometres to Hut 1, and I wasn’t going to make it like this. So, seeing a fence and gate, I saw an opportunity to play my last card. I perched my phone on the fencepost, and attempted the one thing I’m least capable of doing - dancing.

Try to picture, if you can, a lone man, in the middle of the remote Cheviot hills, wearing a pack larger than him, stuffed with enough layers to clothe an army crossing the Antarctic. With his phone perched on a fence, blaring rock tunes from his youth, singing wildly out of tune and fudging most of the lyrics, failing his limbs around like a robot on the fritz, in a comical attempt to emulate dancing. That was me.

But I’ll tell you something - it got me those last couple of kilometres to Hut 1!

The Blurry List

Inside the glorified shed that was the mountain rescue hut, the first thing that struck me were the sheets of A4 paper neatly tacked to the facing wall. A handwritten list extended all the way across them; clearly the work of many different people, although two distinctive writing styles stood out. I guessed two team leaders had done most of the scribing. The list looked like a record of each runner’s visit: their name, arrival time, duration of stay and any notes on their condition, such as whether they’d presented with injuries, accepted any medical treatment, what they’d eaten and how long they’d slept.

There were an awful lot of entries. This couldn’t have just been the full Spine, it must have included Challenger North too. But even so... I pursed my lips and grimaced while my name was written in, right at the bottom, a very long way down the list.

A group of Spine Safety Team members poured into the hut, returning from a resupply mission. It was mid-afternoon, and given the great weather, they were understandably in high spirits. I accepted some tea and vegan biscuits, but I found all the commotion a bit much for my sleep-deprived brain to handle. Only 3 hours of sleep in the last 130 wasn’t enough.

I felt bad asking whether I might be left alone in the hut for 10 minutes, knowing this would effectively confine everyone to their tents, but it had to be done. Everyone filtered out, leaving me alone, with only the grating sound of some monotonous pop music crackling from a portable speaker.

I couldn’t be bothered to remove my muddy shoes, so I laid down on the hut’s wooden bench, kinking my hips so that my feet remained on the floor. I had no pillow, so I crooked my neck to allow my head to rest upside-down on the bench. For a professional contortionist this position might’ve been alright, but for me it was diabolically uncomfortable.

But after five minutes my sleep deprivation won over the discomfort, and that long list of names on the wall began to blur. Finally, I could feel sleep coming. I was drifting out of consciousness now, into that sweetest of states of peace and tranquillity. A state of deep, relaxing sleep… a state of deep, relaxing whispers… chatter… louder… laughter…

Oh, for the love of mother nature, let it not be so. The five stages of grief flashed through my mind at breakneck speed: this can’t be happening, this isn’t fair, can I ask them to leave, I’m so screwed; and, finally, there’s no point remaining in this painfully contorted position. I drew myself up to a sitting position, opened my eyes and brought the hut back into focus.

The Debonair Conversationalist

Another runner was in front of me, engaged in animated conversation with two members of the Spine Safety Team. He seemed so unfathomably happy. He was telling jokes, making witty puns, eliciting raucous laughter, and grinning from ear to ear. I felt really pleased for him. The only problem was it happened to be the polar opposite of what I personally needed.

Then he turned to me, and did the very thing I desperately wished he wouldn’t. He asked me a question. And he stood there, beaming; along with the Spine Safety Team members, staring directly at me, waiting patiently for my entertaining riposte.

But my brain wasn’t in my head. It was still down on that hard wooden bench, asleep. I wasn’t mentally capable of interpreting the question, let alone composing a response.

My mouth frantically searched for some words. Any words, anything at all. Even a mumble would have sufficed. But nothing came to mind. So I made some grunting noises, and meekly diverted my attention to those biscuits I’d been nibbling on earlier, willing the others to resume their conversation so that I might be left alone.

It must’ve been the timing, I thought. The precise second I’d slipped into unconsciousness, I’d been jolted back awake. And then required to join in some ripping banter, leaving me looking like a brainless fool.

This entire situation wasn’t working. Just as I had at Bellingham, I felt I had to get out of here, stat.

I mumbled in pidgin English that I was heading off, then rose to my feet, lost my balance and clumsily toppled into the debonair conversationalist. But he looked like he was preparing to leave too. So… I supposed that meant we were going to leave together? Right after I’d made a total fool of myself? While I couldn’t yet speak in full sentences?

We got underway, and quite understandably he began asking me questions. At first I struggled to respond, and could only mumble an apology and explain that my brain was still asleep. But in time it whirred back into life, my conversational capability returned, and we struck up a genuine conversation.

I found I was running with Andrew Heaney, the same chap I’d encountered very briefly back at Horneystead Farm. I learned he was one of the founders of the charity Into Ultra, which I made a mental note to investigate later. And we ended up having a lovely chat, discussing past races, future plans, and our shared desire to get this thing done.

In no small part thanks to Andrew’s company, my tiredness was behind me now, and so I figured it was time to break away so I could focus on sorting out my nutrition, hydration, layering and planning the journey ahead to Hut 2. I wished him well and shot off down the muddy descent, setting a clear intent to make good progress from here on.

The Sisyphean Time Warp

It was a beautiful night on the Cheviots. Almost perfectly still, and a great temperature for running. At least, it would have been were I not so preposterously overdressed. And I could only de-layer so much since my pack was full to bursting. I had to keep a close eye on my overflowing side pockets lest any gear fell out.

While I was comically overburdened with clothes, I was almost out of food and water. I’d just used my last caffeine gel, and could only find one regular gel remaining. I decided to save that for later. I’d stop at Hut 2 for water and a coffee anyway.

Ground conditions were much milder than last year over Windy Gyle, but nonetheless. This was the high section of the Cheviots. Up here, the snow was back, and it was often quite deep. The flagstones were not without occasional ice, and they offered little protection against the monstrous bog.

“We use the word bog”, I mused, “but… there’s ground at all levels, flagstones floating at weird angles on unpredictable amorphous substrates; deep water, deep sticky mud that claims your shoes, your shins, your knees, and threatens to eat you alive. Some of these bogholes are deep, and for shorter runners like me, the risk of entrapment feels quite real. Every step, every jump, is a leap of faith. There’s no parallel I can think of in southern England; certainly not our XCs, not even the Arc of Attrition’s notorious Pendeen stretch comes close to this.”

My flashbacks grew stranger. The course was starting to feel very familiar; not just like I’d run it once before, but like I’d run it many times, like I was in my own backyard.

“Ah yes, back here again - I always love this stretch!”

I’d felt the same last year too, when I’d never run it before it my life. The sense of déjà vu was powerful and made absolutely no sense.

The really big climb began. Running low on food and battling tiredness, the increasingly deep snow and the resurgence of high winds, I repeatedly checked on my distance remaining, seeking validation that I was making progress toward my goal. While my Enduro 2 was actually working for once, it was as if it were stubbornly refusing to advance its digits. Its empirical data showed I wasn’t advancing at anywhere near the rate I felt I ought to be given the effort involved.

It was all coming to a head. The night sky was pitch black. I was on an extremely remote fell. I had no visual context outside of the beam of my headtorch. The landscape was alien; inconsistent, multi-layered, rocky and covered in snow. Every step was a puzzle to solve, and fraught with risk. I was out of supplies. I needed to sleep. I needed this to be over. But the climb continued endlessly, minute by minute, hour by hour; days became months and months became years…

Perhaps I was trapped in a spacetime glitch. Decades of my lived experience would be spent climbing this infinite mountain, while for people on the outside, going about their ordinary lives, it would be but a fleeting moment. As if they were travelling near the speed of light, and I at a snail’s pace. Would I ever escape this time warp? Was this to be my fate until the end of days? Would there be a society left when I finally re-emerged into civilisation?

When I spotted the snow under my headtorch beam levelling out, I breathed a sigh of relief, and whooped in glee. I wasn’t stuck after all - I had been moving!

Wu Wei

I stood proud atop Auchope Cairn. From here, I could see it all. I could see dots of warm light down below, a very long way away. Perhaps that was Kirk Yetholm, or Coldstream, or Kelso. It didn’t matter; it was evidence of civilisation, and it was such a relief. More than a relief, it was over! The whole ordeal, the whole shebang!

My broken hand, my friends’ DNFs, my searching for a reason that I could never fully grasp. It was all over!

And just like that, the land fell away before me, opening out into that long, steep descent down to Hut 2. I flowed down that mountain like water, my feet barely kissing the snow. My surroundings flashed past at breakneck speed; and I couldn’t have told you how I knew my footfalls would hold as I sprinted down that steepest of fellsides, but this was the most secure I’d felt in the entire race, and the most in tune with the Cheviot, nature, and The Way.

Where the descent levelled out, I was met by a volunteer who ran me into Hut 2. It was mightily cosy inside, with steaming brews and cheery bearded folks lining the benches. They implored me to stay for a while, or at least have a drink and refill my water - “it’s still at least 4 hours to Kirk Yetholm” they warned, pointedly. But I’d been here before. In the flow state I was in now, it’d take me less than 2.

I hastened back outside, where my chaperone ran with me for a kilometre to guide me around the most dangerous bog holes in the vicinity. “We don’t want to have to come back and dig you out”, he explained. But sensing my straining at his reins, he soon waved me off into the darkness.

The Last Morsel

The ground rose up before me, which I knew must signal the start of the final climb up The Schil. The very last one! How far it was exactly, I couldn’t recall, but I was going to dispatch it as efficiently as I could. I powered up through the snowy mud-bog, leaping and bounding and sinking and swearing, though firmly with my eye on the finish.

But the boggy climb just kept on coming, and coming, and coming. My whole world, contained within this narrow cone of light, felt like it was being subsumed by the encircling darkness. My space-time warp was returning. Like a bad dream where your legs move but you do not, I wasn’t advancing through space as per conventional physics. Time had taken on the stickiness of the bogs.

My motivation was fading, so I made the last play I had and ate my very last item of food. Eat, and hang in there, I instructed myself. I was holding out for that fabled summit.

When it came, relief flooded my body. The ground dropped away abruptly once more, and I commenced my second effortless flight down toward Kirk Yetholm.

Neither my lack of food and water, my many suffocating layers, my overweight and oversized pack, nor my two shins screaming ‘shin splints’ could hinder me now.

Crossing the finish line evoked many emotions. First and foremost, there was relief - that the ordeal was over. There was a sense of justice - that all my suffering would be recognised with a finish. There was pride - in my courage and perseverance.

There were also reflections - on the friends who’d had to DNF, the damage I’d done to my body, my slowness, purposelessness, and an observation that this was essentially my second consecutive DNDNF - ‘did not did not finish’.

But I shoved all that to the back of my mind; for, right now, I was finishing. I ran through the routine of kissing the Border Hotel wall, giving a finish line interview, and heading inside to the finisher’s room, where I made my final spotlight - Amnesty International’s most recent appeal to the international community:

While I stood there holding up my little cardboard sign, it dawned on me that I’d rather have turned over my final spotlight to individuals. Perhaps the sons and daughters of Holocaust survivors, so many of whom were standing up and making their voices heard. People like Agnes Kory, Ursula Blumenthal, Stephen Kapos and Haim Bresheeth.

While I didn’t share their voices then, I will do now:

As survivors and descendants of survivors of the Holocaust who condemn Israel’s genocidal actions, we feel our views are not taken into account and neither are those of many Jews who oppose the actions of the Israeli government.

The UK has a duty to comply with international law and to support the international organisations that uphold it; the failure to take such action risks making the UK itself complicit in these crimes

The UK should have the courage to act independently and to take a lead

In doing so, it would regain much of the respect and moral standing that it has lost by its failure to comply with its obligations under international law so far. It is not too late to act.

With my last spotlight complete, I felt I had at least achieved something here. Even if nobody else were to see or read what I’d reported, I had shared meaningful moments with the volunteers who’d acceded to take my photo in each checkpoint. Every one of them had connected with me in some way - from a simple nod of the head, up to a full-blown emotional outpouring about the horror they felt at the inhumanity of the situation in Gaza. Every single one had shown empathy, and that gave me hope.

It was time to sort myself out. I started with tea, water, and food (the first plate of which I managed to tip all over myself), before taking that steaming hot shower I’d so wanted back at Bellingham.

Then I caught a taxi to my hotel in Berwick-upon-Tweed, where I hauled my drop bag up to my room, boiled the kettle, and prepared the last dehydrated meal I’d been saving for just this moment.

The White Rabbit and the Jar

There was nothing else left to do but toast my finish with one of my favourite teas. I’d brought a nice big jar of it in my drop bag. It’d been transported from start to finish, from checkpoint to checkpoint, all the way up along the Pennine Way.

I popped the lid off my tea jar, wherein the smell of jasmine petals infused my nostrils and delivered me unto a state of tranquillity. My thoughts drifted back to my metaphorical box at the end of the Spinebow. Pandora’s Box.

It was funny, I reflected, how the myth of Pandora’s Box came from Hesiod (the ancient Greek poet), while Hesiod himself had never written of a “box”. The idea of a box had only come about from a popular mistranslation of his work.

In Works and Days, Hesiod had recounted the myth of Prometheus giving fire to humans against the will of the king of gods, Zeus. Zeus then sought revenge by creating Pandora and delivering her to Epimetheus with a “pithos” - a jar - that she wasn’t to open. When Pandora opened the jar in violation of Zeus’ instructions, she unleashed his revenge upon mankind, leaving behind only hope.

So it wasn’t Pandora’s Box, it was Pandora’s Jar.

I stared down at my hands. My right hand was holding the lid, and the left was holding the jar.

I hadn’t just found my box at the end of the Spinebow, I’d opened it.

“I’ll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes”

It was time.

Continue reading Part 9:

I’d been freezing cold since turning north from Hadrian’s Wall, so I was mightily grateful to receive a steaming cup of tea and a nice hot meal at CP5 Bellingham.

My spotlight here came from the human rights organisation Amnesty International’s report: You Feel Like You Are Subhuman: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians In Gaza.

Amnesty’s extensive 296-page report was just one of many forensic analyses of Israel’s genocide. A genocide that Netanyahu himself described as a ‘war’ between “the children of light and the children of darkness”.

His supposed ‘war’ comprised a medieval-style siege and an aerial barrage on an historically unprecedented scale. Using this strategy he had killed 2% of the residents of Gaza, in amongst which were 18,000 dead children. A success for supporters of Israel’s genocide, I assumed, on the basis that they were Palestinian, hence “children of darkness”.

Standing there holding my recycled cardboard sign, I couldn’t help but cast my mind back to the 1990s when Hutu leaders dehumanised their neighbours by decrying them as “cockroaches”. One of many polarising acts that led to the Rwandan genocide in which at least 500,000 Tutsis were massacred by the Hutus.

The Palestinian death toll since 7th October 2023 was approaching 50,000. How many more had to be slaughtered before we in the UK joined South Africa, Spain, Ireland, humanitarian agencies, charities, academics and so many principled intellectuals in calling a spade a spade, Israel’s so-called war a genocide…

Borrowing a phrase from Omar El Akkad, “one day, everyone will have always been against this”.

The Anti-Spa

I’d been on the Spine for 112 hours and had clocked just 3 hours’ sleep. If I hadn’t felt tired and numbed before I held up my cardboard sign, I certainly did now.

Should I sleep here? The only other opportunity I’d have would be a draughty little church in Byrness with no facilities to speak of, and that was probably half a day away. Anyway, I hadn’t slept here at Bellingham before, so in the interests of getting the full Spine experience I felt I ought to.

A counterargument was that this checkpoint’s sleeping quarters were renowned for being floor-based and as cold or colder than outside. Having just battled through a freezing miserable stretch, I struggled to convince myself that curling up on an ice cold floor was going to make me feel much better.

I came up with what sounded like a sensible compromise. I’d have another lovely hot shower instead! I collected some dry-ish baselayers and my dripping wet handtowel, pulled on my camp slippers, and found a volunteer to show me the way.

To my surprise and displeasure, the way to the showers was back outside into the arctic. Wearing only shorts, a technical t-shirt and my camp slippers, in the freezing cold temperatures of midnight, the journey at least woke me back up. The volunteer showed me inside the shower block that was no warmer than outside, warned me that the water might take some time to warm up, and left me be.

Inside a cubicle, I stepped out of a slipper, screamed “F*** ME!” and promptly leapt back into it. The floor tiles in this shower block were as cold as ice. Very delicately I manoeuvred myself into the shower avoiding the ice sheet floor, shedding mud all over the cubicle in the process.

The shower hung dead-centre over this bafflingly oversized square shower tray. The shower was a simple push-button operation, but the button was offset in a far corner, quite a distance from the showerhead. I moreorless had to depress the button and then walk back under the shower.

The water was ice-cold just like I’d been promised, and only ran for a second or two before stopping. I walked back to the button to trigger the next short burst, and then walked back under the shower head only for the water to stop before I could reach it. This felt like it ought to be a Laurel and Hardy sketch.

I repeatedly pumped that cold-hearted button, tried to launch my body under that fleeting stream of water quickly enough to catch a few ice cold drips, and just couldn’t make the situation work. I gradually came to terms with the fact the lovely steaming hot shower I dreamt of was simply not going to be. I wasn’t able to raise the temperature of the water even so far as lukewarm, but that hardly mattered since I couldn’t get the water to run long enough to place my body under it anyway.

I got stuck in tunnel vision, doggedly trying to effect my steaming hot shower despite the mounting evidence that it would not be possible, and entirely lost track of time in the process. The only outcome in the end was covering my muddy body in a light sheen of ice-cold water droplets.

I stepped back out onto the ice cold floor, which caused me to scream, leap back up and onto my slippers. I picked up my dripping wet handtowel, which was also plastered in mud from the chaos earlier. Drying myself probably transferred more water to my body than the shower had managed, and did a stellar job smearing the mud all over me too.

Finally, to polish off my spa experience, I spent 5 minutes shivering uncontrollably while attempting to clean the cubicle of all the mud I’d plastered it in. Then there was the task of navigating back to the checkpoint, feeling my way along brick walls through the freezing darkness, wishing I’d had the foresight to bring a torch.

Back in the checkpoint, I pulled as many clothes as I could back over my shivering mud-plastered body, and tried to recover from the whole ordeal with mugs of tea, the only hot liquid I’d managed to find here at Bellingham.

Running Away

I checked on Steve’s progress, hoping for good news to buoy my spirits. He’d have made Alston, I knew he would. He’d be heading north toward Greenriggs, putting daylight between himself and the cutoffs. Perhaps he’d be powering along Hadrian’s Wall, or passing Horneystead. Maybe, just maybe, he’d be bounding up the road to join me at Bellingham. It’d be Steve and I to the finish! Huzzah!

But he wasn’t about to join me at Bellingham. Nor was he approaching Greenriggs.

And as I scrolled back down the table of runners with a growing sense of dread, I could see what I really didn’t want to see, that Steve hadn’t made Horneystead, or Greenriggs, or Alston. Steve was no longer a participant.

I leant back in my chair, dropped my shoulders, and my heart sank. Everyone I knew in the full had DNF’d. I closed my eyes, and held my head in my hands.

I didn’t want to be here.

I felt overcome with tiredness, and I needed to sleep, now. But I was too crestfallen to sleep. Nothing about my being here at Bellingham was as I’d have wanted. I’d wanted Steve and the others to finish. I’d wanted to enjoy the experience, to feel proud of what I’d done, to grow, to develop, to evolve. None of it was happening.

I remained slouching in the chair, feeling numb. I couldn’t let myself sleep like this. I ordered teas and coffees back-to-back, downing each one, trying to drug myself into a state of alertness that would enable me to leave the checkpoint. Because that was all I wanted to do, leave. Not to complete the race, but just not to be here.

I pulled on multiple upper layers, stuffed my pack full with clothes, and then kept stuffing it with more clothes until it bulged, and still more until it looked like it might explode, and then crammed my belt with even more. And then I left.

9 Minutes

It was the early hours of the morning and biting cold. I struggled down the road under the weight of what was an absolutely preposterously overladen pack until I found myself down in the heart of Bellingham village. There was no hint of life on these quaint streets, its residents no doubt snug in their beds, dreaming of summertime.

It was here that my refusal to sleep in the checkpoint caught up with me, for I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. I stumbled around Bellingham’s little alleys like an inebriate, struggling against the odds to move in the right direction, even to remain lucid, upright, awake.

I tried to find a sheltered spot to doze off out of sight, but I couldn’t find anywhere suitable, and before I realised what I was doing I’d left the security of the town behind. I was out onto Hareshaw Commons; an expansive, boggy, waterlogged fell, completely exposed to the elements, where a rocketing wind began hurling me around like a ragdoll while chilling me to my bones.

But not even exposure to these blistering winds could counteract my tiredness. Sleep was no longer optional; it was inevitable, but where?

