Spine 2: Return to Zion (Part 2 of 9)

Edale to CP1: I see you, through cardboard chews & techno blues

This post follows Part 1: Take the blue pill, and the story ends. Take the red pill…

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