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Ep 19 - Great Lakeland 3 Day feature

• Kevin Munt • Season 2 • Episode 19

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0:00 | 39:03
SPEAKER_00

Hello and welcome to Aid Station once again. I hope you're all doing well and we're well into the ultra season now, and I've got quite a lot of catching up to do, so let's start with the news. Firstly, let's start with Sarah Francis and the Cape Roth Ultra. As you know, I interviewed Sarah in the last episode, and uh she's obviously now undertaken that event, and it was quite a challenge. They had terrible weather throughout the most of the event, and I think Sarah she went really well the first two days. I think uh day three was going to be her hump day, if you like, a difficult day, and I think that was the case with the event, and I think she might be have been timed out then. But because she is such a stoic woman, she continued on in the event and got herself all the way through the eight days, finishing up the at the lighthouse, right up in the uh northeast of Scotland, at the top of Cape Roth. Just an excellent, excellent achievement for Sarah to do and to undertake that. I mean the times don't matter. I mean, this podcast from mid to backpack runners anyway, and it's more about what people applying themselves and achieving great things which Sarah's done. There was I think there's well over a hundred river crossings on that course on the way up, and some of them would be pretty frightening, I should think. There was a lot of briefing uh beforehand, safety briefings by the uh Ourea team up there, uh Cape Roth about how to cope with the river crossings and where to cross and crossing in numbers uh with people or pairing up to cross. So that was all good, the safety, all over the safety as usual. Uh, there were no major incidents, I don't think, that I've heard of, uh, but it was probably the worst weather conditions that they've ever had for that event. So well done, Sarah. Great to see uh you get that result, and uh also a little mention for you later on on the uh Great Lake than three day where I bumped into you once again. In other news, uh Lizzie Gatherer, also that you would have heard on this podcast a few times, uh Lizzie took on a fastest known time of the Gwynne Harris Round. Now the Gwynne Harris Round was set up by a guy called Ed Gwyn Harris, and it takes place in the Brecken Beacons Black Mountains area uh to try and get a southern-based round going, I think was his idea. Uh the round is 75 miles, it's over 21,000 feet of elevation, that's 6,400 metres plus, and it has 32 summits. So Lizzie, I believe, is the first woman to have attempted it, so she's laying down a marker now for everybody. And uh after a lot of planning that she put into it, recceing, also getting some help from some friends to get around it, she got it done in 26 hours, 17 minutes and 17 seconds. So well done, Lizzie. The marker's out there for all you women to attack that one, all the men if you think you can get round there in anything like 26 hours. There's a few of us that wouldn't. So that was a great result, and uh maybe you'll hear more about the Gwyn Harris round in the future. And continuing the news theme with the women, Lizzie and Hannah Hall, who I've also interviewed on here, uh took on the Centurion South West Downs 100 uh in June. Uh, they had fantastic weather. I've seen um a lot of video from the event, and it did look superb, beautiful scenery, lovely sunny weather they had on that route. Probably might have been hot at times, but that's what you get when you do an event like that in June. And uh it was Hannah's first hundred mile event since she did the Lakeland Hundred in about 2010. So that's quite a gap between uh getting stuck into a really long distance ultra. She put a lot of work into it, had a few hiccups towards the end with injury, I think, and a little bit of illness. But she got it done in 26 hours, 26 minutes, 54 seconds. So well done, Hannah. Great achievement, and uh hope you're planning your next hundred. Um, and also Lizzie, who amazingly, this was her first ever hundred mile event, uh, got it done in under the 24 hours, so got round the hundred in a day in twenty-three hours, thirty-eight minutes, forty-eight seconds, so also an amazing achievement. So well done, you two. Great effort, and uh so pleased that you've both got the hundreds under the belt again. So, the bulk of this podcast is a great Lakeland Three Day special, actually. Uh, this event took place at the beginning of May, and so I am a bit remiss in getting up to speed with it. But the Great Lakeland Three Day is also organised by OREA Events, obviously takes place every year in the Lake District. The base for the event is always kept secret for quite a while, um, and then you get to find out, I think a couple of weeks beforehand, uh, where it's going to be based, but you don't know where the routes are until you actually