I was giving up hope when my headtorch’s high beam picked out a 50 metre wide peaty mound some way off-trail. Hardly an obvious bed for the night, but it was the only feature I’d seen on this desolate landscape that looked as though it’d offer any sort of buffer against the wind. I hacked my way through gorse, leapt over bogs and crossed streams to carve a path to its rear where the wind was indeed slightly calmer.

I turned off my headtorch, lay my bulbous pack against the peaty mound, set my alarm for 10 minutes, balanced it on my forehead and closed my eyes. Colours swirled around in a vortex, leading me down a black hole, and to the rest I so badly needed.

I came to feeling groggy and confused. Why was I starting at a starry sky, why was I lying in mud, and why was there a gale blowing over the top of my head? And why was my forehead vibrating, and beeping? Ah; yes, my phone. I checked the time, and found I’d slept for 9 minutes.

As I hacked my way back across the streams toward the Pennine Way’s flagstones, I realised I felt far more compos mentis than before. My power nap had done its job, and I seemed to be back in business.

Sunrise

The Pennine Way’s flagstones were sporadic here, with bog being the predominant surface. For the first time in days I deployed my poles, finding them invaluable for testing depths, leaping over wider bogs, and stabilising myself against the often overpowering force of the sidewind.

Passing a cairn at an intermediate summit, I paused to admire the sunrise behind me. It was simply majestic, and I hoped some of those hardy villagers of Bellingham, most doubtless still enjoying their slumber, would get to witness it.

The wind only grew in its ferocity as I climbed, until I was fully dug in, bracing myself against a roaring wall of air that strained every sinew to blast me off the fell.

I leant my body into the wind, finding the angle of equilibrium where I could drop my poles to the ground and hold my arms out wide, embracing the full force of the wind. It was like I were standing proud on the bow of the Titanic.

I was wearing all the upper layers I’d brought with me; quite a feat in and of itself, and I didn’t feel chilly in the slightest. I felt warm and comfortable.

And I knew that wasn’t a good sign. For in not too long, I’d enter the woods and find protection from the wind. Temperatures would continue to rise, becoming quite warm by midday. So if I already felt warm now while moving slowly in gale force winds; by far the coldest conditions I’d face, how hot would I feel later in the day? I thought of my exploding pack and bit my lip. I’d brought way too many clothes on this leg. Not just one or two extra garments, but an entire wardrobe too many. What had I been thinking when I’d packed all this stuff back at Bellingham?

Quantum Flintstates

Under the rising sun, I still felt quite groggy. Up ahead, I could see the strangest thing: a small car, parked in the middle of this vast bog. I screwed up my eyes, trying to make it out. A Mini Cooper, perhaps? There was a campervan beside it too. A Mini Cooper and a campervan… how very odd.

While I drew closer, I became less sure about the Mini. It looked crude. Kind of… blocky. In fact, it looked like the sort of car Fred Flintstone had. And the campervan was undergoing a similar transformation, taking on an altogether rockier, Flintstones-style form.

Of course, I was used to this sort of thing by now. But there was something fantastically romantic about finding a collection of imaginary Flintstones’ vehicles nestled within Northumberland’s remotest bogland. I slowed my pace to a crawl, to delay their probable transformation back into earthly objects.

It was still mind-bending to watch it happen: to observe one object morph into another right in front of your very eyes. My groggy mind tried to form rational explanations in the most irrational of ways. Was decoherence breaking down at the macro level, and the superposition of matter collapsing into multiple states? After all, it was freezing cold, which would reduce entanglement; but alas, the wind was wild, and then there was all the sound, and light, and cosmic rays… No, of course this wasn’t quantum effects… come on, wake up!

Just like the disappearing photography studio atop Old Cam High Road, the Flintstones car demonstrated just how fallible our observations can be. Something we prefer not to admit to ourselves.

I saw it in the Matrix all the time; for it was principally a disinformation space, where billionaire interests leveraged their practically infinite resources to form and promote alternative realities to suit their needs, using any means they desired: troll farms, shills, faux journalists, cyberwarfare.

Navigating this maze of disinformation required constant vigilance, as Winston would have corroborated before his visit to Room 101. The task was made infinitely harder by the technology platforms’ promotion of emotive clickbait, echo-chamber algorithms, tolerance of faux accounts and personalised targeted adverts.

In the Matrix’s post-truth era, doublethink reigned supreme. War is peace. Genocide is defence. Defunding is levelling-up. Trickle-down economics is plugging the inequality gap. Migrants are both lazy and taking our jobs. Ceding rights is taking back control. Climate tipping points are being passed but we can safely delay climate action. Oligarchy is democracy. Reform UK is for the people.

It was enough to give anyone a headache, and anyway, I still felt groggy and tired. I really needed to sleep. My thoughts shifted to the church at Byrness. Sheltered from the wind. Pews to lie on. I could lay down my sleeping bag and get some proper shut-eye. This might be the first time in my life, I reflected, where I felt an urge to go to church.

Reflections

I stopped in my tracks, because I recognised this landscape. The fellside I was descending was where I’d skated down the ice last year, out of control, barrelling through gorse and landing head-first in mixed vegetation. Ahead of me, the route continued up the facing fell, just to the right of the wood, where I recalled struggling up its icy rock climb, half-asleep, fending off hypothermia.

I stood still, soaking it all in. And in that moment, I felt I understood a little more about why I was here, why I’d re-entered the Spine 11 months ago.

I had needed to see it again, to see it as it really was. Unsullied by the darkness, pain, tiredness, hallucinations and clouds of mental alchemy. To build an objective understanding of what I’d actually experienced. Of what any Spiner experiences. Of what the Spine is, and is about.

Because, truly, why does anybody run the Spine? What are we collectively seeking? Is it merely external recognition, or is it more of an internal revolution?

Was I experiencing an internal revolution…?

Pain from the soles of my feet tore me away from the ethereal realm back to the physical, wherein I lost my thoughts down another rabbit hole: was rerunning the Spine really the best way to gain any of those insights? After all, I’d just been using a broken hand to bury a pole in a bog in order to brace myself against gale-force winds, just so I could admire an imaginary campervan parked next to Fred Flintstone’s rocky jalopy…

If I wanted to see part of the route again, perhaps a brief holiday might have worked better? If I wanted time to reflect, maybe a library or coffeeshop might have been a more effective solution?

The awkward rocky climb beside the forest was mercifully ice-free this year, through not entirely without challenge thanks to an abundance of slippery clay mud and polish-smooth rocks. It opened up at the top into a gateway to a Chamonix-esque playground of easy trail, shielded from the weather by alpine-style conifers, surrounded by colourful vegetation.

This was fantastic running territory; but alas, the knee problems that had afflicted me earlier returned once more, forcing me to a hobble. It took all my mental fortitude not to become too disheartened by this. I tried to enjoy the present moment in this wonderful location, and held out hope that my knee would improve.

The Boiling Descent

I popped out onto the road I’d been waiting patiently for, the forest descent road. From here, it was just an easy run down to intercept an easy riverside trail into Byrness.

I couldn’t hobble down a descending road, that’d have been totally unacceptable. So I tried swinging my left leg around in an arc to reduce the impact on my knee. This seemed to work, and I found I could sustain a run of sorts using this unorthodox gait.

Under the protection of the trees, and with the sun rising nicely, it was turning into a lovely morning. And this led to my next problem - now I was running again, while I was wearing more layers than the Inuits, I wasn’t just hot, I was boiling-in-a-bag.

So I began the lengthy process of stripping off layer after layer. I crammed the first few into my pack, until it was straining at the seams so much I worried whether it’d hold together, and then I filled my belt. I didn’t know what to do with the rest. I tied two tops to the outside of my pack, hoping they’d stay attached.

I was still wearing a couple more layers than I ought, but there simply wasn’t anywhere else to put them. So I accepted I’d continue to overheat, and hauled the enormous pack onto my back, feeling its weight and heft. This was utterly ridiculous, but I didn’t know what else to do.

At the bottom of the road, I tentatively praised my Enduro 2 for not crashing for an hour or so, while also eyeing it with suspicion: what was it scheming? Right on cue as I was inspecting the map for the way ahead, its screen went blank before flicking over to the ‘Enduro 2’ logo. What a relief, everything was normal!

Last year, I’d become very confused here. The GPS route had led me through woods to a river, from which it seemed like I ought to track alongside it, where in reality this was impossible. The situation had deteriorated until I became ensnared in a gargantuan bamboo-like plant.

I’d emailed Lindley about it, and while I didn’t think he’d updated the GPX route, I wondered whether he’d try to help us in another way.

So this year I was on high alert for any indication I was deviating from a trodden trail. And that indication came rather unsubtly in an assemblage of luminous signs with phrases like “Straight ahead” and “Ignore GPX!!!”. I gave a metaphorical hat-tip to Lindley as I passed.

Sitrep

That concern behind me now, my thoughts shifted to my physical state. I was carrying so much weight in the pack that it was bouncing around terribly and doing my back some real damage. There wasn’t much I could do about all the unnecessary clothing I was carrying, but I realised I was also carrying almost all my water from Bellingham, which was 1kg right there. So I drank some and sprayed the remainder into the trees, which helped a little.

Something felt badly wrong with my left foot. A building pain just above the foot where the top of my La Sportiva Cyklon’s gaiter sat. The pain seemed to be coming from the zip. I unzipped the shoe’s gaiter, which helped considerably; but without that locking my foot in position, my foot began shifting around the shoe, which I worried would exacerbate the pain in my soles.

My Achilles was in distress too. That was easy to explain - it’d been destroyed from dragging my foot out of all the bogs, which exercised quite different muscles to a standard running gait. There was nothing I could do about that.

My toes were obviously swollen, bulging against the toebox. And then I realised my right foot was also suffering with that gaiter’s zip too, and so I unzipped it as well.

“I’m in a bit of a state right now”, I concluded. I needed food, too. And for the thousandth time, I asked myself why.

I’d seen the course again, I’d experienced the bits I’d missed out on last year. I’d achieved my goals.

Pushing on further from Byrness, over the fearsome Cheviots, in this wrecked state; how would that help? My body was done. My mind was done. I didn’t need to prove anything, to myself or anyone else. Now it was time to go home, to heal, and to move on with my life.

Wizened Mosses

The entrance to Byrness village was truly delightful. An ancient stone church spoke to the history of its people through its weathered though carefully tended tombstones.

Then an enticing footpath led through an ancient woodland bedecked with wizened mosses that looked to have been entirely untroubled by their human neighbours. It suggested a close relationship with the people of the town.

Its inhabitants had obviously loved this patch of native woodland through the ages, just as I loved it now. This was Zion, in all its majesty. Its beauty, its mutualistic relationships, its yin and its yang.

It was moments like this that we runners run for. The connection. The symbiosis. The unity. The truth.

I am because we are.

Namaste, Spine 🙏

Continue reading Part 8:

One of my biggest regrets from 2024 was missing out on the opportunity to enjoy Spine’s most iconic dish, the famous Alston lasagne.

I’d been unlucky. I’d caught the checkpoint team just as they were serving up the last of their vegan batch, and while they gave me some scrapings from the tray, it barely amounted to a mouthful. When I departed the checkpoint I felt as though I had unfinished business at Alston.

This year I stormed into that same Alston checkpoint on a high. I’d just broken my 3 hour target for descending from Greg’s Hut, and I hoped to ride that wave by tucking into a generous portion of the Alston checkpoint team’s finest vegan lasagne.

Well, I hit the jackpot. The team told me they were overflowing with it, and presented me a breezeblock-sized portion. With a whole Spine 2024’s worth of lasagne to make up for, I chowed through it, followed by another serving, and another, and another, and another, until I couldn’t stuff another morsel of lasagne into my mouth. That was Alston’s delicious lasagne, well and truly ticked off my Spine bucket list.

Since I was on a winning streak, what else hadn’t I experienced here at Alston? Aha, the showers! They had to be tried and tested too. My third hot shower of the race was wonderful, and I sought to polish things off nicely with a lovely relaxing sleep.

The Calm Before The Storm

I hardly cracked the dorm door by a smidgeon when the handle vibrated violently, and the ear-splitting sound of a foghorn emanated from within. What on earth? I pushed the door open and inched inside inside the darkened room, which by now had fallen silent. Goodness knows what that’d been. I used a small light to find an empty bunk, and took great care to unpack my sleeping bag as quietly as I could. Out of nowhere, the jarring sound of the foghorn erupted again. This time I could clearly comprehend the source of the offensive noise. On the opposite bunk was sleeping quite possibly the world’s loudest snorer.

It was so powerful & discordant that it physically hurt my ears. There wasn’t a chance in hell of sleeping through that. So I tried some earplugs, but faced with such violent thunder they proved to be absolutely useless. It wasn’t just the eruptions themselves, but the wildly inconsistent interval between each one that made it worse. Would the next come in 5 seconds? 10? 20? It was an ordeal in itself just trying to predict how many seconds remained before the next prodigious explosion.

As I lay there contemplating how similar this might be to sleep deprivation techniques employed in Guantanamo Bay, the knee I’d struggled with earlier began locking up. Every time I reacted instinctively with a full-body twitch that somehow always involved me whacking my broken hand, which rocketed the pain level right up to ten. Then the foghorn blared, blasting air around the room with the power of Cross Fell’s Helm Wind. I tried to sleep for hours, but not even Rip Van Winkle could have caught 40 winks in this house of horrors.

Back in the main room I felt surprisingly groggy given that I’d just been subjected to hours of auditory and physical torture. My eyelids persistently inched their way closed, so I glugged mug after mug of teas and coffees, and somehow managed to spotlight part of South Africa’s submission to the International Court of Justice:

It was appalling to think that a year after South Africa’s 99 page document with 574 references was presented to the court; not only had no effective action been taken to forestall Israel’s genocidal campaign, but throughout the US and the UK had materially enabled it.

If nothing else, that thought helped place my night of auditory torture into perspective.

Preparations for Bog Warfare

There were a handful of other runners in the room with me. Among their conversations, I was disturbed to hear occasional mentions of time cutoffs. Was I really on for a Friday or Saturday morning finish like the anonymous volunteer in Greg’s Hut had reassured me; or was I, in fact, much further behind than that? Some of the boggiest sections of the course still lay ahead of me. There was no telling how slow they might be after all the rain and snowmelt.

At that moment Leif (one of my fellow compatriots during the Pen-y-Ghent downpour) arrived. While he wore his trademark smile, there was something missing from his usually bulletproof demeanour. He wasted no time in explaining how he’d become injured over Cross Fell and would reluctantly have to bow out. It made sense as a precautionary strategy, after all he had his Arctic Spine race to think of in just a month’s time.

So, another DNF. Apart from my brother, everyone I knew was DNF’ing. What about me? I was running hours, days, who knows how long behind schedule. I might even get timed out. I was carrying injuries, fighting my tech, and still struggling with a why.

But there was also much to be positive about, I reflected. I was in better mental shape than earlier, and today’s weather forecast was much better. So much so, we had an unseasonably balmy ‘feels-like’ of positive 4°C ahead of us. Moreorless summertime on the Med!

So, to business. I started to prepare my gear. After all that rain and snowmelt, the next section could be outrageously muddy. What shoes to wear? My Mudclaws would have given me an significant advantage, but I had to consider the swelling in my feet after 300km of Spining. It made sense to prioritise comfort and breathing room, so I returned to my Mafates, whose modest 5mm lugs would have to deal with the mud as best they could.

Too Easy!

I left not long after sunrise. The sky was a bright blue, and it was calm, warm, and overall a thoroughly glorious winter morning up in north England. As someone who considers himself practically allergic to the cold, this felt like the turning of a page, and my day to shine.

The Pennine Way trail tracked parallel to the valley. Blue skies up above contrasted with the vivid greens of forested fellsides, while grassy uplands enjoyed the warm amber embrace of the morning sun.

And then the mud started. “Oh, bloomin’ heck!” “Woah; flipping hell, foot’s disappearing here…” “Wooooooah, oh my God!” The mud was both hopelessly slippery and incredibly sticky. I never quite wrapped my head around the physics of that.

Respite from the mudfest came on a 2km sprint alongside the South Tynedale Railway line, which is probably the easiest stretch of the entire Spine. I made excellent time here, in no small part due to my maintaining a solid fuelling regime.

After Slaggyford the deep, sticky mud kept coming; but in above-zero temperatures and with the sun for company, I didn’t care one iota. “What a great day! Come on!”, I exclaimed, flailing my arms while floundering through a sticky patch. “Too easy, too easy!”

‘Too easy’ is my friend Jandalf’s trademark battle cry. Today, under the glorious winter sun, I used it in jest; for the quagmire certainly was ridiculous, but in these unseasonable conditions, who cared? Keep it coming!

The route climbed up onto moorlands and traded the mud for waterlogged trods, where my squelching turned to splish-splashing. Then, at the intersection with the A689, I found a couple of plastic boxes full of goodies for hungry Spiners. Life couldn’t get much better than this!

Gazing far into the distance, I spotted a line of distinctive undulations in the landscape that had to be Hadrian’s Wall. That landmark was such a significant milestone in the race, and now it was in sight!

After 20km of solid mud-running, my legs began to tire. I’d fuelled pretty well, I reflected, just not quite enough for my effort level through the quagmire. And I had to bear in mind I didn’t have that much food remaining. So I decided to dial it back for a little while; after all, there was no particular rush.

So I checked on Steve’s progress. He was overtopping Great Dun Fell, just two minor summits from Cross Fell. Given how few dots I could see behind him I surmised he was running close to cut-offs. I sent him a message of encouragement, but I couldn’t shake the idea that something might be going horribly wrong for him. I really hoped he was OK.

Now I was travelling at a more modest pace, I was better able to immerse myself in my surroundings. It all looked so vivid. Deep navy-blues from the waterlogged trail. Maroon puddles, perhaps from iron leaching into the water? Luscious green grass. Injections of warm browns from unfamiliar vegetation. Light yellows from inexplicably parched grasses. Sheep added the odd puff of bright white. Old tree trunks balanced the scene with lines of rustic grey. Then, a roofless ruin, still standing, as defiant as it was dilapidated.

“I’m not having to worry about falling on ice, or whether I’ve got enough layers to fend off hypothermia. I’m not juggling multiple pairs of gloves and mitts over my broken hand. I can see around me. I’m able to focus on my running. I’m loving this!”

A Disobedient Digital Twin

I well recalled the little footbridge crossing over Hartley Burn, for it was nestled within a enticingly cosy depression in the landscape. Climbing out of it I spotted a chap up ahead, and conceived the idea of using OpenTracking to find his name so I could greet him when I passed. But when I did pull up abreast, I could see he wasn’t in the frame of mind for a chat. In fact, his eyes appeared closed, he was barely awake, and I found it remarkable he was still upright and moving.

A quarter of an hour later, I reopened OpenTracking to check how my sleeprunning compatriot was getting along, but OpenTracking still showed my dot in the same place it was 15 minutes ago. I kept checking periodically, and my dot steadfastly refused to move. My phone had mobile signal, so the GPS tracker ought to as well. I checked the tracker unit, and couldn’t see any lights blinking. Had it malfunctioned, I wondered? That’d be weird, I was pretty sure it wasn’t a Garmin device…

Eventually I gave race HQ a call to make them aware something was up. They reassured me they’d look into it, and asked how I was doing.

“Fantastic!” I yelled, far too loudly into the receiver, as I barrelled down a boggy hill with a beaming smile. “The sun’s out!”

It wasn’t long before my dot took an Olympic leap up OpenTracking’s map, and HQ called me back to tell me the problem had been resolved. My dot was back on the move, and nothing could stop me now.

And nothing did for a while, until I reached the little banked descent linking Haltwhistle Golf Club to the B6318. I stood with my hands on my hips, laughing out loud. This mudfest would’ve been a dream for a Tough Mudder course. “Dig in with your hee— Woa! Bloody hell!”

Mysterious Pauses

The past couple of days, I’d experienced a frustrating phenomenon. Alongside all the other baffling problems with my Garmin watches, on a few occasions I’d found my Forerunner 955’s activity had paused.

I felt fairly confident I hadn’t done it, either on purpose or by accident, though it was admittedly impossible to be certain. My 955 was buried under many sleeves and subject to activity such as the removal of mitts and gloves. I could have been hitting the pause button by accident.

This had kept me in a mild state of paranoia for days. With every vibration of the 955, I’d felt the urge to roll up my sleeves to check whether that buzz signalled the pausing of the activity. But even when I did roll up my sleeves to check, the act of rolling them back down over the watch itself risked an accidental pause. At that rate, I could have gotten myself into an infinite pause-checking loop. The situation had been driving me potty.

I was a couple of kilometres out from Walltown and the start of Hadrian’s Wall when I made a crucial breakthrough in the Mystery of the Pausing Garmin. I had both sleeves rolled all the way up my arms and I wasn’t wearing any gloves, so there was nothing anywhere near my watches. I’d been looking directly at the 955’s watchface, reading the map, when I watched it pause and drop to the resume screen. All by itself, entirely uncommanded.

