MOURNE MOUNTAIN MARATHON 2021

BY MARK ROBSON

This is when the training SHOULD start. In the bitter winds of winter. Not a fortnight before the event!!!!

The 2021 Mourne Mountain Marathon was like no other and a first for me. I wasn’t competing and, instead, had been thrust into a highly pressurised role. It all began on the Wednesday night before the event. The Chief Organiser Jim Brown had given me a 6 figure grid reference for what is known as “The Stelfox Cottage”. I struggled to find it. Robson (in the dark to be fair) couldn’t locate a fair sized house with outbuildings despite the fact that the cottage was just a few hundred yards from the Trassey car park. How in God’s name would I survive in my new job as “Virgin Control Putter Outer” in what was forecast to be thick fog.

I have a lot of experience of crisis situations simply because I get myself into a lot of crisis situations. So I instantly knew what to do. Consume as much whiskey as possible and pretend that the nightmare that lay ahead simply wouldn’t happen. By three in the morning, in the company of Brown, Terry McQueen, the Course Planner and Gareth McKeown, the Course Controller I was nicely pissed and, magically, hugely confident.

After four hours sleep and now with a tongue like a hedgehog’s arse and head banging like a swing door in a hurricane I slowly parted the curtains. Clearly, overnight, someone had painted the bedroom window with white emulsion because I couldn’t actually see any further than the glass. This might have been the thickest fog I’d ever seen. And it was hugging the mountains like a whimpering 3 year old with his mother on his first day at school. I was whimpering too. Later myself and Gareth struggled to find the turn off to Attical from the main road. I’m serious. It was a classic and very dense pea souper.

This was my first attempt ever at putting out some of the 48 controls for the 2 days of the event. At breakfast the old hands McKeown, Brown and McQueen, who had 346 years of experience between them, tried to find a title for me. “Novice Bamboo Sticker” “Trainee Flag Fixer” were good and kind efforts. By the end of the day they’d settled for “Useless Twat”

All the gear and no idea. Trying to find the right spot in the mist.

Due to a bout of Covid followed by a delightful 8 month long episode of Long Covid participating in the MMM was out of the question for me. Neither fit enough nor strong enough. My lungs were improving but every time I breathed I made a bizarre wheezing wailing noise that sounded like a set of ruptured bagpipes. So I decided to make myself useful by helping the boys set up the course and then work on the event itself as a Secret Marshall. Over the years I’ve heard quite a few very nice people (whingers) trying to persuade anyone who will listen that one control or another had been put in the wrong place. Indeed I’d occasionally thought that very thing myself. In the event you get a 6 figure grid reference for each control. For example on your route card it will say “101 Crest of Main Ridge, above East facing crag 266 218” Well each control is put out to an EIGHT figure grid reference, in this case 2665 2187, and is checked by GPS. See below. So no more whinging. Get on with it!!!!

An 8 Figure Grid Reference gets you within a 10m square. A 6 Figure Grid within a 100m square. But, of course, you all knew that. Sorry for that Granny, Eggs and Sucking moment.

It took me almost 6 hours to put out 8 controls. Honestly it was one of the toughest jobs I’d had to do in the mountains. If you’ve ever tried to snorkel through rice pudding you’ll get an idea what the visibility was like. At one point I was sure I could see the boulder I was attempting to locate. And then… it moved. I may have screamed, I may not have. I can’t really remember but I did let out a loud fart. With a bit more force the damage could have been a lot worse. Turned out it was a massive brown cow. Later in the day it tried to eat Control 128. This is true. Terry checked the control late in the day and found the connecting string broken with the very guilty looking cow nearby. (Terry said the cow looked guilty – how does he know what expression a guilty cow has?… amazing man!)

This is “Brown Cow Control” 128.

Our fear was that the malicious brown cow might have come back in the night, raised it’s tail, and sprayed Control 128 with her own patented brand of slurry leaving the control box buried under a steaming mound of fresh manure. What do you do then? Well anyone old enough to remember the Fawlty Towers scene when Basil ploughs arms first into the Blancmange looking for the main course and shouting “Duck’s Off” will already have a perfect picture.