get there when they issue you with a map. And uh, this was a bit different event for me because I've never done um a multi-day event where you actually did uh your own camping as well, although they provide you with uh a camping area and uh eating area, dining area, relaxation area, as it were. You pitch up your own tent and you take down your own tent, and uh the site does move. It normally only moves once, I believe, but it is possible that it could move every day. So this was a different situation for me, and I'm not really a camping person, so I didn't even own a tent before this event. And I went out and purchased myself a two-person tent so I had a little bit more room in the tent. Um, for those of you that are into such things, I bought an OEX Jackal 2 in red colour no less. It wasn't an expensive tent, um, but it was a perfectly adequate for the job, and it coped with the frost and the rain and the wind that uh I had during the event all that we all had to uh put up with. Um I did a load of practice with it, put it up and down in the garden about three times, and got the erection time down from 35 minutes to 17 minutes, which is not bad for an old git like me. There's a joke in there somewhere. And anyway, I have got everything prepared, quite a bit of kit to take with you. You're allowed a 13 and a half kilos, I think it was, you were allowed to put into your overnight camp bag. Uh that includes the tent, and the tent weighed about I think it was nearly three kilos, so had about 10 kilos of other stuff to take. I decided to do most of the meals at the event. I drove up from Fleet to the Lake Districts, it was about a five and a half hour drive, and uh registered. There was a great atmosphere at the registration. Uh, the queues weren't too long, it went through quite quickly, they dealt with things very well in the normal Ourea style. And you join me now inside my car, having put up my tent and getting my head around what I was about to do.

SPEAKER_02

Good joy!

SPEAKER_00

Well, I'm sat here in my car at the moment, and it is now what time is it? Half past eight. Um, I drove up here, took about seven and a half hours because it's bank holiday weekend, first May bank holiday, uh 2022, and I'm sitting in the car park of the Silver Great Lakeland three-day event uh in Braithwaite, which is near um Keswick. And I've been through registration, set up my tent, had a meal here, uh didn't cook it, bought it. Um, and I'm now pondering the routes. I've just you get issued with a map uh at registration, and it has four courses on it a cafe course, a Wainwright short course, Wainwright long course, an expert course. Um and I'm contemplating what I need to do. I'm here on my own. Uh there's about three people here I know, but they're all doing different things. Um Sarah Francis is doing Wainwright Long. Um I just met Paul Telford, who uh I met at the Dragonsback event, and he's doing Wainwright Short to start with. He's probably just gonna smash that out. Uh and so I'm pondering, and the difficulty is that you get to give them the map and you have to go to certain um points along the route and dib in or go through the controls, uh reach them by certain times, um, and get back to the overnight camp. Uh your camping gear is all moved for you. You have to take it down and pack it, get it weighed, and then it goes off to the overnight camp, which is at Buttermere this time. Um the expert course has got a distance of forty-one kilometres and a height gain of three thousand one hundred metres. The Wainwright long course has a distance of thirty-five kilometres and a gain height gain of two thousand six hundred and fifty metres. Uh the Wainwright short course is a distance of twenty-five kilometres and a height gain of two thousand and fifty metres, and the cafe course is nineteen kilometres and eight hundred and fifty metres, which is the walking course, really. Um so it's decision time for me. I've been studying and studying it. Um and there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine um points to reaching control points to dib in at on the expert course. And it takes in quite a few tops like uh catbells, uh Eelcrag, um where else is it going? Hinsgarth, uh and then way over to the back finishes up on Fletworth Pike and then down into Buttermere by the look of it. Um so I'm really having decision time. Uh the you can get out on the course if you're doing the expert or Wainwright long at seven in the morning. I mean getting up nice and early, getting some breakfast down, breaking camp, packing it all up, uh and getting going. So not sure what I'm gonna do. It's a beautiful evening, uh almost completely clear sky this evening. Temperature's gonna drop quite rapidly. Um it's gonna be a bright start, cold start in the morning, and then rain coming in, unfortunately. Um so everybody is debating about whether to do a shorter course and get the tent up before the rain comes. It'd be horrible to do the expert