Seeing it happen in front of my eyes felt such a relief. It meant I hadn’t been imagining it! I hadn’t suddenly started to hit watch buttons accidentally. The Garmin was quite simply f***ed.

Not ten minutes later, navigating alongside a golf course using my other watch, the Enduro 2, my jaw dropped to the fairway when I witnessed the Enduro do exactly the same thing.

Both of my top-end Garmin watches had, within 10 minutes of each other, paused their activities uncommanded. Borderline unbelievable, but true.

Borderline

Walltown car park marks our entry point to Hadrian’s Wall. To my complete surprise, the Walltown visitor centre was open to us, which it hadn’t been last year (at least, not at the time I’d passed it). A member of Northumberland National Park staff ushered me inside in hushed tones. A runner was sleeping by the fire, she explained. Indeed; he looked pretty snug, curled up like a cat.

I definitely could have used some food to augment my dwindling supplies; but alas, this wasn’t a food stop, and the few offerings that’d been kindly donated by locals didn’t look particularly vegan. While I would just as well have run on, I reminded myself of my promise to engage fully with the Spine experience, so I decided to stay a while for a tea and a whispered chat.

I also used the opportunity to check on Steve. He’d only just left Greg’s Hut, and he seemed to be one of the two last runners on the course. I crossed my fingers, willing that he and Heine would motivate each other to remain ahead of that looming cut-off.

In the short space of time I’d been inside, the wind had picked up and the temperature plummeted quite unpleasantly; but as I rose up onto Hadrian’s Wall itself, Helios used the last of his influence to calm the wind, while casting his waning magic rays down onto me. In his pleasant company, I felt content once more.

It looked glorious, Hadrian’s Wall, under the sunset. The drystone snaked its way far into the distance, over serene rolling undulations counterposed with harsh crags of dark rock. The warm glow over its grassy hills evoked images of summer picnics and frolics while, edging in as the light faded, cool shadows cast over forsaken rocks surrounded by untold miles of desolate bogland and dark, dense woodlands.

O’er the wall I could just spot the southern edge of Kielder Forest, England’s largest. I hoped to reach there soon.

6km along the wall’s mythic journey brought me to the car park at Cawfield. This wasn’t yet halfway along our Hadrian’s Wall segment, and already it had worn thin. The endless route choices, climbs and dips; the falling temperature, and at 340km, over 100 hours into the run, my feet were growing increasingly painful. I had to knuckle down for a long, arduous slog along the remaining 8km of the wall.

When I finally reached the turnoff, I whooped with delight! I felt certain that faster terrain lay ahead of me. Besides which, from here, I’d stop heading east toward Newcastle, and instead turn north, to Scotland. Which was excellent news, because Scotland was where the Spinebow ended.

Quest for Chunky Broth

Alas, my elation was short-lived. Mere seconds from Hadrian’s Wall, I found myself engaged in yet another battle through Gaia’s sticky, squelchy, mud-bog-quagmire-mess. I could see this was going to be the general theme all the way to Bellingham.

The strangest thing, I found, was how the climate had transitioned on a dime. It was as though turning north from Hadrian’s Wall had signalled the start of ‘North England’ proper, where the temperature was colder and the conditions harsher. My feet started crunching over frosted mud, and I paused to add whatever clothes I had left.

Following a long climb away from Greenlee Lough, I encountered a style that afforded an excellent vantage point for me to perch atop and really take in my surroundings.

The sky was pitch black, just like it had been at Tan Hill and Cross Fell. I looked far out to the horizon, and rotated 360° to build a complete picture. Across the infinite inky void, I could spot but two pinpricks of white light, two little red dots on what I presumed to be a pylon, and a hazy glow from what I suspected must be a city far, far beyond the horizon. Out here in the blanket bog, it was just Gaia and I.

That bog remained challenging, with only subtle alterations to mud, or frosted mud, or water. And in the now freezing temperatures, I was coughing that good ol’ ‘Spine cough’ again. Being almost out of food, the best I could do was break out a pair of handwarmers to help raise my spirits.

I’d been eagerly counting down the metres to the only reprieve along this stretch, an outbuilding at Horneystead Farm. A place a lonesome Spiner can be assured of a roof over their head and some hot chunky vegetable broth, no matter the time of day. And after last year, I knew what I was looking out for: a style atop a wooded fell that overlooked a gully, beyond which would lay this haven of respite.

When that style finally came, it was with a sense of deep satisfaction that I stood tall astride it, as if I were a rancher surveying my herd, beaming at the sight of that humble hospice across the ravine. It might not be much, but in the middle of England’s largest area of blanket bog, in negative whatever °C it was, Horneystead’s voluntary provision of love represented more than help. It represented hope.

There were no volunteers outside the farm to welcome me inside like last year, but that was probably because it was approaching 9pm, and besides which it had grown so cold that I’d not have wished such a role on anyone.

I found someone inside the little outbuilding though. A runner, outstretched on a chair, swaddled in blankets, sound asleep. I tried my best not to disturb him while I retrieved a mug from beside the sink and ladled in vegetable broth from the slow cooker.

After my first mug of chunky vegetable broth, Andrew stirred, bid me farewell and headed back off into the arctic bogland. I stayed for a while, just as silently as I’d been in his presence, enjoying another mug of chunky broth and reflecting on the epic journey that’d brought me to this point.

It was at CP1.5 where I’d most seriously questioned why I was back here on the Spine again. That was days ago now. So much had happened since. Everyone I knew had either dropped or was struggling, and whilst I’d developed some thoughts on my why, I still didn’t have a clear answer.

I wrapped my hands around the hot mug, leant back and cogitated.

Hardy People of Bellingham

It was on autopilot that I navigated the remainder of my way to Bellingham, through bog and over ice, through temperatures that felt just as cold as last year, though I knew they probably weren’t.

When I finally summited the last hill overlooking the town of Bellingham, I beamed triumphantly at the town’s lights. Steadying myself against the ripping wind, I bellowed like a town crier: “Hardy people of Bellingham! Surrounded by bogs, tolerating arctic temperatures - I salute you!”

It was with a sense of heavy resignation that I ran down into the Bellingham checkpoint.

The last two legs of the Spine - overtop to Byrness CP5.5, and then over the Cheviots to Kirk Yetholm - are each such serious undertakings in their own right.

And for what? There were no more Keld Tearooms or Tan Hill Inns to visit. There was no more of Alston’s lasagne to devour. Nothing new to experience from now on.

I was running hours if not days behind last year’s time. I was tired, battered, injured, freezing bloody cold, 365km in, and I still had no f***ing idea why I was here.

I should have quit days ago. But I couldn’t quit now. The sunk cost fallacy was playing out: I’d already been through too much.

Everything rested on this illusory box waiting for me at the end of the Spinebow.

The box holding all the answers.

Holding the monkey.

Holding the why.

This box had better f***ing be there.

Continue reading Part 7:

The fire in the hearth was beginning to die down, but even in its diminished state it maintained a mesmerising charm.

Its flames and embers coexisted in a complementary state of yin and yang. The embers foreshadowed the flames’ demise, but were themselves living on borrowed time. Time... wasn’t it time to go home? Home… wasn’t that where the hearth is?

After the double Garmin watch meltdown, I’d mentally disconnected from the race and had little to no interest in continuing. My only remaining focus was on food, and all the more since Langdon Beck was the curry checkpoint. I had to restrain myself from asking for mine very, very, very spicy!

Then I settled on a nice hot shower, and finally to sleep.

I was directed to a 4-bunk bedroom that, as luck would have it, I had entirely to myself. With no need to worry about light or noise levels, I could spread out, inflate my pillow and settle down comfortably for a proper sleep.

I clocked up 3 hours of fruitful recuperation, my first successful sleep some 70 hours into the race. Then I refuelled with some beans on toast. I couldn’t decide between tea and coffee, so I went for both.

It was time for my third spotlight: a statement from Charles Birch, Chief of the United Nations’ Mine Action Programme in Palestine:

Right. It was time to decide what I was doing. Was I going home, or was I continuing?

I left the question hanging while I proceeded down my checkpoint checklist; rattling through it at pace, without giving it much thought.

I kept it hanging through kit check and departure. Then I was running again.

Much like my ‘observer’ status at the start of the race, I wasn’t committing to anything at this point. It just made sense to start running the next leg, while I made up my mind...

Finding My Way

We were diverted around Cauldron Snout for the second year running. Signage had been installed to point the way. I did vaguely recall the diversion route from last year, but for extra reassurance I fired up my Garmin eTrex handheld GPS, upon which I’d loaded the diversion routes.

It took so long to coax the antiquated brick into life, get a GPS fix and load the course, that I’d already run half the diversion by the time it started working. Then I found basic operations like zooming in so aggravatingly slow that I just threw it back in my pack. I didn’t need any more of Garmin’s provocations to throw in the towel and quit. Anyway, in the daylight, the physical signage was quite simple to follow.

The morning weather was favourable (though chilly, requiring 4 layers and a buff over my face), and the underfoot conditions much improved. There was hardly any snow remaining, other than some festive dusting on the felltops. Shafts of sunlight teased between distant clouds. It showed promise, and gave me hope that today might be a better day.

“I want to make sure I get the full experience this time; see it all, because I doubt I’ll do it a third time”, I mused.

“I’m trying to get as much out of this as I can”.

The diversion rejoined the official route to cross the dam above Cauldron Snout, after which I entered what felt like a strange place. I’d only seen this section of the course in thick snow, either in poor visibility, or darkness, or both. But today the visibility was great, conditions were good, and instead of snow there was just green, tufty grass and muddy bogs.

The lay of the land didn’t look anything like I’d imagined it from those long slogs illuminated only by a little cone of light, and so I found it difficult to reconcile what was in front of my eyes with the mental map I’d built up.

High Cap Knee

From this point, the route has no phone signal. Even the Spine’s GPS trackers can’t ping out location beacons (since they use the mobile networks). Until High Cup Nick, Birkdale Farm was our last opportunity for emergency communications, and even that was only possible thanks to the temporary satellite link and WiFi access point that the Spine team installed there. So, if I were to break a leg, all things considered, it’d be best to do it right here.

One moment my left knee was normal, and the next it wasn’t. I could hardly bend it, and was in considerable pain. I didn’t know what I’d done exactly, but it involved the kneecap and surrounding musculature. This was the same knee I’d injured 6 months ago in the Pyrenees, and had never fully managed to repair. Now, after pluckily surviving 260km of the Pennine Way, the poor thing had finally given out.

I remained in fairly good spirits, because it didn’t matter; whatever my why was, it wasn’t time-dependent. I’d just keep moving as best I could, in the form of a slow walk featuring a massive lumbering limp. In some ways this was quite similar to my shoulder episode near Middleton, I reflected. I was on pretty runnable terrain, yet I couldn’t physically run.

I kept positive by admiring the scenery, praising the weather, trying to reimagine this landscape as it was under the snow covering of yesteryear. Anything I could to distract from the pain in my knee.

As it had before, the wind picked up when I climbed away from Maize Beck onto High Cup Plain, and I began to suffer in the cold. My sloppy kit preparation hadn’t accounted for this wind chill on top of an injury. It raised the question of just how well-equipped I was for Cross Fell, which is renowned for some of the strongest winds in the country.

Rounding over the slightly boggy plain, a vista I’d been eagerly awaiting emerged in front of me, in all its majesty. Behold, High Cup Nick.

Every time I see it, it draws me in and holds my attention like a vice. It’s unrealistically dramatic, as if it were an exaggerated landscape painting. At the heart of the drama is the harmonious dissonance between the grace of the valley’s gently sweeping sides, alongside its ominous shadows and foreboding rocky outcrops.

Today, High Cup Nick was especially atmospheric. The late afternoon sun was setting dead-centre, its light heavily diffused through layers of cloud and mist that wrapped the valley like a blanket. While the howling wind pressured me onwards, I stayed firmly put, absorbing the grandeur of the scene before me.

Had I Been Framed?

Into the descent down to Dufton, I became aware of a runner approaching, though still a way behind me. I couldn’t accept them sprinting past me while I limped down like an invalid, so I gritted my teeth and insisted my knackered knee submit to something resembling a run. Within seconds, my fast hobble met its match on a slippery mudslide, and I wiped out impressively, rolling and sliding down through mud, rock and scree.

Both my leggings and my legs took a thorough beating. Even more self-conscious now I was plastered in mud and blood, I staggered on with my limping run, hoping the other runner hadn’t witnessed my You’ve Been Framed moment. I was grateful when he passed without making comment.

Funnily enough, the more I forced the knee to run, the more all its musculature loosened, and the easier it became. By the time I reached Dufton, my knee was much improved. I felt incredibly lucky that I could now continue with good speed, where I could so easily have been forced to retire.

My arrival into Dufton brought with it another opportunity to build purpose into this year’s Spine. Last time, I’d run straight past the Post Box Pantry café, my head at right-angles, lustfully gazing through its windows at the cosy interior. I thought I saw the shopkeeper smiling back, eager to welcome me inside. I’d deeply regretted not stopping there.

So, while my racing brain knew I ought to keep on going; to make the best of the setting sun, and to keep the blood flowing around my knackered knee, my why overruled all that.

Nobody Mention The Spine

I edged discreetly inside the Post Box Pantry, painfully aware it was full of diners enjoying their afternoon teas, who would likely not appreciate a Spine runner invading their space, leaving a trail of mud and blood in their wake. I tried to stay under the radar, choosing a route to the counter that allowed me to hide my legs behind other diners, tables and chairs.

Trying to appear as normal as possible under the circumstances, I ordered a vegan breakfast and tea, then made a beeline to a spare table, shoving my legs underneath as quickly as I could. That’d gone fairly well, I thought. I didn’t think the other diners had noticed me.

I spotted a TV in the corner of the room, and was surprised to see it showing the Spine’s OpenTracking map. It was focused on the descent from High Cup Nick to the Pantry. I looked around, and could see some of the diners watching it. It began to dawn on me that they’d watched me descend. They’d probably seen my name. Perhaps they’d been waiting for me to come in.

Then someone from the next table leant over to me and asked “How’s it been so far, Adrian?” And when I looked around I could see the eyes of everyone in the café staring straight at me, waiting with baited breath to hear runner 122 tell their story of Britain’s most brutal race.

It took a while to extract myself from my attentive audience in the Pantry. I only had to travel a few hundred metres up the road to reach the next stop, CP3.5 at Dufton Village Hall. There I availed myself of the opportunity to add my spare baselayer, expecting that I might suffer from exposure over Cross Fell in my relatively lightweight upper layers. And if my knee failed again; well, things could become thoroughly miserable up there. It was best to be prepared.

Blown Away

By the time I departed, light was fading and I had to add my headtorch. I thought I could remember pretty well the ascent route up Knock Fell, but its many false summits still took me by surprise.

I’d traversed Cross Fell twice before. The first time it’d been dark and foggy with very low visibility, and on the second the whole range was plastered in deep snow. Tonight, for the first time, I could see the ground as far as my headtorch could illuminate. The Pennine Way’s flagstones stretched out before me, snaking their way over the undulations of what was at present a pretty boggy and waterlogged moor.

While initially buoyed by the flagstones’ presence, my enthusiasm for them waned as I began to slip and slide. Wafer thin, hard-to-spot patches of ice seemed to be the cause. Also, the flagstones often vanished beneath 50-metre-wide pools of water.

Given all the hazards, I chose to avoid the flagstones entirely. Instead I hopped and leapt through the bog, and occasionally I misjudged it and sunk in.

I’d forgotten the strange way the Helm Wind works over this particular ridgeline of fells. You might, like me, assume the wind would be strongest over the summits. While it’s rip-roaringly wild up top, it’s actually in-between the summits in the cols where the wind blasts through at its fiercest. Tonight was no exception.

It hit me hardest in the dip between Great Dun Fell and Little Dun Fell. The Helm Wind shrieked past my ears and tore through my windproofs as if they just weren’t there. My ears and nose froze, my core temperature plummeted, and I hammered the climb as furiously as I could to generate body heat.

The summits had a totally different microclimate. Despite the wind, they felt warm in comparison, so much so that I felt quite comfy up here in my layers. The wind was still strong enough that I could tilt my body 30° into the wall of air and remain quite stationary, comfortably resting on my air blanket. In fact, I found I could do this while running too. I could close my eyes, and casually doze off, all while running and resting on my own Helm Wind airbed.

I See You

Cross Fell is the climax of the whole ridgeline. It’s the highest place in England outside of the Lake District, and one of the windiest. Despite the forces of nature working to blow one clean off the summit, I’ve always found it a place of wonderment and contemplation. And tonight, it didn’t disappoint.

As soon as I set foot on its expansive top, I felt a sense of calm spread through my body. I positioned myself behind some rocks to shield my body from the worst of the wind, took off my pack and rested on a rock. The view from here was divine. Perfect visibility afforded me a line of sight that ran for tens if not hundreds of miles, with the most distant pinpricks of light appearing indistinguishable from the stars in the sky.

That large cluster of lights to the north - could it be Carlisle? That was some 20 miles as the crow flies. To the east and west, there wasn’t so much, just odd pinpricks of light here and there. Some diffuse glows on the horizon hinted at the possibility of urban centres further beyond, but they would have been far, far away. A monumental distance across a vast expanse of terrain. Days of travelling.

Even the closest light I could see was rather far below and quite far away. I really was all alone up here. Just me, the boggy ridge, a pile of stones, and the Helm Wind for company. Up here, I was on the top of the world.

I had with me a bivvy, sleeping bag, stove and water. I thought about setting myself up here for the night. I’d have been quite comfortable. Far away from all the exigencies and trappings of modern life. From all the invasive technology platforms and their divisive algorithms. From the politics of division, hate, power and greed. From the wars and genocides, the trickeries and deceits, the megalomanias and socio-psychopathies. There was none of that up here. None at all.

My breathing had slowed to a meditative state. I was absorbing the tiny beams of light from the homes far below and the stars far above. Each beam of photons distilled something so complex into something so simple. My existence depended on all of it, be that Jupiter’s vast gravitational force bringing order to our Milky Way, to the worker at the water company making sure there’s drinking water for me to refill my bottles at the next CP.

But I’d been here a while, and it was probably time to bid Cross Fell farewell for now. I picked myself up, slung my pack over my back, gave Cross Fell one last hat-tip, and then launched into an frenzied, arms-flailing descent down to Greg’s Hut.

The Target

I was saddened not to find John Bamber in the hut on this occasion, but gladdened to find he’d left a jar of his homemade chilliewack on the table. So when I prepared one of my bland and unappetising dehydrated meals, I took great pleasure in introducing some va-va-voom to it by spooning on as much of John’s chilliewack as I felt I could morally defend. Because John’s chilliewack was bloody marvellous!

One of the volunteers struck up a conversation with me, asking how things were going, and so I offloaded what was on my mind that minute: how contented I felt that my brother had successfully completed Challenger South. She asked his time, and I reiterated what I’d been told at CP2, that it’d been within an hour of the final cutoff. “He must have been under such pressure”, I reflected.

She asked his name, and when I told her, she raised an eyebrow. “I saw him at Hawes. I’m sure I did. But he didn’t finish in 59 hours!” She explained he’d arrived around the same time as one of her friends, and that had been much earlier.

Both of us were confused now, so she double-checked my brother’s result for me on her phone. And there it was, in black and white: not 59 hours, but 54. Five whole hours earlier than I’d thought. Awesome! We both shared in the joy of that realisation, while I savoured the last dollop of spicy sauce.

Just before I left, the volunteer caught me and, with a beaming smile, she framed the remainder of the race in her unique, enheartening way. I’d be down at Alston CP in just a few hours, and then on to the finish on Friday - or early Saturday morning, at the very latest, she explained.

She said it all so assuredly that I couldn’t help but believe her, even though her estimates ran quite counter to my own. I’d made such slow progress and was so far behind where I ought to be that I’d entertained the thought that I might not finish before Sunday, or even before the final cutoff… But who was I to argue with such certitude?

So when I left Greg’s Hut and hit the long, runnable track down to Garrigill, I had her conviction playing in my mind. I ate more food, dropped a mitt and backtracked a bloody long way to find it, and all the while I couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps she was right.

I considered my context. My knee was OK right this moment. Alston was about 18km away. 3 hours was the target she’d set. That meant I’d need to exceed 6km/hour.

6km/hour mightn’t sound like much. After all, that’s just 10 minute kilometres, which is basically a decent walking pace. But the Pennine Way at the height of winter is not a 10 minute/km walking route. Consider that the winner of the Spine, an elite runner and seasoned veteran of the Pennine Way, would travel slower than 11 min/kms over the duration of the race.

That said, I still had 7km of descent ahead of me down to Garrigill, and I remembered it being a decent, runnable track. I stood a chance at least.

So I pushed hard on the descent, flying over all those jutting stones that carved into my sore feet, guided by the lure of Garrigill’s lights below.

