Writing a story on success is a lot of fun, sharing your elation at a strong finish, describing, with smugness, the ache in your limbs from a good hard run.
Unfortunately, this is not such a story. In 2013 Dark Mountains well and truly kicked my ass. The biblical storm that the race was run in left me with pretty severe hypothermia and a numbness in my feet that lasted for 7 weeks.
2014 was going to be different. I was so confident in this prediction that I convinced Fraser that this time we should enter a harder course and signed us up for the B class.
Everything went well in the run up to the event. Some training was actually done. I made sure that I had clothing that was actually warm enough for winter night racing. I was sure that my nav was actually good enough.
So at 9.33pm we set off from the start line near Glossop in the Peak District. A quick look at the map showed blue was the dominant colour across most of the map so we were sure to have much fun running across very boggy hillsides.
The route looked relatively straight forward with decent handrails running into the checkpoints. With some 40Km and 1800m of ascent it was going to be a long night but more than doable. My only concern was checkpoint 2, a kilometer south of the summit of Bleaklow in some complex and boggy terrain.
The first checkpoint was dealt with swiftly, a nice uphill run along a vague track to the summit control. Afterwards we descended into some awful terrain. Deep ravines cut into the peaty bog with a lot of up and down required to make any forward progress. Some helpful soul had built some wooden walkways across the worst sections. Within minutes Fraser had proved these walkways were absolutely lethal and came clattering to the ground. The decision was made to abandon the wooden death traps and smash our way through the mud to higher and drier ground.
At 580m we climbed into the thick mist enveloping the summit of Bleaklow. The terrain on the plateau was terrible, ravines criss crossing the muddy ground making it difficult to stay of course. Eventually we hit the fence line a few hundred meters behind the checkpoint. Missed it on the first attempt, no big deal, just relocate and attack the control again. After 20 minutes of searching still no control so we went back to the fence line to get our heads together and try again. With the visibility down to less than 5 meters at times we were literally going to have to trip over the control to find it.
Again and again we tried to no avail. So at around 2am after 3 hours to trying to find the control from 6 different attack point we had no choice but to abandon the course. Even if we did find it there was no longer enough time to complete the rest of the course.
Feeling dejected and pissed off we trudged off down the hillside along the Pennine Way and back to the event centre. A quick couple of hours sleep and some breakfast, then the long drive back to Edinburgh.
Last years event taught me more about mountain running than everything else I’ve done combined. Hopefully, in time, I can take the lessons from this year and come back stronger for next year… maybe.
Conor Cromie