and then come in the rain and have to put your tent up and get all your gear in in the rain. So that's another consideration to take in. So I'm erring towards going out with Paul at the moment. But uh we'll see how it goes, and I'll come back uh tomorrow when we actually start. I mean what I've just told you is just day one. So there are options on day two and day three, and you can choose any time you like before you set off which route you're gonna do. You just have to let them know as you go at the start. So that's the great thing about this event is that you can pick and choose and mix it up how you feel. So we'll see how it goes tomorrow. I was freezing. Luckily, I took a um uh La Sportiva uh down ski jacket that I have with me, um, expecting the worst, and I actually slept in that and all my clothes and a couple of pairs of socks uh inside an OMM sleeping bag. Um, and it's a bag that I've bought actually uh for the using on the Dragon's Bat race because last year's on last year's Dragons Bat race I had a far too uh bigger sleeping bag, far too bulky, um, took up too much room in the overnight bag. So I bought a small bag, uh, which was supposed to be okay down to zero degrees, but I had a really cold night, got about two hours sleep, and was quite surprised when I woke up in the morning and zipped the tent at about 5-50, and ice fell in. Um and uh I then realised why I'd been so cold all night. I hadn't been brave enough to get up to go to the loo to go out there, and the fields were white and the tents were all white, and actually had little sheets of ice on them, which made for um putting the tents away because we had to break them down, uh putting them away wet. Anyway, it was then having done all the pre-race morning breakfast and faffing and toilet stops and everything, finally got together with Paul Telford, who I managed to persuade to come off the short course, Wainwright short course, and go Wainwright long. So we took on the Wainwright long course in really nice weather, actually, as you expect after a frost, we had really sunny weather for the uh um first day, and we took off up towards Sale. The route was taking us to Sale, Hinsgarth, Great Gable and Kirkfell, uh as well as Haystacks, and then back into um the Buttermere Lake area where the second camp was held. So we had really calm, hazy sun for the first two hours. Yeah, Paul's getting naked, and it's really sunny and warm, and we're heading out on the Wayne Wright Long Course on the first climb out of Braithwaite. Perfectly calm, lovely sunny morning. Apparently, we've got rain on the way this afternoon, but we're here. Paul says we are heroes, yeah. We'll find out if we're heroes at the end of this. Yeah, zeroes, yeah. Heroes heroes. Anyway, get back later. Uh we came off of um sail down a heather descent, which had a bit of bumsliding. Paul had sort of mastered the technique of that. Um, and it was a very steep descent, but it did cut off quite a bit of the corner. I had a major, nearly a major incident on Great Gable. Um, there's a big scree descent off of Great Gable, and a lot of it moves all the time, um, and I'm not good enough uh or experienced enough on Scree when descending to like take off down it. Uh, and people were travelling very slowly down it as the whole mountain seemed to be moving under your feet. And at one point uh somebody shouted from above and I just dived sideways because I had a feeling that they didn't shout rock or um anything that might give me the impression that I needed to get out of the way, but I just had this sense that things weren't right, and two rugby-sized rocks came flying by, one at head height, one at chest height, which I luckily hit the side of the uh mount in the grass off the scree uh as they went by and they went continuing on down through the uh scree field actually. So it just shows you how dangerous it can be out there, and to keep your wits about you at all times, and also always prepared to shout when there's going to be any sort of rockfall or um rocks that you set loose that might hit somebody below you. Uh anyway, got over great uh got off Great Gable, lost Paul somewhere out there. In fact, I think he just ran off and left me behind, and uh eventually found him at the last checkpoint, and it was lucky it did because uh it was quite well hidden under the track actually. They're not normally that well hidden uh in this event. It's not an orienteering event, um, but uh I would have definitely missed it and ran past it. Uh and there was one woman who we had uh seen earlier on who uh missed it altogether and then decided that realised she'd missed it and ran back up. It must have cost her about another hour, and I was really uh impressed with her dedication to go back because I certainly wouldn't have got back, but she got the uh course done and ran the the full Wainwright course. So anyway, Paul and I both got round and not in anything stunning, I think we were like I don't know, 60 