I recalled that Spiners talk about Annie in Garrigill, someone who often appears to offer food and water. However I hadn’t seen her last year, and so wondered whether she might be helping out today.

It just so happened that I was overtaking another runner (the first I’d seen in hours) on the main street through Garrigill at the very moment Annie came out of her house and waved to us both, calling out offers of tea and supplies. I was surprised the runner I was passing didn’t respond, but when I looked at his face I saw an expression so tired I doubted he’d either seen or heard her. So it was for both of us that I waved back, smiled, and thanked her for her generosity.

It wasn’t until I’d passed that I realised I’d broken my own purposeful rule, to experience everything to the fullest. Should I have availed myself of a cup of tea and a chat? But I considered I was temporarily engaged in a new purpose, to reach Alston before 1:20am, within my 3 hour target. I had to keep up the pace, and so felt I could forgive my transgression.

Last year the Pennine Way had an official diversion around the South Tyne River path, cutting an astonishingly awkward route through outrageously muddy quagmires that’d make our southern cross country races look like road runs. Not to mention the awkward styles every 50 metres, squeezes alongside barbed wire fences, and other such nonsense.

I was nonplussed to find the diversion still in place. I thought I’d remembered how dire it was from last year, but this year seemed so much worse, probably because last year’s icing had mitigated the worst of the abominable mud. It wasn’t what I fancied dealing with after 300kms of Pennine Way carnage.

But I was acutely aware that time was ticking and my 3 hour target was fast approaching, so I gave that last awkward stretch to Alston everything I could. I banned myself from checking the time, lest its proximity to my target of 01:20 caused me to lose hope and back off the pace.

The Moment of Truth

It was with a duality of celebration and trepidation that I spotted the trail’s turning into the YHA up ahead. I couldn’t have exceeded 3 hours, I just couldn’t. There deserved to be a good news story here.

Only when standing in the entrance to Alston YHA did I finally allow myself to check the time. I grimaced, expecting the worst. Nothing else had gone right, why should this have?

I did a double-take when I saw the time, and I paused to double-check my calculations, but they were correct. I’d taken a couple of minutes under 3 hours. I’d made it! Something I’d done had worked!

And it’d all been thanks to an anonymous volunteer back in Greg’s Hut.

I cast my mind back to Cross Fell, where photons visited me from near and far. Even in that most remote of locations, I’d felt the strongest sense of unity and community.

As the volunteers at Alston cheerily welcomed me in, despite my muddy, smelly and practically punch-drunk demeanour, I smiled in appreciation of how immensely fortunate I was to be partaking in this crazy event once more.

How fortunate I was to be back in Zion.

Where the stars shine brightly, and our community shines brightest.

Continue reading Part 6:

30 incredibly long hours after setting off from CP1, I finally reached the youth hostel in Hawes. Thirty hours, that was 25% longer than it’d taken me last year. It showed just how difficult it’d been to hack paths through the snow.

The checkpoint’s L-shaped room was configured similarly to last year. I was even directed to the same chair in exactly the same position. The vibe of the room felt different though, and not for the better. The air of despondency was deeper.

I overheard one of the volunteers muttering “Challenger South had the slowest winning time on record”. That made sense, I figured. The deep snow had been challenging for us on full Spine, but it would have been even worse for those who’d started a day earlier in the Challenger South race. I could only imagine what its frontrunners had gone through, both the formidable task of breaking trail and the difficulty of navigation.

This felt like the right time to spotlight my second quote, from the United Nations’ Human Rights Council:

With that off my mind, I could attempt to unwind. As a volunteer handed me a steaming mug of tea, I enquired after my brother. “Has he finished?”

There’d just been a shift change so my volunteer didn’t know offhand, but he checked the tracking website for me.

“Yes, here you go - he’s down as a finisher”.

Woohoo! Good news at last! And just like that, I felt a weight lift from my shoulders. I really hoped he’d enjoyed it; well, not all of it, obviously, but parts of it. That he’d experienced some of the deep introspection that exceptional undertakings like the Spine can provoke. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience after all - well, supposedly…

I ordered some soup, and followed that up with vegan chilli. All the eating gave me time to take a deeper read of the room. People’s injuries looked particularly severe this year, with the frosted snow taking its toll on people’s feet and legs. There were some challenging scenes as people tried to process what they’d been through. I’d seen and experienced enough to need a break.

Last year, when I’d felt particularly wrecked at CP3, I took a lovely steaming hot shower. That’s what I ought to do now, I decided.

My shower was pleasant, but it didn’t feel the same as last year, because it didn’t feel like the right thing to be doing. In the context of a race, this was plain timewasting. Was I racing? If not, then what exactly was I doing here?

Why was I here?

Should I sleep here? I didn’t feel particularly tired, but I reasoned I probably would soon, and so I made the executive decision to sleep anyway. The bunkroom I was assigned to was full aside from one top bunk, where I lay, fiddling around with the alarm app on my phone, trying to set a 90 minute alarm that wouldn’t piss off everyone else in the room.

I closed my eyes expecting to fall asleep on a dime like I had last year, but my hand was in pain, throbbing relentlessly. I tossed and turned to no avail. For ages I tried, growing ever more frustrated, while nerves fired pain signals up my arm and thoughts crashed around my mind like that monkey with its cymbals. After 2 hours I cut my losses and headed back to the main room for another bowl of chilli. What a total failure that’d been; not only hadn’t I slept a wink, but I felt worse for totally wasting another couple of hours.

Packing for the next leg was a monumental task, for there wasn’t a dry or unworn item in my pack. Absolutely everything needed to be replaced.

And while I ran through the motions, sorting out each kit item one-by-one, I felt just like I had back at Malham Tarn. That I had no purpose being here; no DNF to correct, no poor time to improve upon, no novel strategy to bring to bear. All I had was quite possibly a broken hand.

With no insightful thoughts of my own, I allowed myself to become distracted by the chap next to me who was busy toasting his mobile phone with a cigarette lighter. A pretty risky strategy just to dry out one’s USB charging port.

By the time I’d finished packing my gear, volunteers were furnishing that chap with a lender phone. It seemed he’d taken his toasting a little too far.

A Great Emoshunal Rollercoaster

I’d been in the YHA for almost 7 and a half hours, very close to the 8 hour checkpoint limit. Where on earth the time had gone was quite impossible to discern.

I genuinely didn’t care though. Any sense that this was a ‘race’ had long since dissipated. Frankly that’d happened shortly after CP1, when I’d internalised that the snow would make for a slower time than last year.

All that aside; now it was daylight, the weather was fine, I was on a road, and it was clear of snow and ice. This was not normal! Should I use the opportunity to do something? I decided that shooting a segment of video made sense, so I pulled out my phone and started a vlog.

I was mid-diatribe when I noticed I was climbing up Great Shunner Fell. It looked so different in the light, without any snow. Instead I was trotting up a most agreeable dirt/stone track that had meltwater gently trickling down it. The conditions were pretty good too, just some mizzle and a light breeze. I didn’t mind this at all.

In fact, when snow reappeared higher up the fell and reminded me of the cols I’d crossed with my friends in the Pyrenees last summer, I really started to enjoy myself once more. Picking routes around icefields, those little gambles with the tufty bogs, all in fair weather - this was rather good fun!

When the sun broke through the clouds, I grinned widely. This was more like it! I properly let myself go on the descent, catching a couple of SSTs by surprise on the road into Thwaite. Given how far back in the field I was, I figured they expected to find someone rather less spritely and carefree than I was at that moment.

The sharp climb out of Thwaite caught me off-guard, until I was able to join the dots and comprehend where I was. This was the start of the sketchy singletrack I’d remembered so vividly from last year. It was a slither of angled trail that wrapped around the side of Kisdon Fell, and last year it’d been covered in slick ice. In my hallucinatory semi-conscious state, it’d been absolutely treacherous. The sound of water crashing over rocks far, far below had only added to a looming sense of doom.

This year, it looked very different. Under a glorious daytime sun and free of ice, it was no longer a death trail, but rather a marvellous stretch of singletrack boasting an incredible view over the valley.

It was still the Spine though, so the trail soon became trickier. It rambled endlessly up-and-down, over rocky protrusions, through mud, bog and more snow. It was impossible to develop any sort of rhythm here. Just as soon as I got up to speed, I’d have to slam the brakes on to pick my way over something else. Adding to my frustration, rain teased throughout, and so I fell back into my earlier despondency. Why was I putting myself through this again?

A Purposeful Tearoom

Hearing the sound of a waterfall, I sensed I was nearing Kisdon Force. This meant the end of this semi-technical section. Here the trail split in two, with the Pennine Way breaking right down into the valley, and a sign advertising Keld’s “Winter Tearoom” pointing along the remaining path. Last year, I’d desperately wanted to follow that sign and avail myself of warmth and shelter, but for some reason I didn’t and I’d regretted my decision for hours after.

Well, here I was again at that sign. Keld Winter Tearoom. Warmth, shelter, tea and cakes. It was a shame I didn’t need to stop this year, for the weather was fine, and I had ample food supplies. Frankly, the only thing I needed was a why, and I certainly wasn’t going to find that in a Winter Tearoom.

But this time around I remained standing beside the sign, an invisible force preventing me from running on. It might just be a tearoom, but I’d seriously regretted passing it by last year. Now I had another opportunity. Somehow it felt important that I complete the visit, irrespective of whether I needed a cup of tea or not. It just felt like the purposeful thing to do.

It took a good few minutes to reach the village of Keld, but I quickly assessed it to be a most pleasant looking village community, and so I readily entered its quaint tearoom. Inside I found a cosy room bedecked in wood panelling, strewn with travel magazines and burgeoning under the weight of homemade cakes and pastries. Here I met volunteers and village folk alike, with whom I engaged in some excited discussions about the eccentricities of the race.

One volunteer, John, an academic specialising in brain chemistry, recounted the hallucinations he’d experienced during last years’ Spine, and his self-analysis of them. I found learning about the science behind our madness fascinating. But my tea was drunk, and I’d been standing chatting in the tearoom for a half-hour. Spine HQ would dispatch a Safety Team if I stayed here trading stories any longer.

Running back toward the trail split, I reflected that in concrete terms, I’d wasted 40 minutes diverting to Keld, all for a cup of tea I didn’t need. But somehow it didn’t feel like time wasted. It felt like time well spent.

A Purposeful Inn

It was late afternoon, and the last of the sun bedecked Tan Hill in an effervescent light. The scene had for all the money in the world the look of a warm autumnal evening, with straw-coloured grass blending into deep oranges and punches of dark shadow, as though harvest were coming due. The only hint to the month of January came from the occasional punctuations of bright white snow.

If only the going were as dreamy as the mind’s eye, for despite appearances, the trail was unrelentingly waterlogged and boggy. I scanned the horizon for the Tan Hill pub, certain I should be able to pluck it out of the fellsides, but I could not. Instead tiredness tested me, offering up the odd hallucination - that branch, seemingly a man reclining - but; alas, no sight of Britain’s highest pub.

As I moved through this anti-oasis; my feet sloshing through water that was indistinguishable from desert from afar, my brain retreated back to the existential question of my why in the race. “I’m here reliving the experience, the emotions. Putting the jigsaw together. But what that means in terms of what I ought to do out here - how hard I push myself - who knows?”

There were also my logistics to consider. I had post-race accommodation and trains booked, and at this rate I might miss the lot. Perhaps I should push harder? But if this was the last time I’d be here, perhaps I should ease off and enjoy it? But what about the logistics… The arguments were circular, and I grew tired of my inane deliberations. Instead, I set myself a tangible goal of reaching Tan Hill Inn before dark.

While I didn’t quite make it before darkness set in, the revelation of Tan Hill’s lights was a sight for sore eyes. Just like at Keld, I had no need to avail myself of a rest here, but the same logic I’d employed at Keld rang true here as well. This was another stop I’d regretted passing by last year, and thus the only vague purpose I’d found - to experience everything as best I could - dictated that I must stop. So I did.

The inside of Tan Hill’s function room reminded me of a chalet in the Alps. Wooden throughout, furnished with quaint knick-knacks, boasting a well-stocked bar and a roaring fire that kicked out enough heat to burst the mercury out of your thermometer. It made me want to head straight to the check-in desk - “a single room for a month, please. Oh, go on then - make it three!”

Here I enjoyed an unexpected tomato soup and roll, and I sort-of set up shop here, with my feet up & phone out, taking care of social media. I checked on my friend Steve’s progress, and hummed away to the music, quite content in this little haven of tranquillity.

Hitting the 30 minute time limit, it was with some reluctance that I collected my gear and headed back out into the night. I supposed all good things must come to an end.

A Purposeful Bog

Over Sleightholme Moor, planets, constellations and a full moon popped against the otherwise pitch black night sky. This is probably the boggiest section of the Pennine Way. Flat, desolate and entirely isolating, it’s notorious for playing mind-games. Save the discordance of Tan Hill Inn’s rainbow lights fading away to the rear, there was nothing on the horizon to indicate humanity’s existence. Just 5km of pure, uninterrupted bog.

A lonesome danger sign warned to keep to the right to avoid disappearing into bottomless bogs. But, out here in the darkness with nothing to orient on, stay right of what, exactly? Poles were key to gauging the consequences of each step.

While I find myself reluctant to reflect too positively on a bog crossing, beneath that ultra-black starry sky, I found a strong sense of connection to the earth and cosmos that feels tangible to this day.

Sleightholme Moor Road offered a brief respite from the omni-bog, before the black hole that was Wytham Moor swallowed me up once more. Now the distant horizon teased me with an illuminated line running perpendicular, with dots of light skimming along it like aeroplanes. Was it real, or a hallucination?

After eons squelching through that bog, the illuminated line had developed into a road, and the dots into boxy little vehicles. Soon I could hear it, and then I was there, standing beneath it, cars rocketing overhead. People. All in their individual containers. Propelled through the landscape like rockets. Did they have any idea of the remarkable landscape they were hurtling through?

The Pennine Way crossed under the A66, before heading straight up onto the next barren expansion, Bowes Moor.

By now, mizzle had set in, the wind had picked up, and the temperature had plummeted, making the going extremely unpleasant. Here, the Pennine Way existed more in conception than reality, borrowing indistinct trods over this undulating omni-bog, criss-crossed by marshy streams that were best tackled with a hearty bound. It was all I could do to keep my head down and my feet pointed in the general direction of that most heavenly of refuges, Clove Lodge.

Tea by the Bale

The barn at Clove Lodge had proved an essential pit stop last year, when the bogwater had been even icier, and the weather even harsher. This year, while milder, the journey from Tan Hill had been wetter underfoot, and the bog tougher to traverse. My feet and I fancied another break.

Clove Lodge Tea & Coffee Stop is a sizeable barn of breezeblock and corrugated metal construction. The front is wide open, inviting one into the first half of the barn where long tables and industrial shelving creak under the weight of an eclectic range of chocolate bars, crisps, energy mixes and other edible wonders of broad and unusual origins. Drinks bottles and the all-important tea and kettle round out the nutritional offering, while a multiform collection of garden furniture and beachfront sun loungers offer space to relax with a view of the outside.

The barn was busy today. Two volunteers were seated, looking very comfortable with their steaming mugs of cocoa. Across the way, two runners stood over their chairs, grinning from ear-to-ear and gossiping excitedly like it were a school reunion.

It was lovely and wholesome, but the sunny disposition of my compatriots was in conflict with my own mood after such a wet & difficult stretch. After all, I’d been running for 62 hours and awake for 65, without so much as a jot of sleep. I was cold, wet, hungry, aching, a bit miserable, and only had proper use of one of my two hands. I still couldn’t clearly articulate why I was doing this silly thing. So I didn’t fancy putting on a happy face and chatting about how amazingly awesome everything was. And that made me feel like a killjoy, which made things even worse.

So, possibly slightly discourteously, I kept my head down and busied myself with my own activities. I boiled the kettle, hydrated my food pouch - a 5 Bean Cassoulet - and ate in silence, only nodding and smiling politely when called upon.

The two runners left, ushering in a peace within the barn. Feeling warmer, fuller, happier and much more communicative now, I struck up a conversation with the two volunteers. In no time I was engrossed in discussion, learning about their why for volunteering, what they’d been up to, what their aspirations were, all the while searching for my own answers. I drank at least two cups of tea during this discussion, though it could easily have been more (I wasn’t counting).

An hour had passed at Clove Lodge, wherein I’d principally chatted and drunk tea. It certainly hadn’t been a sensible use of time in racing terms, but it had very much felt like what I ought to do in Spine 2.0.

Realising it would be even colder now, I donned four upper layers before I left, refusing only my balaclava because it was still soaking wet from the previous night.

It certainly was cold back out in the bog. I shivered uncontrollably for quite some time, at a loss for ideas to warm up other than getting a move on. But getting a move on was easier said than done when the route consisted of a gate or style every 50 metres, linked by gloopy, sticky mud.

After such prolonged exposure to cold air, my respiratory system was really beginning to struggle. I pulled my buff up over my face to pre-warm the air, and was relieved to find this a gamechanger. I’d entirely forgotten about this aspect of last year’s race.

It was at the intersection of Pennine Way trail and B-road where I stumbled upon the strangest of situations. As if by magic, a miniature hay barn popped out of the darkness, illuminated by a warm orange glow. It was lined at the rear by a dozen stacked hay bales, and fronted by a folding stall and a lone gentleman, with his wares laid out before him. His shoulders were open, his hands were clasped in front and his face projected a genuine, welcoming, though slightly vacant smile. He reminded me of the shopkeeper from the old children’s TV show Mr Benn.

The shopkeeper waved, and called me over. I obliged, quite astounded to find this most peculiar of sights was no hallucination. It really was a miniature hay barn, and the shopkeeper turned out to be a volunteer. Well, I’ll be!

I didn’t need anything, since I’d recently drunk enough tea for a month of Sundays. But as I got talking with the gent, I learned he’d been awake almost as long as I had. He’d been waiting until I passed before catching some shut-eye, for behind me was a long wait until the next runner, apparently.

Knowing I’d kept him awake, I felt keenly as though I ought to have something, and so accepted yet another tea. But then I spotted his bowl of bananas, and jumped at the opportunity for my first piece of fruit for days. Rather a treat, that!

With a little more tea swishing around in my belly than I thought entirely wise, and a couple of bananas to the good, I set back off. Mercifully, the bogs were disappearing, the mud was reducing, and wonderful grassy, rolling fells were emerging. The going was becoming immeasurably easier.

But; alas, a new problem was developing. My GPS tracker (the beefy box taped to our pack straps) was digging into my shoulder, and it was cutting off blood flow, or affecting a nerve, or something. Whatever was going on, my shoulder was in agony, and it was damn near paralysing my left arm.

I could lift up the tracker to relieve myself of the symptoms, but as soon as I dropped the tracker back down onto my shoulder, I’d be in pain again. The rotational movement of running caused it to dig in awfully, though I found if I walked & kept my upper body rigid, I could avoid the worst of it. Then I discovered that adjusting my running gait into a non-rotational robotic waddle-run afforded a fair compromise between speed and pain reduction. It was all very awkward, and to make matters worse, my robo-gait seemed to enrage my tibialis anterior. Short of cutting off my GPS tracker, it seemed I couldn’t win.

So over these last couple of runnable grassy fells dropping down into Middleton, the best I could do in the end was walk. Which was ridiculous really, given how runnable this stretch was compared to everything that had come before. But instead of losing myself in frustration, I pottered along quite happily, gazing down upon the lights of Middleton and imagining what the residents might be up to at 2am on a wintry Wednesday morning.

I passed straight through the town, turning left to join the 13km riverside stretch that torrential rain had made so thoroughly miserable for me last year.

Shielded from the wind down here, I felt much warmer, and mercifully my GPS tracker seemed to have shifted into a position that felt immeasurably more comfortable, allowing me to command a decent running pace once more. I’d be able to enjoy this stretch this year, and take in the sights - High Force, for instance, widely regarded as one of the best waterfalls in England. It all felt correct. This must be what the return to Spine was all about.

The Great Unraveling

I checked on the distance to CP3, but as usual my Enduro 2 was rebooting, as it had been roughly every half-hour for days now. Like at the base of Fountain’s Fell, I decided to roll up the sleeves on my other arm so I could access my Forerunner 955 and take a distance reading from that instead.

But when I finally revealed my 955’s screen, I could tell something was up. I had it on a clock screen to save battery, and I knew that wasn’t the right time. I furrowed my brow, unwilling to entertain the implication. I tried to scroll the watch to its navigation screen, but the 955 didn’t respond. It just sat there on the clock screen, showing a static time that I knew to be wrong. The watch had frozen.

I stood motionless, disbelieving the situation. Here I was, in the middle of the Spine, sporting two top-end Garmin watches. Both of them were broken. What was the f***ing point of these things if they couldn’t even manage basic nav?

I’d used both of these watches last year, and they’d both performed perfectly. This year; well, look at me. Thousands of pounds of Garmin gear, and I had nothing.

