Third time lucky? Or is it sixth time lucky*? Haggis on Tour (me, Jasrad, and special guest Jim Mann) finally won the High Peak Marathon http://highpeakmarathon.org.uk last weekend — a 40 mile circumnavigation of the Derwent Watershed, starting (at midnight!) and finishing in Edale. Interested historians can read here http://carnethy.com/2015/03/high-peak-marathon-2015-haggis-on-tour-of-bleaklow/ and here http://carnethy.com/2014/03/high-peak-marathon-haggis-go-on-tour/ for nail biting accounts of poor navigation and horny trophy obtaining.
For me, this year was a bit uncertain: I was making my (triumphant?) return to hill running with a two-week intensive training plan** in Cambridge, my new — very, very flat — home after my sojourn in Trumpland ended last winter.
To say I was nervous was inaccurate: I was terrified. I genuinely worried about being able to finish. But, I had a plan. It had two key elements:
1) Remind my teammates every 30 seconds to slow down when I thought we were too fast.
2) Eat a mars bar or equivalent every 30 minutes.
To say that I ate and whinged my way round the Derwent Watershed is no understatement. Whinging was great fun.
The key memories from the race for me were:
– being told off by my three much fitter teammates for starting too fast. Oops.
– losing hope in Hope. We took a wrong turning in Hope village — the least difficult part of the route to navigate, and less than an hour into the race. We lost 10ish minutes and morale dropped considerably.
– The ever frequent flatulence from all team members. The traditional mushroom meatballs got the blame. The world inched closer to 2C warming.
– Passing John Ryan and Alex’s team discussing ‘how white Tim (Culshaw)’s arse was’. It was very white. We didn’t stop to chat.
– The onset of fog and rain as we headed north of the Snake Road (and the navigation gets tricky)
– The distant discovery of the headtorches of the marshals at the bottom of Grinah Stones — they should have been at the top. Much whinging.
– The Soreen I ate at the top of Snake Pass.
– The realisation that I only had 10 miles to run. That I would survive.
– WINNING!
Iain Whiteside
*Two second places, 2 snow cancellations, 1 twisted ankle.
** After the best part of a year spent nursing two plantar fasciitis infected feet