odd plus position on that first day, but the positions don't really matter that much because uh people run so many varying courses over the three days. Um but got in just as it was there was some light rain, and Paul's wife, Fran, who'd done a cafe course, had already got their tent up and there was a spot next to them. So Paul gave me a hand with my tent, which I was grateful for and got it up before things got too wet, before we went off and got some food, and they had fantastic catering arrangements there as well. Um, you have to pay for it, but there was some good stuff, and there was uh sponsored beer uh for two nights, so you got a bottle of beer each night, which was really nice from the uh sponsors of the event. Then it was off to bed and it uh the rain started, it got heavier and heavier, and the wind got up. One of the big things at these events that you don't uh account for is loo doors. I have never heard so many banging loo doors, even at like half past twelve, one in the morning, still the loo doors bang. Um you you thought people on these events would like get it, that you know they're all in it together and that they would shut them, but no, every time somebody comes out of a loo door, they don't even make any attempt to quietly shut it or even hang on to it, it just slams. So Porterloo doors are my big hate at the moment. Of course, along with with the normal snoring and stuff you would expect to get. Um, somebody actually screamed out loud in the middle of the night a horrific um scream, terrifying scream, and then immediately said, sorry, nightmare. Um and they're clearly somebody that has regular nightmares, and I felt really sorry for them because I I wouldn't want to have those sorts of uh dreams that they were having. So day two came along, and it was a much cloudier, uh overcast start. There was drizzle in the air, things weren't looking like they were going to be that good, and quite a difficult navigation day. Um, I convinced Paul to go Wainwright long again after a lot of uh more procrastination. We were both doing, but it turned out to be a bit of a poor decision, really. There's a hard climb straight out of the camp up Fletworth Pike in some awful weather conditions. It absolutely started throwing it down, and the wind was blowing in so that you were into the wind all the way up the mountain. And we were heading out to a peak called Red Pike. And on the way up there, Paul chose to uh in the middle of a track, headbutt a woman in the knee who'd stopped to have a short break. And if you can imagine, he's about six foot three and an ex-sargent major, and this poor woman was just sitting there and he spanned round and headbutted her straight in the knee. And Paul also broke a pole on the trip. I think he might have broken it at that point, actually. Maybe the pole broke and he swung round and headbutted her in the knee. Anyway, when we got up to the top, we couldn't find Red Pike. We um weren't making a good job of the navigation. Uh, we did manage to find a wall up there that we were going to use as a handrail, uh, but didn't realise we'd gone past Red Pike by this point. Uh, and Paul disappeared behind the wall to get some layers on because he was cold by now. Um, probably should have had him on earlier. And he's standing behind the wall and he says to me, Kev, come and pull up my zipper. Um, which wasn't that appealing really, but he was in his hands were so cold he couldn't even pull the zip up on it. Luckily, it was on his jacket and on not on anything else. So I gave him a hand with that, um, and uh we decided at this point that it would be quite good to get off. We were a uh scout fell at the time, and uh thought we'd better get off down the mountains, so we bailed out uh down to the national coast to coast path actually, uh, and took that route back to camp. It was still seven and a half hours out there, but it was certainly a lot nicer once you got down off the top. It was still raining most of the time, but we didn't have to contend with the wind. And when we got back uh into camp, there was an immediate kick check because um the previous day there'd been an incident in that required the helicopter call out, and not that they wouldn't have done these kit checks anyway, but it sort of brought it home to you how important having all this kit was, and certainly that was a day that you could have needed all the emergency stuff that you were expected to carry or have to carry. Um, and amazingly, during the kit check, there were about 35 people who failed the kit check, which really surprised me for experienced people. So don't ever go out there up the mountains without being fully compliant with whatever the event director says is the kit check. I don't have any sympathy for people to get pulled in these things, um, and it's fair on everybody that everybody carries the same stuff and doesn't put any other member of the event staff or mountain rescue at risk. On to less serious