I Googled how to soft reset a 955, but when I followed the instructions it only rebooted my 955 to a blue Garmin triangle, where it stayed. I stood around drumming my fingers for 5 minutes, but nothing changed. The watch seemed to be bricked.

That was the last straw. All my frustrations about Garmin came flooding out. The bugs they’d introduced over the past year. Their focus on headline features over stability. I started listing all the whacky problems these two watches had manifested for the very first time during this race, but the list was so long I couldn’t retain them all in my head without a pencil and paper. I pulled out my phone and recorded an irate rant, which I then edited down; but then I ditched that and recorded a longer one, and edited that. Somewhere in the middle of all this my Forerunner crawled back to life, hanging its watchface in shame.

When it came to publishing my video, I first looked up and around, and drew breath. When I’d started making this video it was totally dark, and now there was enough light to make out features. I was surprised to discover I was standing in the middle of a muddy field in a valley. What on earth had I been doing?

It was getting to the point when HQ would be thinking about dispatching a team to check on me. I’d better move my dot, pronto! Not because I cared about being DQ’d for failing to report in, but because there might be other people who needed the Safety Team’s help more urgently than I, who had, somewhat inexplicably, been standing around in a field filming a documentary about Garmin watches.

Back on the go, my mind was tied up in knots. Had Garmin just pushed the most disastrous software update in the history of wearable devices? It hardly seemed plausible. Maybe they’d been sabotaged by a rival company - this wasn’t such a stretch of the imagination, considering their debilitating ransomware attack back in July 2020.

The remaining 10km to Langdon Beck was not the pleasurable sightseeing tour to High Force that I’d hoped for. I was busy mentally unplugging myself from the race. I’d had enough of Zion, I decided. My moving forward had nothing to do with the Spinebow any more. I would have happily ripped off that tracker and thrown it into the river. I was quite simply showing a middle finger to Garmin, the Spine’s Sentinel, and its continual efforts to frustrate me.

Arriving at Langdon Beck YHA, I maintained a deadpan expression as I shuffled past a courier van blocking the driveway, and weaved between piles of drop bags lining the pathway to the entrance.

I didn’t even bother trying to put my worthless Enduro 2 into rest mode, but instead rolled up my sleeves to reveal my Forerunner 955 and hit its rest button, which had worked earlier. But all that did was start a new lap. Err… what?

On Garmin watches, the rest button doubles as a lap button. All I could think was that after its freeze and reboot, the 955 had mistakenly automatically resumed the activity in ‘regular’ run mode rather than ‘ultra’ run mode (which switches the lap button to function as a rest button).

That was it. I’d had enough.

F*** Garmin.

F*** the Spine.

F*** the box.

F*** the monkey.

F*** the why.

I had reached the end of my tether, and the end of my story.

It was time to call it quits.

I wanted nutritious food, a hot shower, a good night’s sleep.

And then I wanted to go back f***ing home.

Continue reading Part 5:

The snow was so severe that the Scout Centre in Hebden Hey (our usual CP1 venue) had been snowed-in. So the Spine hired the Birchcliffe Centre in Hebden Bridge as a last-minute replacement. It’s an imposing building; a stone mansion, fronted by a series of concave arches held aloft by Tuscan pillars. Inside its foyer, it felt like I’d entered an ancient place of worship. Then I was led through its mezzanine floor, down into the bosom of the great hall.

I was surrounded on three sides by wooden stands rising steeply toward lofty windows. A smattering of spectators gazed down toward me.

This felt more like a Colosseum, and I was in the arena. I imagined a lion being released, the audience goading it, and a brutal fight to the death.

It felt like an appropriate moment to make the first of my statements, this one originating from the global anti-poverty charity Oxfam:

That sobering business taken care of, I moved on to tackle my new-for-2025 laminated checkpoint checklist. Feeling many pairs of eyes boring into me from the stands, I tried my best to look like a competent professional while I worked through it.

I hit the ‘rest’ button on my Enduro 2, which inexplicably crashed. Then I hit the ‘rest’ button on my Forerunner 955, which also acted up, but after some perseverance it did eventually enter its rest mode. A minor success there.

Next, I couldn’t get either Garmin watch to charge. I’d prepared for this eventuality by bringing 5 USB-C cables and 10 Garmin adapters in my drop bag; but it seemed that none of them worked, which made no sense whatsoever.

After 5 minutes of frantic cable switching and heightening frustration, I flicked the Enduro 2 onto its settings screen so I could see the battery percentage. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the number tick upwards by one percent. What…?

I threw my arms up in the air in disbelief. It turned out both my Garmin watches had been charging, they just hadn’t been showing their charging overlays like they usually do.

“F***ING GARMIN!” I muttered under my breath. Well, I’d certainly intended to mutter it under my breath; but the runners, volunteers and spectators all seemed to be staring at me. Perhaps I hadn’t muttered it, so much as bellowed it across the whole hall… after spending half a day battling the Enduro 2’s crashes and locational myopia, something had to give.

I moved onto charging my phone, but that turned out to be suffering from the most terrible of afflictions: a moist charging port. It took quite some perseverance to get that going.

With all the technical challenges keeping me occupied, I straight up forgot about the 12-24 hour deluge ahead. It slipped my mind to switch my lightweight waterproof jacket for my heavy-duty Phase Nano, and to replace my lightweight waterproof trousers with my rugged Montanes. While I switched to larger shoes, I forgot to fit them with gaiters. I accidentally left behind my hooded windproof. And as for the extra midlayer I’d intended to pack, that too become just another unfulfilled intention lost in the mists of technological despair.

In need of some good news, I fired up the Spine’s OpenTracking webpage to check my brother’s progress in Challenger South. I found him close to Gargrave, which was pretty good going for the heavy snow conditions, and bode well for his completing the race.

I was almost ready to go when I noticed my Enduro 2 hadn’t built up much charge. When I kept an eye on the charge percentage, I realised it’d actually stopped charging. There’d been no easy way to tell without its usual charging overlay. The f***ing thing!

That ended up delaying me for quite a while longer while I twiddled my thumbs waiting for it to charge back up. (Usually I’d have charged it on the go, but given all the trouble I was having with it today, I preferred to wait).

With the Enduro finally sufficiently recharged, I made to leave for the second time. I was pretty nonplussed to see I’d spent 90 minutes inside CP1, basically the same sluggish turnaround time as last year. But I took solace from the fact that most of it was due to Garmin malfunctions.

Thumbs Down To Colden

It was a long way back from the Birchcliffe Centre to the Pennine Way. Just like the runners from earlier, I too returned in silence, evading the eyelines of those still on their way to CP1.

A couple of them asked me how far it was. I smiled back and tried my best to meld honesty and encouragement into the phrase “it’s a little way yet, but it’s worth the wait”. What else could I say - “a few kilometres further, then drop down a near-vertical road, traipse along the river, through the town, dodge the raving drunkard, and climb up the other side of the valley?”

By the time I rejoined the Pennine Way, I calculated that this leg would be about 7km longer than usual, making it at least 106km! Rather a long way before I could resupply. Especially with deepening snow, another diversion ahead, and that weather forecast predicting a half day or so of rain...

First things first, I still had to get myself along the Pennine Way to Colden (where CP1 would usually be found), so I could properly begin the second leg. I needed to drop back down into the same valley I’d just clambered out of, then climb all the way up the other side, through a mix of Hebden’s cobbled pathways, narrow stone-walled alleys, fields and river crossings, until I reached Colden.

That was easier said than done in this snow.

With night setting in, the wind picking up and temperatures plummeting fast, I had to raise my hood and add my fleece-lined mitts. I’d have added more layers, but there was nowhere suitably sheltered to stop. The snow continued to deepen, and slippery ice cropped up ever more frequently, all contributing to my steadily slowing pace.

It was a tricky little climb away from the river. In the darkness, it wasn’t easy to spot the patch of black ice on the path. My Mafates’ Vibram Megagrip soles were my last line of defence, but they were no match for such a supremely slick surface. So my feet simply shot out from under me, and I came crashing down onto the ice. I softened my landing by outstretching an arm, which certainly benefited my hip, but not my thumb.

I writhed around on the ice, simultaneously trying to right myself and distract from the splitting pain in my hand. Try as I might, with just two legs and one hand functioning, I couldn’t get enough purchase on the ice to stand. So I sat myself up, and paused, taking stock. My thumb was injured, and it was too painful to remove the glove to take a look at it.

My headtorch was skew-whiff, so I righted that, and looked around for the energy bar I’d been eating. I found it wedged in the snow behind me. My waterproof mitts had been dangling by their cords at the time, so my gloves were soaked through and my hands were freezing. I needed to get my fleecy mitts on, but without a functioning left thumb that was really difficult. So I did the only thing I could, and gradually worked each mitt up over my gloves using my teeth.

Using the rocks by my side for balance, I managed after a few attempts to haul myself up and safely onto solid snow.

I’d injured a thumb last year too. But this time the injury was worse, and it was still very early on in the race, with most of the course ahead of me. How would I manage with only one functioning hand?

How far was it to Colden from here? I looked at my Enduro 2 for answers, but that thing still hadn’t managed to recalculate its waypoint distances since Hebden. I might as well have been carrying a chocolate teapot. At least I could’ve eaten that.

The Wrong Spikes

Between all the snow, and wind, and one immobile hand, it was nearly midnight by the time I reached Colden. I hadn’t been able to look after myself properly, so there was much to sort out here. Out of the wind, I delicately worked a windproof jacket over my immobile thumb, and removed some food from my pack.

I ate while hiking up over snowy cobblestones, and used the opportunity to run some calculations. Originally I’d estimated 22 hours for the CP1 → CP2 leg. Factoring in an extra 7km from the relocation of CP1, the worsening underfoot conditions, my broken hand, and the approaching weatherfront coupled with the bad weather gear that I’d forgotten to bring, that 22 hours was starting to look mightily optimistic. I just hoped I had enough food and power to make it to Hawes.

A sharp climb away from Heptonstall Moor brought me to a large glossy ice sheet. It angled down into a darkness my headtorch couldn’t illuminate. I rested a foot on it, intending to gauge its friction. But my foot slid straight away from under me, down toward the precipice. I lost my balance, though I just managed to launch my bodyweight from my other foot, angling my body away from that cliff edge. I came crashing down, landing half on that slick ice sheet; but fortunately, half on a layer of thick snow, which was just enough to halt my slide down into oblivion.

A near-death experience amply met my threshold for microspikes, so I hauled myself up into the snow to put on my Yaktrax. Feeling much more confident in these clunky contraptions, I bounded along quite happily - for all of 60 seconds, until the trail spat me out onto a tarmac road.

I sighed and stopped to take off the Yaktrax, spending a couple of minutes stuffing the awkward things back into the little black bag I’d brought for them. Not 20 seconds afterwards, my grip faltered again as more ice materialised on the road.

I glared at the bag with my Yaktrax. I couldn’t play yo-yo, taking them off and putting them back on every couple of minutes. They probably wouldn’t be much use on these razor thin layers of ice anyway. This needed nanospikes, and I didn’t have any of those.

It was with a heavy heart that I delicately picked my way up the slippery road. If I couldn’t make good progress through the deep snow, or the ice sheets, or now even the roads; then where, exactly, could I make good progress? How bloody long would it take to get to Hawes at this pace?

Why was I putting myself through this nonsense again?

Arctic Explorer

Reaching Walshaw Dean Reservoir brought memories flooding back from last year. I remembered standing right in this very spot, clasping my shoulder in agony, reckoning that my race was run, and wondering how I’d even make it to a place of safety in those freezing temperatures.

At least it wasn’t as cold this year, and there wasn’t nearly so much ice. My shoulder was alright too, even in spite of my sewing faux-pas. But the snow was deeper, my thumb was buggered, and my lack of a why was dragging me down. Why… why do this again?

Conditions deteriorated further over Top Withens, where the snow deepened to waist height. I was immensely grateful that the Challenger South runners had broken trail yesterday, leaving half-metre deep footprints and chasms. Even so, just to land my feet in those footprints, I had to raise my legs up to my chest with each step.

Then there was the curiosity of the thaw. It had begun, and was resulting in meltwater flowing beneath the snow. With every step I took, I could never be sure if the snow layers would hold, or whether they’d fail, and plummet me down to the ground beneath. I used poles to help mitigate the worst of it.

From Ponden Reservoir, the long climb over Bare Hill revealed how the fell had gained its name. Fully exposed up here for a long and arduous trudge through the deep snow, the wind howled something silly. And when the footprint chasms grew even deeper, they diverged from our charted GPX route, leaving me forging new paths in places and gambling with the off-GPX trodden route in others. It felt like a scene out of a movie where an Arctic explorer battles a storm in a fight for his very survival.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I recognised the hillside descent to Cowling. I remembered that it was in the little bus shelter down below that I’d stopped to add a jacket last year, and had frozen my hands in the process. I’d stop there again now, add more clothes and eat some food, because all that poling through the snow had left me ravenous.

But somehow I talked myself out of stopping at the bus shelter, and instead continued straight through the town of Cowling. Hungry and cold, the respite of Lothersdale while within 4km still felt an awfully long way away.

Freddy Krueger and the Face

I was descending a track dusted with a layer of snow just slight enough to obscure whatever was beneath it. So I never saw the ice that caused my body to swing acrobatically in three-dimensions. One minute I was a runner, and the next a passenger on a gravity-fuelled voyage of forces, vectors and motion.

My face made impact first, followed by the rest of my rag-doll body. I lay there, spread-eagled, with my face buried in the ice. What had just happened? I could feel pain, but couldn’t tell where from. Was my nose broken? No, I didn’t think so. If my nose was broken I’d know it. I’d nose it. Ha! Nose. What a funny word.

My thumb, the same thumb from earlier, that was firing a few neurons for sure. Throbbing violently, like Popeye’s arm after popping a can of spinach. But if I was mainly feeling my thumb, then my nose couldn’t be too bad, could it?

I hauled myself to my feet where I held myself in a bent-over pose with my hands on my knees. Where I just slid further down the ice until I lost my balance again and tumbled back over in slow motion. There ought to be a night vision camera here streaming live to YouTube, I thought. I’d be a hit!

If I’d been unable to remove my glove to inspect my thumb earlier, I certainly wouldn’t be able to remove it after this. So there really wasn’t anything else to do other than crack on.

The rest of the journey to Lothersdale was fairly fresh in my memory from October’s recce with my brother, which helped me calm my frayed nerves and build back into a steady rate of progress. However, I was a bit concerned my face might look like it’d undergone the Freddy Krueger treatment. This wasn’t just a question of vanity. Medics were on the lookout for head injuries, as concussion could call into question one’s fitness to proceed. But I had remained conscious throughout, and if I remembered correctly, that was usually the deciding factor.

From last year, I knew exactly what to expect from the tri tent, and when I arrived I needed zero encouragement from the volunteers to burst inside, shout “Honey, I’m home!”, order a vegan butty and a tea, and collapse into a chair swaddled in a melange of warm blankets and heat reflectors.

This was a good, good place to be. I wolfed down my butty, downed my sugary tea, leant back and closed my eyes. Peace at last.

Time dripped through my fingers, far too quickly. Drip, drip, drip. It was pouring off of my throbbing thumb and pooling beneath me. We were only permitted to stay here for 30 minutes. Without a why to draw me back out into the winter wilderness, I intended to use every one of those 30.

I pulled out my phone to check on my brother’s progress in Challenger South. I was hugely relieved to learn he was almost at Horton. There was only another 20km or so to the finish at Hawes. He was going to complete it!

My 30 minutes was up, so I stuffed some money into a protesting MRT member’s hand and thanked them all profusely. This tent is such an important respite along the incredibly long drag to Gargrave.

Frank on Ice

Outside the tent, night had been busy turning back to day. The wind kicked in with some ferocity as soon as I climbed over rooftop height, so I was mightily grateful that my windproof did such a stellar job repelling the worst of it. I decided to stow my poles to help me focus on eating.

Under the slightly warmer daytime temperatures, I managed to maintain a fairly positive disposition, though a low point came when I watched a runner tackle a slippery ice patch by confidently sauntering over it without a care in the world, all while holding an animated conversation on his phone. How on earth did he do that? Over that same patch I slipped and slid and flailed around like a clown. Compared to the consummate professional in whose footsteps I was following, I must have looked like Frank out of Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em.

But the odd patch of ice aside, conditions really did seem to be improving now. Ahead, I could see a much flatter profile to the landscape. The fields were easier underfoot, with less snow and more green grass showing through. And my concern that snowmelt would turn the fields into muddy quagmires didn’t seem to be playing out, not this far south anyway.

On Cam Lane I picked up a drafter. His eyelids looked like they had 1 tonne anvils weighing them down, how he could see his way I didn’t know. He never spoke a word. I went through a cycle of holding gates open to let him catch up before pulling away from him again, but he always managed to stay within line of sight, and toiled hard to catch me back up before the next gate. I figured he was holding onto my coat-tails to save the hassle of navigating, and probably for some motivation too.

Since I’d started drinking caffeinated Tailwind after Lothersdale, my stomach hadn’t felt entirely settled, and I’d stopped eating. Now over the undulating fields toward Gargrave my chickens were coming home to roost, and it was I who was running low on energy. I slowed my pace to a run-walk, and after matching me for a while, my sleepwalking drafter decided to push on past me.

As I watched him disappear over the undulations, I scored a minor victory by finally managing to ease the glove off my injured hand. There weren’t any bones sticking through my palm, so that was a plus. Come on, mate. Gargrave isn’t far away. Shake a leg!

My arrival time into Gargrave provided a simple way to compare progress against last year. The Co-Op opens at 7am, and last year I’d arrived almost bang on 7am, in what could have been described as perfect timing. This year, I’d arrived at 10:20. I was three-and-a-quarter hours behind. I’d lost all that and more since CP1.

Sure, for a fairer comparison I ought to account for the 7+ kilometres of additional mileage from the diversion to the relocated CP1. But even that still left me an hour or so behind.

I plonked myself down on the bench seating in Gargrave’s semi-circular outdoor shelter, and carefully extracted my phone from its broken zip pocket to check on my brother’s progress. He was just 10km from the finish now. He basically had it in the bag!

Then I checked on Steve, my friend who was also running the full. He was on the approach to Lothersdale; so not all that far behind me, and about to enjoy a 30 minute break. Everyone was doing well! Everyone else, anyway. Goodness knows what I was up to.

Food-wise, I still had plenty of supplies remaining - in stark contrast to the first leg. But it still made sense to visit the Co-Op and scavenge some proper grub. There I found a jackfruit & rice bowl, a vegetable samosa, and a strawberry & banana smoothie, and carted the lot back to the outdoor shelter to feast.

In between mouthfuls, I checked the weather forecast, hoping the 12+ hours of rain might have faded away. But no, the forecast was upgraded to ‘heavy’ rain, and it was scheduled to run all the way from my arrival at Malham Tarn through the night and well into the following morning.

Since the rain was almost upon me, I used the opportunity to wrap myself up in my waterproofs. I really wished I’d brought my heavyweight gear with me, this ultra lightweight stuff wouldn’t last 5 minutes.

On the way out of Gargrave, while I was doing another Frank Spencer impression on an icy road, someone shouted my name. It was Mark Collinson, out walking his dog.

I’d run with Mark briefly during last year’s Spine. We’d met along the banks of the River Tees before CP3, during a torrential downpour that left us both soaked, shivering, and extremely appreciative of the crackling fire at Langdon Beck YHA.

After some reminiscing with Mark, I bid him farewell and trotted off, lost in memories of last year’s Spine. Glancing down at my Enduro 2, I was overjoyed to see it actually working for once, showing me the distance to the next checkpoint and everything!

But… wait a minute, where was my route line? I cocked an eyebrow and stared at the screen. Bugger, I was off course. I zoomed the screen out, and found I’d missed my turning a good half a km ago. And the Enduro 2 knew it, and hadn’t bothered notifying me…? This same watch had been perfect last year. What for the love of gadgetry was going on?!

The Valleys and Tarns of Yesteryear

Having righted my route, I soon found myself wending through a peaceful valley. The superb path meandered lazily around River Aire, neither hugging its banks nor veering too far from them.

I recalled this section well. Last year, I’d struggled badly with sleep demons here. I’d drifted in and out of consciousness, struggling to keep abreast of where real world ended and dreamscape began.

To see this section again, more compos mentis this time, felt meaningful. Also I felt relieved that it was mostly as I had remembered, despite my state of semi-consciousness at the time. Though I did find it curious how my memories were confined to the beauty of the valley itself, with no recollection of the resplendent fells to either side. Had I not looked up?

So why was I back here, pounding these trails again, I wondered? “I think part of it is reliving the trauma, revisiting the sites, and just making sense of what happened”.

I definitely felt a catharsis from this stretch of trail.

However, no section of the Spine leaves one entirely unchallenged. In the relative warmth of midday, with the valley protecting me from the wind and being wrapped up in not-very-breathable waterproofs, I actually found myself overheating.

So I removed my waterproofs, and then the rain clouds spat; so I re-added them, then the rain stopped and I removed them again, and so on and so forth, seemingly ad-infinitum. The ominous clouds seemed to take great pleasure in toying with me.

I breezed through Malham, acknowledging a couple of members of the Spine Safety Team, and turned my mind ahead toward Malham Cove. I relished the opportunity to return there, since I most fondly recalled the unbridled pleasure I’d taken from leaping over its organically-shaped boulders last year.

At the top of the climb to the Cove, a race photographer snapped photos and then pointed me in the direction he’d seen other runners head. Helpful, since navigating this boulder field is much easier said than done.

However, for some reason I felt I knew better, and made my way over the boulders. Just like last year, I went off in completely the wrong direction. And while I tried to extract myself from many tricky spots on treacherous snowed-in rocks, I imagined the photographer watching from afar, throwing his arms in the air, questioning how on earth this idiot had managed to get himself all the way up here from Edale.

After a much tougher boulder scramble than necessary, there was still a long slog to go over an awkward mix of rocks and tufty bogs to reach Malham Tarn, during which my feet were rarely out of water from all the snowmelt. My Dexshell waterproof socks had failed a long time ago, so in a practical sense the immersion hardly mattered, but it served as a reminder that I’d need to pay close attention to the state of my feet going forward.

Reaching Malham Tarn somehow felt like arriving back home. I kept staring across the dark waters of the lake, searching for the ‘mansion’ that I swore I’d seen from this vantage point last year. But try as I might, I couldn’t pick it out. It hadn’t been a hallucination though, since a kilometre out from the CP I finally spotted it on the approach.

I Should Never Have Re-entered

CP1.5 was located in one of the small outbuildings behind the mansion. I requested a tea and some hot water, in order to deploy one of my innovations for 2025: a dehydrated meal. That was a lesson I’d learned right here at Malham Tarn, from watching others tucking into their steaming hot meals, while I could only chew on a cold bar.

This time, I had a hot meal of my own, and my chipotle chilli with rice was delicious! I wolfed it down like a shipwrecked passenger might their first meal back on dry land. It was so good that I kicked myself for only packing a couple more dehydrated meals in my drop bag. What if there were more kettles than I had hot meals? If I found a kettle along the Pennine Way, I decided I wanted a meal to cook with it.

Before I left, I decided to give my feet the best chance to avoid trenchfoot by performing a full sock change. It was a gamble, given the next stretch was probably going to be boggy straight out the blocks and I only had a limited supply of Dexshells, but I calculated it was a gamble worth taking. “Use the good vanilla” - I couldn’t remember where I’d read that phrase, but that’s what I was doing. Using the good vanilla. (My Savage Trail friends will appreciate the sock-food metaphor, and if I’d had any Pasta alla Norma, I’d have certainly sprinkled that on too).

Amidst my refuelling and foot-culinary preparations, there was a sobering development in the checkpoint. Two chaps who I’d breakfasted with yesterday morning, Cedric and Ashley, were both here. They were both injured, and were both having to withdraw from the race.

I’d traded thoughts and places with Ashley on multiple occasions from Devil’s Dyke onwards, and had fully expected him to go on and perform well. And Cedric - I knew him from last year’s Spine, and knew what finishing meant to him this year.

They were both wishing me well, but I could see the sadness in their eyes, and hear a mix of dejection, frustration and longing in their voices. They’d have given their right arms to continue in the race. And that made me feel supremely awkward.

Because I’d already completed it. I didn’t seem to have any material reason I could put my finger on to run it again. I would happily have traded places with either of them then and there. I was taking a place from someone who needed the finish more than I. And, frankly, between my wafer-thin waterproofs and the torrential rain about to begin, this felt like an the ideal place to hang up my gear and duck out of the race.

I should never have re-entered.

“Make the most of it!” they insisted. It sounded as if they planning to live vicariously through me, as I had through my brother.

How could I possibly respond? If I’d told them I couldn’t have given a toss about the race; that I had no motivation, no why, and would much rather have quit, that’d have knocked the wind out of whatever sails they had left. But if I’d acted as though I were raring to go, that’d have been a brazen lie.

So I clammed up, unable to compose a suitable reply. In the end I diverted the conversation, wished them both a speedy recovery and hurried out of the CP with my tail between my legs.

Other people desperately wanted to run this while I desperately wanted not to. What on earth was I doing here? Taking up other people’s places, that’s what. I was an unwilling observer getting in everybody’s way.

I should never have re-entered.

Through the fading light, what had been a blue sky early in the day was now a mat of grubby cotton-wool. It grew dirtier, more ominous, and started to rain; light at first, but rapidly building into a deluge that had me soaked through in minutes. The darker and wetter things got, the angrier the scene became.

Yet there was someone else, or something else, out here on these embattled fells. A massive mechanical monster with an evil grin of high beams, tearing around the fellside like one of the Sentinels. Had a kid stolen a multimillion-pound tractor and taken it for a joyride in this f***ing storm? I needed this like a shot in the arm.

I should never have re-entered.

The Easy 10k to Horton

I couldn’t remember what was coming up ahead very clearly, but I figured the route would take me directly to Horton, and from there up-and-over Pen-y-Ghent to CP2 at Hawes. How long would I need to endure these conditions before I reached cover at Horton? In resigned hope, I looked at my Enduro 2, willing it to show me my waypoint distances; but of course, it was still as high as a kite, showing me simultaneously off- and on-course.

Never mind about the Enduro. Horton couldn’t be that far away, surely… 10k, perhaps?

I began my climb up Little Fell on a snowy, slushy, waterlogged trail. The higher I climbed, the more things deteriorated. Wind buffeted me from the side, and the rain ratcheted up until I may as well have been standing under a power shower. Underfoot, the slush was replaced by snow that grew deeper and deeper, until it overtopped my quads, forcing me to wade and then clown-walk through it.

The deep, deep footsteps left by the Challenger South runners made it so much easier than it would’ve been to break trail through this alien landscape, but the effort was still extremely weighty. Just lifting my legs high enough to clear the snow was a tall ask for a short chap like me, especially as I am most definitely not a yogi.

Bracing myself against the doof-doof of my foot falling through multiple collapsing layers of snow, down into the unknown abyss below, was both tiring and perilous in equal measure.

Then the footsteps and carved chasms began to deviate from the GPS course, like they had over Bare Fell. I investigated side routes that looked more accurate, only to find them veer further off course, or disappear entirely. I had to break fresh trails to get back to better paths, sometimes getting stuck in waist-deep snow I could hardly move through at all.

Meanwhile, the wind gusted, the rain poured, and fog set in. This bounced the light from my headtorch straight back into my face, blinding me rather than illuminating the way. It was another world up here.

I’d been fighting the fell and the weather for days, weeks, most probably decades. But finally, mercifully the angle of the terrain began to veer downwards. Over this side of the fell, sharp wet rocks peeked out of the snow, willing me to slip and impale myself. A cliff-edge emerged to my side, the pitch black beyond leaving no question as to the implications of a slip here. And the rocks by the edge were slippery, interspersed by deep snow whose behaviour was entirely unpredictable. Cautiously, I manoeuvred myself downwards, weighing a rapid descent out of the weather against the need to survive the scramble.

When the rocky terrain eased, the mud & ice began. Rain fired into my face like darts of ice, causing me to draw in my hood, though that offered scant protection. I just wanted to get down, and so I threw caution to the wind and hurled myself down the fellside, landing my feet as quickly as I dared such that they may catch me when I slipped.

But the ice darts were softening, and the wind was relenting, and quite possibly, the ground was gradually levelling out. I didn’t know it at the time, but I’d just overtopped Fountain’s Fell.

The trail popped me out onto Silverdale Road, into relative calm and quiet. There was only a light smattering of rain now. I stood for a moment, in awe of what I’d just experienced. The raw forces of nature, the extraterrestrial world, and the claustrophobic bubble of solitary confinement.

Gazing back in the direction of the fell, I spotted a headlight appear high up above, and gradually edge fractionally closer. I couldn’t believe it. That was the first sign of life I’d seen for hours.

I snapped back to the moment. I must be nearly at Horton now, which was probably just down the road, and thank goodness for that! After hours of freezing wet-through conditions, and hardly eating or drinking a thing, I desperately needed a place to recover.

My Enduro 2 still wasn’t showing any waypoint distances, so I zoomed around its map, trying to locate Horton and estimate its distance. This wasn’t easy on the Enduro’s little screen, but one thing became clear - it was bloody miles away.

F*** this for a game of toy soldiers. I invested a couple of minutes rolling up each of the four tight-fitting sleeves on my left arm to reveal my trusty Forerunner 955, and opened up its nav screen. See, this Garmin watch was working - why couldn’t the so-called Enduro 2 manage it? The clue’s in the name - Enduro - that’s literally the whole point of the bloody thing. Anyway, there it was, Horton. Just 9km away.

Huh - 9km? I played with it on my tongue. 9, nine, n-iii-ne. Such a funny word, n-iii-ne.

“How are there still NINE KILOMETRES to Horton?” I shouted in the direction of the speck of light descending towards me. “There were 9 kilometres to Horton 3 f***ing hours ago when I left Malham bloody Tarn!” At least, I had thought there were. Assumed there were.

“That f***ing Enduro 2! Why the f*** can’t it f***ing work for more than a f***ing minute at a f***ing time, that crash-looping waypoint-blind non-charging piece of sh**!”

The Pen-Y-Ghent Conundrum

I was growing cold, standing in the rain in my sodden clothes. And that headtorch was drawing closer, perhaps a couple of minutes away. Not fancying company at this precise moment, I turned away and set off along the road.

The road was flooded, and iced, of course. I picked my way around obstacles at a snail’s pace, no longer caring much at all. The runner from behind caught me up, though we didn’t exchange words. He didn’t appear very happy either.

I was going to let him go, but at the last minute decided to tag along behind him instead. Why not? Might as well, the faster I moved the sooner I’d reach Horton. But I soon found I didn’t want to run in his wake, and so I overtook him instead, seeking solitude up ahead.

A bright sign stopped me in my tracks. It was an arrow, pointing left. A diversion arrow?

I racked my brains. I knew there was a diversion, but that was around Pen-y-Ghent, and I thought Pen-y-Ghent came after Horton. Had I somehow missed Horton? Surely not.

The anonymous runner caught me back up, along with another runner who had his arm outstretched, holding a handheld GPS. This was the diversion, they both agreed, and set off in the direction of the sign.

I remained by the sign, still confused. If the diversion was left, then I had to be standing at the base of Pen-y-Ghent. So Pen-y-Ghent came before Horton, and I must have misremembered the route. Really? Argh, f*** it...

Still not entirely convinced, I extracted my Garmin eTrex handheld GPS from the depths of my pack. I’d loaded all the diversion routes onto it. But no sooner had I pressed the power button, I realised I didn’t have the patience to wait 5-10 minutes for this old Garmin device to boot up and, if I was lucky, deign to show me a map. I shoved the thing back in my pack, and shot off to catch up with the other two runners. F*** Garmin, I’d be better off following them.

The diversion started at 530m at the base of Pen-y-Ghent’s southern ascent, and forked us west down a direct 300m descent emerging in Horton in Ribblesdale.

Just like the descent from Fountain’s Fell, the rain continued unabated, the fog played unsporting games with the light from our headtorches, and in the deep snow, this technical, scrambly descent was borderline treacherous. We three kept our heads down and rotated the lead runner like a peloton, all the while pushing each other to move faster and faster over the terrain, regardless of the snow, the ice, the sheer drops; for we each needed to reach shelter.

Safely down in Horton, I pushed the pace even harder on the roads, dropping the other two until finally - finally - I reached the waypoint that I’d been searching for for the past 4 hours and 20 minutes. Horton’s public toilets.

In a moment of madness, I shrugged, said “f*** it”, and ran past, setting my sights on Hawes. But thank goodness I had enough sense remaining to re-evaluate; to stop, turn around, and retrace my steps back to the toilet block. I hit the rest button to track my rest time, which naturally crashed the Enduro 2.

Inside were my two sullen compatriots. The chap in the thick orange storm-proof waterproofs was Leif Abrahamsen, a Norwegian who was only running Winter Spine as a kit test before Arctic Spine in February (a race nobody had ever finished before, which he would go on to win). Leif looked relatively unflustered compared to us two, but I think it’s fair to say we’d all been through something out there.

With the dripping of our clothes, expansive puddles were emerging on the floor. I set some of my devices on charge, and then set about replacing my baselayers with my dry spares. Every item that went back on over that dry layer I could have wrung a puddle of water out of.

Before I left, I took a distance read off of my functioning Forerunner 955. There was just over 22km to go to Hawes. I couldn’t remember what the route entailed though... Pen-y-Ghent was obviously behind me now, so I just hoped it’d be flat and easy to Hawes.

The Battle with Poseidon

I set off in the lead, looking to put some distance between us. It was nothing against the other two runners at all; their company had been a great help on the scrambly descent, but I just wanted time alone to reflect on that last stretch from Malham Tarn.

The long, gradual, rainy climb through snow played right into my hands here. Its continual effortful awkwardness afforded me the perfect opportunity to take stock and place the last few hours into a wider context. And as I did, I began to stop fighting the rain, but rather accept and embrace it.

Both the rain and snowmelt fed into the rivers continually snaking across my path. Some had developed deep chasms of aggressive, fast-moving torrents that would have been quite dangerous to ford. It took some persistence and creative thinking to locate sequences of tufts, reeds and islands that I could string together into paths across, which was initially quite a fun, creative thought process.

Despite my success at building back some positivity, I was again falling back into a downward spiral. I’d started coughing incessantly, just like my compatriots had been back at Horton. Now my throat was growing sore, and I was starting to feel genuinely ill. Had I picked something up from them?

Or was it dehydration? I took a sip of my Tailwind, and was surprised to find I couldn’t stand it. Why? I’d drunk very little in the past 5-6 hours. My mind rattled through the contents of Tailwind, and stopped at salt. It must be the salt I was rejecting. I realised I was seriously dehydrated.

For some reason I hadn’t refilled my water in Horton. A quick assessment revealed that, excluding the Tailwind, I only had a few sips left. So I was badly dehydrated and basically out of water, with no idea of what lay ahead of me.

All things considered, of all the race mismanagements I’d ever orchestrated in my career, the last 12 hours felt like one of the worst. Not the worst; that dubious honour was reserved for my Cockbain Track 100 fiasco, a true masterclass in bumbling idiocy. But this was up there. The waterproofs. The nutrition and hydration. Misremembering the route. Technology failures. Then, not refilling water - what had I been thinking? Had that preposterous “observer” mindset been affecting my decisionmaking process?

I should probably turn back, return to Horton. Drink water. Sort myself out, regroup, and go again.

But that admission of defeat hit me like a blow to the stomach. I was not going to let a duff Garmin wristwatch derail me. I was a bloody ultrarunner. I’d sort myself out. Somehow...

I just needed water. Water. If only I could find some water.

I looked intently around me, determined to find an answer to my dehydration puzzle; but alas, there was nothing.

“Sh**”, I exclaimed, as I unexpectedly dropped down into a river of snowmelt. I hadn’t been paying attention to where I was going. I stared down at my swimming feet, nonplussed. Then adjusted my gaze back to the sea of white all around me. Then up further, toward another river that I could hear gushing ahead.

Everything I could see. Everything I could hear. Snow. Rivers. Meltwater. Rain.

It’s all f***ing water!

Within seconds, I had a filter flask filled to the brim and was downing delicious, pure, salt-free water. I necked a litre then and there. Just like that, all my cognitive functions whirred back up. I took electrolytes, and plenty more water. Now I felt much better. There was a feeling of embarrassment that I’d let myself get so badly dehydrated while hardly being able to move for water, but at least I’d sorted it out in the end.

Climbing into Hell

Hours passed into the night and the climb grew no easier. Which towering mountain was this, for goodness sake? To deal with the cold, the building wind and the unrelenting rain, I put on all the clothes I had, down to my balaclava, buffs, and for the first time ever, a pair of disposable handwarmers (which certainly wasn’t very green of me).

While I was initially unimpressed by the limited effect of the handwarmers, I soon came to appreciate their subtle warmth. But my waterproof mitts were completely soaked, and it wasn’t long before this penetrated into the handwarmers, degrading their performance until they became nothing more than heavy bags of cold water flapping around inside my mitts.

It was only when the trail merged onto track (Cam High Road - a notorious stretch of climb almost universally hated by participants) that hazy memories of this stretch to Hawes started coming back to me. Yes… I’d pushed this one right to the back of my memory, hadn’t I. Repressed it. Had dreams about it. Nightmares. I hadn’t been sure if they were real or imagined.

Last year, the weather had been offensively awful, the cold indescribable, and the underfoot conditions preposterous, amidst an alien landscape that felt as remote as anything I’d ever encountered. It mightn’t be quite so cold tonight, but the prospect of reliving aspects of that experience didn’t thrill me.

I should never have re-entered.

Still with no waypoints to go by on my Enduro 2, and unwilling to zoom around its map for fear of prompting another crash, I kept climbing and climbing and hoping the summit would emerge at the extent of my headlight beam. “This must be it”, I kept thinking to myself. It already felt like I’d been climbing up this fell for days.

Now I remembered - I’d come to a left hand turn. An exposed track with a stone wall to the side. Wind. Lots and lots of wind. Freezing cold. There’d be snow, ice. Lots of it. It’d been bad, really bad.

It was at that moment of recollection that I misjudged a patch of ice on the track ahead. My body rotated, I lost my legs to one side, and my upper body came crashing down; saved only by my left hand’s trusty, reliable, self-sacrificing thumb.

There was far more pain than either of the previous two falls, so I knew I’d done something quite notable. But up here in these conditions, what could one do?

Between the resounding pain in my hand, the building cold, this never-ending climb to the heavens, my lack of situational awareness thanks to the Enduro 2, and the cumulative effects of 40 hours of running, pressures on me were mounting.

I raised an eyebrow at the photographer to the right of the track. Well; not a photographer, actually, but their complete photographic setup. Lightbox, camera stands, the works. Funny, really, that they’d have all that expensive gear setup here, in the middle of the night, in these extreme conditions.

I paused to observe it all, and smiled a wry smile. It wasn’t real. But; I was curious, and so I hiked off the track and down the fellside toward it. Just before I could touch the first lightbox, everything in front of my eyes disappeared. I knew it would, because it wasn’t there. I’d been through all this last year.

Why was I doing this again? I’d probably broken my hand, and I was dug into snow on the side of a high fell in negative whatever Celsius trying to touch an imaginary photography studio.

As if standing in solidarity with my situation, my Enduro 2 chose this moment to restore its waypoint functionality. And just like that, voila - I had situational context again.

Seeing the distance to Hawes triggered more memories from last year. This stretch must be Cam High Road. Various numbers stood out in my memory: 9, 8, 6, 4… there was something significant about each of these numbers. No doubt distances to CP2, each with a notable feature on the ground. I thought 9km might be the left hand turn at the summit, before that nightmarish exposed stretch.

So 9km became my target. And, indeed, as the waypoint distance ticked down to 9, the ground levelled off, and a track emerged to my left. Now I was getting somewhere.

That flat track deteriorated into deep snow that was hardly passable, so I hacked up onto the snowy banks to the right, where I found numerous trails of footprints meandering along these craggy banks. Here the wind howled something silly, and though one of my shoelaces came undone, this was not the place to pause and retie it.

My race number, which had been making one heck of a racket in the wind, broke free of its safety pins to be whisked high up into the sky, where it picked up a main wind and rocketed out of sight in a flash.

I kept dipping back down to the snowed-over track, vaguely recalling that I’d need to wind up on it eventually; but each time I returned to it I found it entirely impassable, and had to retreat back up onto the banks.

That point came at 6km, where the route veered off over felltop moorland. This had a bit of everything: bog, snow, ice, rocks. The bogs proved quite unpredictable. One caught me out wherein I disappeared up to my waist. Thereafter, I strongly suspected my bog-dunked voice recorder was only flashing its LED out of politeness, but was internally quite broken.

It was so exposed in the wind that with only one working hand, all I could do was plough onwards. It wasn’t until 1:30am that I found some overhanging ground that offered some shelter from the wind (though not the rain), where I could pause to eat and give my almost-dead Forerunner 955 a little boost of charge.

Bog Off, Box

I thought I remembered the descent to Hawes being a sharp, steep rocky downscramble. That never materialised. There was just a relatively gradual descent through mud and bog. It wasn’t long before I popped out of it into the familiar town of Hawes, where I felt totally confused.

It’d been an Odyssean quest to summit that fell. It’d taken hours, days, decades to complete; how could that little descent have returned me so much as quarter of the way back to ground level? There had to be more descending to come. There just had to be.