notes. At the overnight camp there was pizza, there were fire pits out, and it was really nice to sit around outside um and be able to eat. We had a quite a laugh about Paul's incidents with headbutting the woman's knee and his broken pole, and um it's struck me that um there are a lot of people, I've heard a lot of people getting broken poles, and I have to say it seems to be those yellow and red lecky, I don't know if they're glass fibre, the very thin ones, but they do seem to break more than the others. And uh I thought there must be loads and loads of single poles out there somewhere, and uh it c it it sort of struck me that why aren't people saying they want to marry up their broken pole? I realise that they're all some of them are fixed length, but there must be a lot of single poles that could do with being married up to the uh opposite pole. Uh so I thought that it'd be quite good if people did have broken poles that they want to give away to somebody else or somebody else who has a broken pole that wants to get one, they should uh post them up on some social media and get it going. So don't be like Paul, don't use one pole, pair up your pole. Heavy rain, and the noise of the uh rain and the wind on the canvas cut out a lot of the snoring and door banging from the Portaloos. Uh so I had a much better night's sleep, and it's a really quite nice, comforting thing to lay in your sleeping bag and just hear the wind and rain on the tent. Um, and all that sort of creates that white noise that allows you to get off to sleep. So I don't think wet nights, windy nights, are that bad actually, unless of course you're on the top of a mountain, it's absolutely roaring. But uh, I certainly had a better night's sleep on a wet and windy night. Well, day three dawned, it was an early start again, up at about half past five. Um, all the usual breakfasting and everything. Um, Paul and Fran were enjoying a day out together on the cafe route, which was very sensible. Them as a couple, and they were they had to get off to Ipswich, so they wanted to go get away earlier. Um, and I decided I was gonna do the Wainwright short course, and I got right up to the starting gate where you have to pick a lane. There are four lanes depending on which course you're going to do. And the event manager Graham Gristwood from Ori Events was stood there and asked me which course I was going to choose, and I said I couldn't make up my mind whether to go Wainwright short or long, and he gently persuaded me to go Wainwright long because you know it's all doable in that I think there was about five and a half, six hours to do it in. So I went long for training reasons really, uh, because I live in uh fleet when it's a very flat, fairly flat area, and it's uh don't get I don't get that much chance to get out into mountainous terrain. I'd paid my money and travelled all that way, so I wasn't in a rush to get home. So I decided to uh not completely max out but go long again. And uh so I set out on my own uh and the first ascent is up uh a peak called Robinson, and oh my word, is it a tough one? Really steep, or almost straight out of camp, certainly straight up from the side of uh the lake at Buttermere. Um I bumped into a chap called Martin, who turned it turned out was from Winchester, which is just down the road from me, and we went up Robinson and over the top together. Uh, and then uh he turned into the best descender I've seen, just about and disappeared off so fast down the other side of Robinson. Uh, and uh I'll tell you how fast it was. There was a good, I suppose, a mile and a half stretch, and I was doing seven-minute miling, uh, which was quick for me, and he was still gone out of sight, so that was amazing running. Um, and uh he soon was round the course. Just after that point, I bumped into a guy called Ben Davis Thompson, who was on Dragons Back Race last year, um, and he was with a a group of friends, uh, and as we were heading out towards the next peak, which was Barrow, um, his group went up the wide track route that uh takes quite a long loop around and back up Barrow, and I saw a woman going straight up through the heather, and I made the mistake of taking the direct route and following her up, which turned out to be about half an hour of heather bashing to the top, and when I got to the top of the barrow, there's Ben and his group tucking into their sandwiches, and they'd probably been up there about ten minutes before me. So I'd made a really bad uh route choice both from a physical effort and when I thought about it from an environmental aspect. There are map areas on the course that are marked out in purple that are out of bounds, and mainly for environmental reasons. Um obviously some of them had to do with uh the land ownership and farmers uh uh and villages as well. Uh but it did strike me that my decision to go bashing up through the heather, although I wasn't out you know on an area that was purple or uh or marked, that