But apparently there wasn’t, for I was literally in Hawes. From here, the short run to the YHA was as bewildering for me as it was nostalgic. In some respects it felt victorious. I’d been put through the proverbial ringer today, and I’d more than prevailed - I’d turned Poseidon’s wrath into an elixir to restore my own strength.

At least, that’s the idea I tried to sell to myself as I limped my beleaguered body into the YHA. But it was my steamrollered mind, my sodden gear, and my broken thumb that told a truer story.

I wasn’t just an observer any more.

I was back down in the bowels of Zion, waging war against the Sentinels.

Battered and broken. Low on morale. Verging on defeat.

Why was I putting myself through this again - for that mystery box, right? That, and some bulls*** about a monkey?

You can’t be f***ing serious…

I should never have re-entered.

Continue reading Part 4:

The weather was just fine, a few degrees warmer than the -3°C forecast, and I was loaded with a whacking great brick of flapjack I’d bought yesterday in Café Adventure. The thing was so epically large it dug into my chest, so I extracted it from my pocket and gnawed my way through it, feeling its glucose course through my arteries. I would eat well today.

I had my poles attached to the front of my pack this year, which made them a breeze to deploy at the base of Jacob’s Ladder. I poled up the snowed-over cobblestones, while my brain jostled with the main question on my mind: was I an observer here?

It would have sounded crazy if I’d asked it out loud. For I’d prepared hard for this race; and here I was, wearing a Spine race bib, number 122, running up Jacob’s Ladder somewhere fairly close to the front of the field.

But it didn’t sound crazy in my head. I knew what this event entailed, and my chances of success were slim without a why. Being an observer, on the other hand - that I could do. Perhaps I’d record some documentary clips under the sun, conduct a few running interviews, before peeling off to a pub where I could edit them into a movie. That sounded pretty lucid to me.

Fortunately, James Elson caught me up on the climb, and distracted me from my madcap deliberations with a friendly chat about our preparations and kit.

Then at Kinder Low we paused and admired with the deepest of pleasure the sun-drenched snowy fells, poking through a dreamy cloud inversion. It’d been a year since I’d gazed awestruck over a vista like this.

James peeled off with another runner and disappeared into the distance, while I played out my observer role, snapping photos and attempting to livestream video clips over a flaky mobile signal.

Our route skirted the edge of Kinder Plateau, where the snow had been tamped down into a perfectly runnable path by yesterday’s Challenger South runners. Rocks poked through, adding just enough variety to keep things interesting, and the winter sun bathed us in its magic rays. I couldn’t help but reflect - what a day to be alive! I kept pulling out my phone and making video after video, like a good observer, keen for those back at home to share in this most magical of experiences.

It got even better when I reached Devil’s Dyke. What was usually a miserable slog was, today, anything but. Those parabolic gulleys, covered in perfect curvatures of snow, simply begged to be explored. What would emerge around the next bend? Only one way to find out! Even the race photographers were loving life.

Welcome to the Jungle

Things got more intense when visibility fell. Now there was only white to be seen; up or down, left or right, and the glaring monotone became disorienting. I developed a mild headache, and occasionally saw stars before my eyes.

Through Hern Clough and over Bleaklow Head, rivers of meltwater emerged, with wet rocks and icy tussocks alongside. Footprints spread out in multiple directions, requiring more careful navigation than before. And the snow deepened, requiring ever more effort to make progress.

Under these more trying conditions, I began to slow, and struggle. A steady stream of runners overtook me, seemingly unencumbered by the terrain underfoot. As more and more runners passed, I began to sigh, and turn within myself. Heavy packs, snow and iced rocks weren’t my speciality. I wasn’t observing very much any more, so why was I doing this?

The singletrack along Torside Clough grew more awkward still, with snow melting into slush, mud and bog. I ran it in a train, sometimes mid-packing and sometimes leading. The self-imposed pressure to maintain my position while not holding anyone up caused me to delay eating and drinking until I reached the water stop at Torside reservoir.

But the length of this meandering stretch always caught me out, and by the end my mouth was dry, my muscles were running on empty, and my mood was low. So I rushed the final descent to the reservoir, keen to make it to that refuelling point as quickly as I could.

On the approach, a chap with a relaxed demeanour cheered me on by name. It took me a second to process the face. That was Damian Hall, wasn’t it? Presumably tracking Kim up the course, but sticking around to encourage the rest of us well too, just like he had last year. Awesome chap!

I refilled a couple of my water bottles, added Tailwind, and hotfooted it out of there, completely forgetting - despite the presence of Mr. Tea himself - to revive myself with a nice cuppa.

Never mind, the reservoir crossing was a prime opportunity to take on nutrition and hydration before the climb up Black Hill. As the road began to incline I slid on some sheet ice, and my mood instantly soured. Last year I’d fallen hundreds upon hundreds of times on the ever-present ice. Given warmer temperatures this year I’d rather hoped I might avoid any icing conditions; but alas, it was not to be. Why would I put myself through that again? I had no desire to break a hip.

On this side of Black Hill most of the snow had melted, making for a muddy slog to the top. But at least I was alone now, and could focus on self-management: water, carbs, electrolytes. I stowed my poles to free up my hands, and downed PF gel 45 grams at a go to replenish my glucose stores. It was becoming apparent that I hadn’t brought nearly enough fast sugar nutrition on this leg, and at this rate of consumption I’d exhaust my supplies in just an hour or so.

Over the summit of the fell, the white mist set back in, and the snow returned for another entirely white viewport. With the trail cutting across a 30 degree slope, the unclear delineation between ground and sky made for an invigorating run.

When the terrain levelled out, the snow deepened. High snowdrifts made it hard to locate a path. Frequently I found myself breaking trail, a slow and effortful process. Though I willed trodden paths to emerge out of this white desert landscape, it also harkened back to those innocent winter snow days - sledging, snowmen, snowballs and assorted snow-based tomfoolery.

A brief respite came at the A365 crossing. I hadn’t realised there’d be volunteers here offering water top-ups. I emptied my last sachet of Tailwind into my softflask, and confirmed what I’d feared for the last hour, that I’d used all my PF gels. All I seemed to have left were slow-release energy bars.

I figured I had just about enough kCal to make it to CP1 without totally bonking, so long as I made my optional stop at Nicky’s Food Bar. But even with that, I was going to need to moderate my pace. I seemed to have completely screwed up my nutritional plan...

Agent Smith, We Meet Again

I checked on my brother’s progress using my phone, and was delighted to find him doing really well. But as I returned my phone to the front pocket of my pack and drew the zipper up, I noticed something amiss. The zip had sort-of separated from itself, about halfway up. I’d been quite lucky, I realised, for if I’d pulled it any further it’d have come clean off its rails. I would have to be mightily careful with this pocket from now on. With so much gear stuffed into my 20L pack, there simply wasn’t anywhere else to store my phone.

Feeling a growing sense of hunger, I checked my Garmin Enduro 2 watch to see how far I was from Nicky’s Food Bar. But instead of showing me my list of waypoints and distances as it ought, its screen turned off. I raised an eyebrow, stopped, and stared at it, suspiciously. The screen flickered back to life, and displayed the Garmin Enduro 2 logo. It’d just crashed, less than a marathon into the run. Spiffing.

I was becoming frustrated, and that allowed my physical niggles to bubble up to the forefront of my mind. I could feel the pads under both of my feet starting to complain; though after 6 hours carrying 7+ kilos on my back, that was no great surprise. I could feel my shoulders growing sore, which I hadn’t expected at this stage. Come to think of it, during the waterproofing incident last night, I’d sewn an extra top strap onto my pack to mitigate this. It’d been working surprisingly well, cinching my pack at the shoulders just as I’d hoped. So, why would my shoulders be sore?

I glanced down at my chest, where I found my handsewn top strap flailing around in the wind. My stitching had failed on one side. Damn! It’d been working so remarkably well. I could only hope my inability to sew wouldn’t cause too much of a problem.

Why was I putting myself through this again?

Conditions on the Pennine Way grew colder and windier, so I deployed my hood and my thick waterproof mitts. The track turned icy too. I saw a couple of runners deploy their spikes, but I held off, preferring to avoid that awkwardness for as long as possible.

The trail dropped down to run alongside Wessenden Reservoir. It was a dazzlingly picturesque sight, with the late afternoon sunlight dappling a distant fell, casting a beautiful orange lustre over the water. Coming after that succession of technology, gear and nutritional planning failures, I found it restorative to allow my mind to bathe in this harmonious coalescence of natural and man-made beauty.

As I picked my way down another iced decline, the gleaming water of the reservoir caught my eye again. It really was lovely. Worth recording, actually. That’d cheer me up. So I whipped out my GoPro, framed the shot, started recording, and began narrating. No sooner had I introduced the scene, my GoPro interrupted by beeping urgently, and switching itself off. Its battery was dead. Which made absolutely no sense, it’d shown 95% charge just seconds ago.

I stowed my GoPro back in my pack, stewing over yet another gear failure. What could possibly go wrong next?

Right on cue, my phone grabbed hold of that baton, and began speaking the distance to the next waypoint. I just threw up my arms, and sighed.

I had disabled navigation audio prompts. I had disabled any and every setting that could possibly be vaguely related to audio prompts, turn prompts, navigation prompts, any damn prompts. On my watches, on the Garmin phone apps, everywhere I possibly could. I’d reinstalled all the Gamin apps. I’d even uninstalled some of them entirely. Twelve months I’d battled with this weird phenomenon that’d emerged out of nowhere. Gamin called it a “feature” on its forums. Nothing I did, short of disabling Bluetooth, seemed to stop this infuriating bug. And now it was bugging me mid-Spine.

“F*** off, Garmin!” I shouted back at my phone. Sitting in the pocket with the broken zip, beside my GoPro with the dead battery, behind that severed top strap.

Less than a marathon in, things were not going well.

How far was it to Nicky’s Food Bar? I glanced down at my Enduro 2, but that was still showing the Enduro 2 logo. While I’d been getting pissed off at my phone, my watch had crashed again, and would need a few minutes to reboot.

Will Run for Food

When I popped out of the trail at Standedge Cutting, I got a much-needed mental boost from seeing Oldham Mountain Rescue and, once again, Damian Hall. I shot past without stopping though, feeling the need to keep making progress toward Nicky’s Food Bar.

For I’d been running more mental calculations, and had reached the conclusion that I hadn’t enough food to get me to Hebden Bridge, not at a good pace anyway. So my new strategy was to move efficiently and eat nothing more until Nicky’s Food Bar. I’d stop to load up on carbs with a proper meal there, and then continue moving efficiently, eking out my remaining reserves until CP1.

Finally, some good news - my Enduro 2 had rebooted and could tell me the distance to Nicky’s! I had 7km to go, apparently. How long would that take, with all this deep snow to hack through in near-whiteout conditions? I did some more mental calculations, and figured about 90 minutes (which might sound ridiculous for 7km; but honestly, that was a solid pace in these conditions). I put my head down and cracked on through the snowdrifts, growing hungrier by the minute.

I could hear the traffic whizzing along Ripponden Road long before I could see it. Nicky’s Food Bar is situated in a lay-by, inside a renovated shipping container. It might not look much from the outside, but for Pennine Wayfarers, it’s the proverbial oasis in the desert.

Pasta and a Carb-board Dessert

I creaked open the shipping container’s incongruous uPVC conservatory door and shouted a greeting to Nicky, who was as busy as a bee in her gleaming stainless steel kitchen. I placed an order for tea, and the all-important vegetable pasta, grabbed a packet of crisps, and delighted in taking off my heavy pack. My shoulders felt an immediate relief!

I hit the ‘rest’ button on my Enduro 2 to record the duration of my stop, but the stupid thing just crashed.

I was very grateful for Nicky’s vegetable pasta, which worked wonders to restock my depleted glycogen stores. I washed it all down with a hearty mug of tea and felt much better for it.

Back out on the trail, I couldn’t persuade my Enduro 2 to acknowledge I was back on route. Unless and until it did so, it wouldn’t show me my waypoint distances, which was pretty irritating.

It was just starting to get dark when I reached Blackstone Edge. I remembered this section well from last year, and was sure I’d been wearing my headtorch at this point. Given I wasn’t this year, that meant I was running slightly ahead of last year’s time. And that was with an extra food stop at Nicky’s. I couldn’t be doing too badly, then.

There was a further cause for celebration when I uncovered some Precision Hydration Chews in another pocket of my pack. Fast sugars! I ripped open the packet, eager to dose up on glucose; but try as I might, I physically couldn’t remove a chew from the packet. They had completely fused onto their cardboard backing.

“Oh yeah”, I recalled, sullenly. These chews were long past their best before date. I’d packed them anyway, not wanting to waste them, though not realising that product and packaging had amalgamated into something best left uneaten.

Well… I needed sugar, and I’d be damned if I was going to waste them now. I spent a couple of minutes prising each chew from its cardboard backing as best I could. The sugar still tasted great, albeit with an unappealing essence of wood pulp.

Underfoot, my trodden path through the snow had disappeared, and I was back to breaking trail once more. Perhaps it had snowed here recently? Either that or I was going astray. Sighting a headtorch up ahead, I put on a burst of speed to catch up with the lone runner. It turned out to be Will Robinson, whom I chatted amicably to while we trotted up to mountain rescue’s water stop at White House.

The Pap

We stopped in for a cup of tea, where Will explained he’d recently completed a 459 mile jaunt across India. It was impressive stuff, though the climate and underfoot conditions were very different to the Spine. I could see the cold had taken its toll on Will, as indeed it had me.

While we spoke, a race photographer snapped a stream of photos. “Could you move a little this way? MRT, if you can come in behind them. There, that’s good. Could you just gaze into your cup for me? That’s it.”

We tolerated the photoshoot for a few minutes, until Will grew tired of the paparazzi’s directions, and hit the road for the next stretch - the long flat track heading to Stoodley Edge.

I stayed put for another couple of minutes, cradling my mug of tea, musing over my why. Here I was, on a freezing cold night in northern England, double-gloved, held up in a mountain rescue tent surrounded by deep snow. Lost and abandoned in this desolate wintery wilderness, all alone...

Click. Click, click, click.

The photographer was holding his camera at 90 degrees, contorting his body into some sort of yoga pose, firing off shots like a machine gunner. “Could you look down into the mug… get that steam in front of your face. Perhaps if you blow on it, that’ll get it going? Just sort of gaze into it...” Click, click, click.

“Could you perhaps look a little more tired for me?” Click, click, click.

Look more tired? F*** that! I downed my tea in one, slung my pack on my back and charged outside, up the climb, hot on Will’s footsteps.

Running on Empty

Last year I made fantastic time along this White Holme Reservoir stretch, and I fancied repeating that now. I did feel pretty knackered, though, so I paused to take stock of my remaining food supplies. I found one flapjack, one energy bar, and one solitary cardboard-melded PF Chew. I chose the flapjack. I’d never tried this particular brand before, so I took a test nibble. Damn - the flapjack was good! I inhaled the rest of it in seconds.

At Stoodley Edge, the Pennine Way returned to snowed-under trail. Its pure, bright white reflected the light from my headtorch so perfectly that it was like driving at night-time, faced with approaching cars with their bright lights on.

I’d been out on the Pennine Way ‘observing’ (or whatever the heck I was doing) for over 10 hours now, so it felt like a good time for a self check-in.

My toes were being squeezed against the end of my La Sportiva Cyklons. The pads under my feet were sore. One of my shins was complaining. So was the opposing hip flexor. Something in my pack was jutting into my lower back (badly, that needed sorting PDQ!) I had only one energy bar left. I was rationing water, and should have taken electrolytes hours ago.

It was going to be important to reset properly at CP1, so I planned the key actions. Swap these Cyklons for a larger pair. Charge my devices. Switch out my lightweight waterproofs for heavier duty gear (remember - an epic rainstorm was fast approaching). And stock up on food. Lots of food, fast sugars in particular.

The Hunt for Checkpoint 1

How far it was to CP1, though, I had no idea. My Enduro 2 was still refusing to show my waypoint distances, and besides which, I didn’t know where the relocated checkpoint was anyway.

I got chatting with a female runner (who I couldn’t believe was using a paper map for navigation) when a checkpoint diversion sign caught me off-guard. I hadn’t expected that yet, before we’d even dropped down into Hebden valley.

The diversion took me along a soft, earthen trail overlooking the valley below. It was a beautiful route with an equally beautiful view, where twinkling lights from the far-below town glistened like fireflies between these ancient tree trunks.

Something wasn’t quite right, though. Faster runners returning from the checkpoint were passing in absolute silence, and even averting their gaze. That wasn’t a good omen. See - if a checkpoint’s close, we runners will normally call out “Almost there!” or such, by way of encouragement. When we don’t, that’s a sign that the path ahead is long, technical, or both.

Kilometres ticked by with no sign of a checkpoint, until the trail merged into a road and suddenly swung down an extremely steep drop to Hebden Bridge. “Christ, I’ll have to come back up this”, I thought. Down in Hebden, signage directed us along the riverside, through the town centre, and then back up a steep climb on the northern side of the valley.

I ran some mental calculations. The next leg was already the longest of the race, near enough 100km. This diversion had started quite a long way before our original CP1 location, and was taking me an even longer way off-course. I expected this would add at least another 2 hours onto the next leg. During which the weather forecast was, in summary, heavy rain. And I probably hadn’t enough food to sustain me either.

So that’s all good then, I muttered, mentally manifesting myself into a W1A meeting.

High above me, I spotted a couple of volunteers waving in encouragement. That had to be CP1. At last!

Zion, I See You

This had been a leg of two sides. Significant stretches of the day had been visually stunning, delightfully memorable and deeply satisfying. And in those moments, my return made total sense.

But much of my gear and gadgetry had already failed me, some of it in novel and inexplicable ways. I couldn’t begin to fathom how I’d underestimated my nutritional requirements so badly. And the next leg would be much longer and tougher, with deteriorating weather, in which I felt sure my missing why would play an increasingly important role.

Role… what role was I playing now, exactly? A steely, unbreakable runner, prepared to stick it out for all 12 rounds; or a happy-go-lucky observer, preparing to retire to the nearest pub?

Yes, I remember these mental tussles like it was yesterday. To DNF or to fight on. To bounce back into the comfy Matrix, or to grit it out here in the real world. This was what the Spine is really about. The internal war.

Agents, Sentinels - I see you, f***ers.

I’m back. For my box. And my monkey. And my why.

… perhaps. Or alternatively I could head to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for this all to blow over.

I still had to make up my mind on that point.

Continue reading part 3, CP1 to CP2: The rise and fall of Poseidon

Little did I know the evolutionary journey this would take me on.

Both Arc of Attrition and Dragon’s Back challenged me beyond expectations. Harsh winter conditions, tricky technical terrain, bogs, heights and exposure, over innumerable hours, days and nights.

I overcame so many challenges, and learned so much about running endurance races. And after each race, I grew into a stronger trail runner, ready and waiting for my next big challenge.

The Spine should have followed a similar path.

Except it didn't.

Spine 1

When I started the Spine last year, I had no idea what sort of physical and metaphysical rabbit holes it would lead me down. They proved to be deeper and weirder than I could ever have imagined. Hallucinations, phantasms, existential questions, physical breakdown and extreme sleep deprivation were some of many curiosities the white rabbit introduced me to.

I needed to DNF shortly after the first checkpoint, and only continued because there was no alternative. One section was so horrendous I erased it from my memory, though it would later return to haunt me in my nightmares. I broke waist-deep snow over Alpine-style peaks. I skated through frozen realms so fantastical that they couldn’t be real. I got blown up mountains, and slid and tumbled down the other side. I waved at people who were really trees, dodged beasts that were really rocks, and imagined thousands of unique Banksy artworks handcrafted out of snow.

Atop the Cheviots, I helped lost & injured runners to safety; while in any other context, in the condition I was in, I’d have been the one being rescued.

After 120 hours barely surviving in that incorporeal Pennine Wonderland, I smacked into the wall of the Border Hotel in Kirk Yetholm, and that was it.

Spine, and my Legendary Triad, was complete.

Or so I thought…

Because unlike Arc and Dragon’s Back, I didn’t celebrate, grow into a stronger trail runner, and set about planning my next big challenge.

I didn’t even celebrate.

I’d reached the very end of the Legendary Triad rainbow, but found no pot of gold. There was just one thing there. Pandora’s f***ing box.

And when I opened that box, out poured questions, emotions, psychological insight and trauma surrounding the Spine. It all reverberated around my brain like a monkey crashing cymbals. Try as I might, I simply couldn’t force it back inside Pandora’s sodding box.

So I spent weeks reliving the race, writing a blog that micro-analysed it minute-by-minute, but I couldn’t bring myself to zoom out to process the whole. What I’d experienced, what it meant, how to build from here. I felt like I was stuck in a state of mental purgatory with that blasted monkey crashing away in my head.

How could anyone reconcile life in a comfortable Orwellian plutocracy with such savage enlightenment? It was like Morpheus had shown me the Matrix, and offered me a choice between the blue pill and the red. It was the Matrix or Zion. The Big Brother cult or the Pennine f***ing Way.

The Red Pill

It was a few weeks later when entries for Spine 2025 opened. I had absolutely no desire to put myself through that again. I couldn’t even figure out how to recover from it. But equally, I didn’t see that I had a choice - I had to re-enter. The return was the recovery. More than that, it was the gateway to reality.

You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you return to Zion and I’ll show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

I considered whether I was, ironically, being selfish. For some of my friends had felt inspired to apply for the Spine themselves, and given how oversubscribed Spine is, my repeat entry could come at the expense of theirs.

But that couldn’t be helped, I reasoned. I’d been unplugged. I’d swallowed the red pill. Zion may be hell, but it was also home. There was no question in my mind, I had to return.

And as if it were fated, I secured a Spine place for myself, while some of my friends did not. But as bad as I felt for them, I needed my place. It enabled me to shove all those reverberating questions, the hope of Pandora, the land of Zion, my crashing monkey, and even the resolution of Orwellian duality back into that unassuming little box. I could shut the lid and launch it all back over the Spinebow. For now, at least, I could resume my life as a prole in Airstrip One, a willing inhabitant of Big Brother’s comfy Matrix.

A Comfortable Life

But my life didn’t resume comfortably, so much as it drove straight into me and then reversed back over my writhing corpse.

I became unwell, yet somehow I hauled myself around UTS100 in what was a flagrant act of self-neglect. That caused me to deteriorate into a long period of illness, during which I fastpacked the Pyrenees and smashed my knee on a rock. I had to pass on what was supposed to be my first backyard ultra with my friends, and wasn’t able to run for most of the summer.

October brought me some respite. I built back into a respectable training cadence. I started upper body training, readying myself for the rigours of carrying a hefty Spine pack once more. And I began kit preparations, changing out jackets, shoes, nutrition, goggles, and replacing all the mandatory medical kit, in accordance with the Spine’s somewhat puzzling new requirements for 2025.

As it was emerging, my biggest concern now wasn’t so much physical as it was mental. I’d completely repressed my reason for rerunning the thing. I mean, I knew I had a reason. But it was locked in that sodding Pandora’s box I’d lobbed 268 miles back over the Spinebow. And try as I might, I simply could not remember what was in that bloody thing.

Having run a fair few big races now, I felt experienced enough to know that for a race as formidable as this, having no purpose, no why, was a recipe for disaster.

So I explored the situation in writing and vlogs, desperately trying to uncover what it was that might have persuaded me to re-enter. Why I was proposing to put myself through hell again? I produced various theories, but I never managed to answer the question. My why felt just as elusive as Elon’s capacity for empathy.

Finding my why evolved into a painfully insufferable itch I couldn’t scratch, so I was fortunate to be gifted with a fresh lens through which to view Spine 2.0.

Apparently inspired by my description of the Spine as ‘hell’, my brother had signed up for Spine Challenger South. This would be his first hundred miler, no less. So he appreciated (or perhaps tolerated!) the opportunity for a recce expedition with yours truly. We headed north to run a couple of stretches of the route, bookending each day by enjoying live performances at Marsden’s legendary Jazz Festival, something that had been on my bucket list for many a year.

My brother’s involvement in Spine 2.0 became a vector by which I could push my own looming car-crash into the dark recesses of my mind, and instead live vicariously through my brother’s infectious quest for adventure.

Friday

On race week, we travelled up to Hope Valley together, staying in probably the coldest youth hostel in the country. He sailed through his kit check, and in keeping with my usual pre-race tradition, I took my brother for a pre-race curry. “Very, very, very mild, please”, my brother pleaded with the waiter.

Over his very, very, very mild curry, we discussed our race forecasts. Challenger South would start in 12 hours, on Saturday morning. There was deep snow covering the course, and cold conditions were forecast to persist for the duration of his race. So it was going to be tough going, especially for those at the front, breaking trail through deep snowdrifts.

It’d still be snowed -over when I started on Sunday morning, though it’d probably be a little warmer. It would continue to warm up over the course of the week, meaning the snow was likely to start melting as I headed further north. Heavy rain for 12 to 24 hours from Monday would add to the snowmelt, giving a high probability of a muddy, heavily waterlogged, deeply boggy course. It was likely to end with some balmy warmth, though, so that was something to look forward to.

Saturday

In spite of his evening curry, my brother was in high spirits when he set off on his Challenger South race. He bounded off through the snow, forging trails through what looked like a picture-postcard winter scene. I was buoyed by his enthusiasm, and willed him to have as safe and enjoyable an experience as possible on this most demanding of 100M courses.

Back at our youth hostel, the heating still wasn’t working. Somehow it was actually colder inside than out, so I bailed, checked-out and crawled around the local coffee shops, stuffing my face with tea and goodies, feeling entirely at ease, passing time before my kit check slot.

At Spine HQ, my gear received the A-OK, meaning I got my hand stamped with the customary Spine stamp in the form of Lindley Chambers’ grinning face (in my opinion, this is one of the race’s little-known esoteric highlights!)

On the downside, in the race briefing, they threw me a curveball by explaining that CP1 had become snowed-in, and would need to be relocated. I was told the new location would probably be somewhere in the vicinity of Hebden Bridge; but where exactly, or at what distance, remained a mystery.

After receiving that little bombshell, I met up with my friend Steve, who would also be running full Spine this year. We’d both had a long day preparing for the race, and were ready for dinner. So, naturally, I took him for a traditional pre-race curry.

“Very, very, very mild, please”, poor Steve begged the same waiter who’d served my brother and I yesterday. Over Steve’s shoulder, the waiter fired me an interrogatory look, as if to ask why on earth I kept bringing diners who quite obviously didn’t want curries. I just grinned and gave him a double thumbs-up.

In return for my dubious hospitality, Steve hosted me at his youth hostel, which turned out to suffer from the exact opposite problem of mine. Instead of zero heating, Edale YHA had its heating on full-blast, resulting in a near-tropical climate in the bedrooms.

Adding to our heat-triggered delirium was Steve’s curious decision to re-waterproof his shoes with a spray that, as we quickly discovered, should have been used in a well-ventilated area, which our hermetically sealed dorm room was not. The fumes clouded the air and our minds alike, precipitating much laughter and some questionable last-minute decision-making, not least my self-reinvention as a tailor wherein I decided to make some “improvements” to my running pack...

Sunday

On race morning I met up with Cedric Castille and Ashley Ward. Cedric I knew from last year, and he shared some of his impassioned why for running the race, which turned out to be a thousand times clearer and more compelling than anything I had for myself. I sincerely wished him well.

Where was my why at, I reflected? Nowhere, that's where. I had nothing invested in this race. No why, no goal, no need to hit a time, to finish, or even to start. In contrast, I was invested in my brother’s journey; in Steve’s, Cedric’s, Ashley’s. Everybody and anybody’s except mine. Frankly, I was in denial that I was even running the thing.

Mingling with the spectators on the sidelines of the start line, I could sense the anxious buzz of nervous tension from a hundred and fifty fearful souls, trepidatious about setting off on their adventure of a lifetime. Some were here to rectify a past DNF, many were stepping up from the Challenger races, and some were Spine virgins, with absolutely no idea of the dark rabbit hole they were about to descend into.

Me, though; I felt exactly like I had yesterday when I’d seen my brother off. I wasn’t a part of it. I was more like a spectator. I even imagined myself a reporter, in a helicopter up above, gazing down on the starting field, introducing the start of the race. I was explaining the Spine’s history, the route, the highlights, the challenges, the weather forecast…

But my report was interrupted by a megaphone, which was making an announcement very much like a race briefing, and the runners around me were retying their laces and adjusting their packs, and the spectators were cheering, and those around me were running, and my little feet were pattering through the snow, casually cruising through Edale toward that sign marking the start of the Pennine Way; and I could feel the heavy weight of my pack on my shoulders, and I was questioning - am I doing this? - and I was thinking this stupid, and asinine, and irrational; and I was protesting, and telling myself I was only a spectator, or observer - anything other than a runner, though I was surely running, wasn’t I - and as I ran, I began to recall how indescribably hard this had been, how deep down the rabbit hole I’d had to go; and I knew, I really didn’t want to run this again, and injure myself again, and subject myself to all that trauma again - not without a reason, not without a why… but the run was drawing me in, and I had no choice in the matter, not really, because I’d swallowed the red pill, and I knew I’d swallowed it for a reason, and the reason was locked away in the box, at the end of the Spinebow, and I was going to have to get myself back there, to the end of the Spinebow, and find the box, and open it, and resolve Pandora's predicament… my predicament… for there was a crazed monkey crashing, and a white rabbit retreating, and Morpheus beckoning, and Big Brother brainwashing, and a f***ing war raging -

But it was all okay

Because I was only an observer

Dropping back into Zion

Nice and quickly

To find a box

A monkey

And a why

Continue reading Part 2:

The event took me a long while to process. I couldn't pull together all the pieces.

Where was this memory from? Did that vague recollection actually happen? What would those sections look like outside the halo of a headtorch?

What would have happened if I’d have diverted to Keld, or stopped at Tan Hill? Should I have used my spikes on the ice? What if I'd have been more disciplined with fuelling and hydration?

Should I have slept less, or more? Or napped on the trail? Could I have avoided the hallucinations? The sleep-deprived staggering?

What if I'd have taken warmer layers? Larger shoes? A bigger pack? Or could I have travelled even lighter?

What if I'd have fixed the issues with my pack and gloves? Taken more dehydrated meals? Had a better checkpoint plan? Slept well in the days before the race?

What if the weather had been wetter? Less icy? What if I'd have started slower? Could I get to Alston quicker if I had an extra spoon of John’s Chilliewack?

What if I was consumed by a bog? What if I miscalculated my layers and became hypothermic? What if rain continued for days?

Did everyone else suffer like I did? How did the frontrunners maintain their race discipline? How did the tailrunners keep going with the extra pressure of chasing cutoffs?

Could I become any better at the race? Could I ever enjoy it? Did I even want to find out?

When 2025 entries opened a few weeks later, my head was still spinning with a million questions.

I didn't want to run the Spine again, ever. But equally I had to unearth some of the answers. I couldn't leave it like this.

I entered again for 2025, and immediately felt a sensation of dread in the pit in my stomach like no other.

Over the following months, I recounted the events of my Spine in as much detail as I could into my Trail Explorer blog. It was all I could do to tell the story blow-by-blow, as it happened. As soon as I reached the finish in Kirk Yetholm, I drew the line there. I made no effort to analyse the whole. My brain was kaput, and I was done.

I shoved everything else to the back of my mind. I forgot about my questions. I forgot why I'd entered 2025.

As the year rolled to a close, I restarted my familiar training and kit preparations. But why I was doing this again, I no longer knew.

In the weeks before the race, I used a vlog on YouTube specifically to explore some of the possible reasons; but even that missed the mark, and I could sense it at the time. I'd genuinely repressed the reason I was going back, and I couldn't seem to unearth it.

When I started pounding a trail back along the Pennine Way, memories started coming back. Questions resolved down to concrete answers. And, gradually, I remembered why I had sent myself back here, to subject myself yet again to the indescribable ordeal that is the Winter Spine.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll craft a blog post that explores some of these questions about the Spine race. I hope it'll give a deeper insight than last year’s War and Peace epic.

For now, I’d just like to thank everyone who was involved in getting me from Edale to KY again, enabling me to indulge my curiosity and relive the memory of 2024.

When I really think about it, this couldn't have happened without the help of so very many people behind the scenes - not tens, or hundreds, but literally thousands of people. I was just the one with the running shoes on.

It’s as clear a reminder as any of our social nature as humans, and our interdependence on one another to both survive and thrive. Of the need for political and economic systems that support our ability to work together; and the dark risks emerging from subversive political groups like Reform UK, and so-called media like Talk TV, that are working to unpick this very social fabric upon which we depend.

It's in the deepest and darkest of places that the light becomes clearest. Perhaps the Spine will help show us the way 🙏

New for 2025, I’m excited to announce that in addition to this blog, I’m adding video updates via my Trail Explorer YouTube channel. Here I’ll explore topics in a relaxed, conversational format, allowing me to bring you ideas and insights more quickly than ever before.

I’m kicking things off with The Return of the Trail Explorer: a recap of my 2024 year in running, and a look ahead to what’s in store in 2025.

Hit the YouTube subscription button below to be notified when new videos come out.

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And rest assured, I’ll continue to use this Substack blog for my detailed race reports and publications. I’ve got some really exciting articles coming out soon, so stay tuned!

Happy New Year folks!

My original 7-part blog series covering Spine 2024 can be read below.

I believe this second report demonstrates modest progress, though there remain many opportunities for improvement. Many of my friends are leading in various areas, having switched to electric cars, heat pumps, second-hand purchasing platforms, and more.

Travel

I’m proud to say I slashed my private car miles by over a third in 2024.

This was mostly achieved through using the train for journeys I previously thought too awkward for public transport. Not only did I survive hauling my suitcase around the country, but the train journeys were more productive than losing time behind the wheel.

The reduction in foot travel was due to my prolonged illness after UTS, and injury sustained in the Pyrenees. I hope to be back to my usual perambulating self in 2025!

International Travel

I made 1 trip involving three countries (France, Spain and Andorra). I travelled by train (c. 2,800km), car share (c. 300km) and fastpack.

This was a similar amount of international travel as compared to 2022. Again, this was the result of a conscious decision to focus on local races and breaks within the UK.

To reiterate: my aim is not to reduce international travel to zero, but to favour local where possible. When I do decide to travel, I will use low carbon forms of travel where at all feasible.

Food

For the fifth year running, I consumed a 100% plant-based diet (even during the Spine, during the now infamous Alston vegan lasagne exhaustion!)

For the third year running, I grew some of my own food in my front garden. However, I had far less success this year, in no small part due to the strange weather patterns caused by climate change. The unusually wet conditions were a boon for slugs and snails who consumed many of my plants, despite my painstaking efforts to relocate them.

There were slim pickings throughout my crop of courgettes, lettuces, peppers, french beans and strawberries, while my tomatoes succumbed to blight for an almost total loss. However, I still had respectable results with runner beans, broccoli, loganberries, and of course my trusty perpetual spinach.

For the first time, I grew some of my crop from seed in a mini greenhouse. Results were mixed, with some rather hot days scorching my vulnerable seedlings, and the greenhouse offering little protection from the slugs. That said, it was particularly satisfying seeing crops mature from seed to harvest.

Energy

I use a 100% renewable electricity energy supplier. I achieved a marginal reduction in consumption by switching out some old, inefficient tech, and being more mindful of my use of central heating. A running midlayer and an OMM Core beanie can go a long way!

Running

I have maintained my membership of The Green Runners, as part of which I am renewing the following pledges:

• Prefer local races & training

• Make my journeys by foot, bike, train, bus or carpool where possible

• Be proud of & publicise kit longevity/repair

• Track and report my carbon footprint annually

Last year I signed off my climate report by showing a photo of my slightly knackered trail shoes with 2,190km on the clock. Since then, I repaired them following The Green Runner’s recommended protocol, and I’m pleased to report they’re continuing to serve me well. They have now chalked up some 3,312km.

Long may it continue!

Heading into 2025, I will continue my environmental progress, while advocating for those whose voices are marginalised. Both within the UK, and overseas, including the victims of the unimaginably horrific genocide being perpetrated in the Middle East.

Let’s all work toward environmental and humanitarian justice for all in 2025 🙏

I can’t remember seeing a Christmas ad reflect on the sustainability of all this, and the looming environmental disaster that awaits if we continue down this reckless path unabated.

The science is as clear as can be: we must reduce consumption, now. We need adverts reminding us of the 6 R’s of Sustainability, rather than the freshest 6 Running Shoes.

It’s not always that simple though, is it? Not in the real world, down at the level of day-to-day decision-making. Look, I’ll come clean. I bought some new running shoes last week.

Did I need them? According to the 6 R’s of Sustainability… it’s complicated.

The shoes were for an extreme race with pretty extreme conditions. I already had plenty of shoes that would have passed the race’s kit check. However, they weren’t ideal for the terrain & conditions, and might have risked me DNF’ing.

Perhaps I could have used one of the 6 R’s of Sustainability - Rethink - and found a workaround that didn’t involve buying a brand new pair. For example, perhaps I could have found a pair second-hand.

What do you think - am I a hypocrite, blogging about reducing consumption on the one hand, while placing online orders with the other?

Where do we draw the line between what we need and what we want? Upon who does the burden of responsibility fall to solutionise for sustainability, within the framework of a neoliberal market capitalist economy?

The best we can do is be clear on our values, and be critical thinkers every day. Question ourselves relentlessly, seeking to maintain logical consistency between our values and our actions.

As I sit staring at my contentious pair of shiny new daps, right next to them I can see a pair I’m rather more proud of. My Saucony Kinvara 12s.

I bought these back in March 2022. Since then, I wore them two hundred and twenty two times. They recently passed their third megametreversary for covering in excess of 3,000km.

As you might expect, after so many km’s, they were a little worse for wear. Their uppers had gaping holes providing more ventilation than the manufacturer intended. Their treads were, in places, flat. And whatever spring & cushioning Saucony’s PWRRUN foam midsole used to provide was long gone.

Rather than use the massive milestone as an opportunity to retire them into the bin (and buy some fancy-shmancy new ones with spring and cushioning and grip and all that dandy stuff in the adverts), I decided to use those one of those 6 R’s of Sustainability. I’d try to repair them.

Repairing shoes was brand new to me, so I needed some help. The Green Runners (of which I’m a member) have a neat guide to shoe maintenance, and that directed me to the Pair Ups upper repair process.

My primary goal was to consolidate and strengthen the uppers, stopping those huge rips that ran half the length of each shoe from spreading and tearing the shoes apart.

Pair Ups recommended some K-tape and some strong flexible glue. You might already have some, but I didn’t, so I bought one of their Lite Shoe Repair Kits for £10. It came in compostable packing and was quite clearly prepared & dispatched with love.

How cool’s that?

Reading through the instructions, I could tell that my old shoes were frankly a bit knackered to undergo the process as they were. They’d need some extra TLC.

I started by giving them a good scrub-up, so the glue would have a solid surface to attach to. They looked much more vivacious after their spa day! I left them to dry for about a week to make certain there was no residual water that could affect the repair.

Then I set about consolidating those large rips by sewing them together using a needle and thread. I figured this only needed to hold the material together long enough for the glue to bond; but nonetheless, I tried to do a decent job, to make the thread a structural repair in and of itself.

As you can see, I’m not an accomplished sewer (and in my defence, it can be quite tough to force a regular needle through a shoe’s upper). Fortunately the mess would get covered up by the patches anyway.

With all the prep done, I could finally get to the patching itself. This was really simple. Essentially, cut out a patch, squeeze glue onto the shoe and onto the patch, place the patch and use the scraper to smooth it out. The patches slide easily over the glue, and they also stretch, so they’re pretty forgiving of mistakes in placement.

Okay, so I made a bit of a gluey mess of this too. But the more glue, the stronger the repair, right?

After a couple days of drying, it was job done! My 3,000km+ Kinvara 12s were renewed, rejuvenated, totally unique & ready to run another megametre or so. Awesome!

Is this virtue-signalling? Am I a hypocrite for buying new daps?

What I do know is I’ll keep running in my newly patched-up Kinvaras. That’s something I’ll take way more pride in than any fancy shmancy new shoe.

Even if they do look like a five year old has had at them with their new art set 😊

#3000kmtoinfinity / #runwithjoy / The Green Runners / Pair Ups

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Running is one thing, but why run these absurd distances? I get asked this a lot.

Ultramarathons cause so much muscular damage, inflammation and endocrine disruption that they can take days, weeks or even months to recover from. If running provides a foundation of health upon which one can build virtue, then ultrarunning is a pneumatic drill attacking that very foundation. So why do it?

When adventurers are asked why they climb Everest, the most common response is “because it’s there”. That is no explanation. The white cliffs of Dover are there, but that’s no reason to jump off them.

Epic challenges are extreme examples of managed risk-taking. At their worst, they can be used as vehicles for self-promotion. But at their best, they’re one of the most effective tools for practicing self-development.

Specifically, they develop endurance and resilience. Together, these qualities breed courage: the ability to face down danger with confidence, in pursuit of one’s values.

To lead a meaningful life, one needs courage.

You certainly don’t need to run 100 miles over mountaintops to be courageous. Some of the most courageous actions I’ve seen have come from people who almost certainly didn’t have a 100 mile buckle, Ironman tattoo, Everest ascent or bungee certificate to their name. Actually, we all have it within us to rise to a challenge.

What ultrarunning does is demonstrate our innate capacity to endure, and to recover. It proves to us what we already have inside. In so doing, it builds confidence, which prepares us for challenges we may face ahead.

So while running builds a foundation upon which we could practice virtue, ultrarunning strengthens our confidence to actually do it.