uh it also would have an environmental impact. So in future I am sticking to the trails. Uh there's nothing to stop us crossing these areas, but uh from an environmental perspective, I'm not sure that that's such a great idea thing to do for the long-term future uh of running in the fells and on these mountains. Anyway, off the top of Barrow, uh I on my own, I had to take the trail across to Grysdale Pike, which was quite a hike. Um actually that was off of Outer Side, and on the way there, coming in the other direction, because they were doing a different course to me, uh, were Nicola McNally and Steve Chamberlain, both who are entered into the Dragonsback race again this year. Steve finished it last year, and Nicola had an unfortunate injury and volunteered on the event. So it'd be great. It was good to see them, and it'd be great to see them again up at uh Conway when we get going again with the Dragonsback race. So they had really good uh three days out. I think they did the expert um day one and a couple of short courses for the next couple of days, so obviously all good training for them as well, and nice to see them both. Anyway, once I'd got to Grysdale Pike, there was a lovely, lovely long, fast uh descent back down to the camp, which I really enjoyed. It was probably the best bit of the event, really. Uh, the big champagne finish, I think Shane called it, and got into the finish. I think I took about five and a half hours, kit change, and a really lovely three bean chili and rice, followed by sticky toffee pudding lunch, all put on by the event, all part of your fee, uh, before the long drive home. Uh, all in all, it was a really good event. Great training for me for Dragons Bat Race. Uh, the knee got through it really well, which I was really pleased about. I had some information obviously for a few days afterwards, which made it sore, uh, but still seem to be coping with it, so just managing it at the moment. Uh, but I have to say that uh it's an excellent event. I highly recommend it. If you've uh not done multi-day events before, this is such a good event to do because you've got all these four route options you can um bail at any time, you can add extra bits in at any time. Uh, so you could choose to go Wainwright short and then chuck in another Wainwright if you're passing one on the way. Um, so it's a really good open way to approach multi-day racing, and I'd highly recommend it. Um, and there are still places for next year, so get out there if you want to give it a go on multi-day racing. And remember, this is for mid to backpack runners. This isn't you don't have to be incredibly quick, you can go on the cafe course if you're feeling really worn out after the first day. Um, and it is the vibe is fantastic, the atmosphere's great, um, some really lovely people, which there always are out in mountain ultras, anyway. So it's a great thing to be involved in, and I highly recommend that you get your entry in for next May. So, what's next for me is the Lakeland 100 in five weeks' time. Um I've been really managing the knee. Uh, I'm planning having a cortisone injection in the knee about 10 days before the event, uh, purely because I can't see this event's got a cut-off time of 40 hours, so I can't see that I'm not going to get some issues, pain issues, and inflammation. And I imagine it will take me the best part of 40 hours to do the event. In fact, I think my approach is to uh max out on the time, treat it as a training run, um, and the reason for that is because five weeks after that is the Dragonsback race. Uh, I think I'm probably one of the few idiots that's doing Lakeland 100 followed by the Dragonsback race. I don't think the 100 is a is a good way to prep for it. Uh, but a lot of my reasoning for this is at the age of I will turn 65 next month. Uh I don't have much time um left to do these sorts of long distance mad ultra events, so I want to get them in while I can. You know, I intend to still be running later in life, but it's not it's gonna be harder to do these multi-day ones, and obviously the dragons back race is probably the king of them all, certainly in this country, in terms of uh elevation, distance, and toughness. I hope you've enjoyed this story. It's been mainly about multi-day ultra racing, obviously, and it's not a long episode, but I'm hoping that um I can get Lizzie and Hannah on here to talk about their South West Downs hundred before I do the Lakeland 100, and then I'll do a feature on the Lakeland 100 as well, which I'm very much looking forward to because it is one of the classics uh in this country. Uh, it's been around a while, it's our UTMB, if you like, although it doesn't have the same elevation or the um altitude, it's still a great event and one that I've always wanted to do ever since Hannah uh told me about her adventures on it. So, until the next aid station, bye for now.

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To the next bloody high diet,