I survived my first day as a control placer and was actually very happy with my work. I’d even taken photos of all of my controls beside the prescribed 8 figure grid reference on my Garmin Etrex 10. However I’d failed to build in the legendary McQueen factor. What I didn’t know was that, within the malevolent mind of our perma-tanned Course Planner, 8 figures wasn’t quite good enough. The control had to be in a “TerrySquare” which, I discovered, had the dimensions of a postage stamp. I love Terry dearly but, to be honest, I thought 15 lashes with the cat-o-nine-tails while roped over the top of “Boulder by Stream 261 222” was a bit extreme. Mind you Max Mosley would have paid good money for that!

The Race: Day One. The red faced and panting “Secret Marshall” begins his subterfuge on Cock Mountain “131 Flat Area on Shoulder (450m) 250 264”

The job of a Secret Marshall is a simple one. He, or she, is there to make sure no one cheats. Teams are supposed to stay together so no dropping the rucksack with the “weaker” partner at the bottom of a slope while the strong partner rattles up to the control. There is of course a certain amount of tolerance. As Secret Marshall you have to show empathy. I mean it’s a tough event. Long, exhausting, mentally challenging. I carried a tape measure and as long as the team mates were within my proscribed distance there was no problem. One man, whose partner had lagged behind, shouted at me, “8 inches? You must be joking!” Well, I’m sorry, go look at the race regulations. It clearly states under Law 12 Subsection 17.2 “Double Entendres Will Not Be Tolerated”

A fabulous view over Spelga Dam towards the end of Day One.

Last year in my Mourne Mountain Marathon Blog I said that the only place our Course Planner Terry McQueen had NOT put a marker was INSIDE a crag. One so difficult to find that you’d have to dynamite the granite to find it. Terry laughed when I told him this but a few moments later I saw him scribbling while covering the note pad with his hand. I’m fairly certain that Terry’s eyes had gone black. His breath hung in the cold air like a ghostly apparition. Surely not Terry? NO Terry? Well, would you believe it, this year he DID hide a control IN a crag and the evidence is below. Judge for yourself!!!!

This Control is actually IN the Tor… isn’t it? Official description “Hen, E most tor, NE base” Unofficial description “Hen, hidden from view, E most tor, NE base. Requirement: The X Ray Vision of Superman.”

The weather on day one was absolutely glorious. Sunshine and warmth most of the way. Perfect visibility. A few injuries and mishaps but the bulk of the field made it to the campsite in a spectacular setting just below Hen Mountain. As always in good weather the craic was mighty. Most people out of their tents in the heat and mingling happily swapping tales of courage and heroism. Mind you we almost had a mini Chernobyl which would have put a slight dampener on the event. Kathleen Monteverde and Jackie Toal put in a sensational performance in the Vets in the C Class but almost met their demise before they’d cooked their dried noodles. Due to the noise coming from a nearby field where a farmer was cutting silage Jackie couldn’t hear whether her gas was on or not. Well, Jackie found out when she put a light to it. Great balls of fire almost engulfed the tent and eventual winners of the Vets class. Monteverde and Toal nearly ended up medium rare. Fortunately event medic Peter Howie was on hand with a basin of water to quench the blaze. It was almost the Mourne Mountain Marathon’s Jerry Lee Lewis moment.

The Campsite below Hen. Bathed in sunshine. Jackie Toal is the one on the right under a fire blanket.

I witnessed one of the most horrifying sights of my life early on the Sunday morning while sipping whiskey (yes more whiskey) inside the organisers marquee. Ok I admit it was well after midnight and the small cohort of hard core revellers had clearly forgotten that the competitor’s tents were not in any way sound proofed. I mean it’s a thin layer of material between the campers and the half pissed members of the more immature section of the organising team. After “another” glass of Clagganmore I suffered an uncontrollable fit of the giggles and was joined by a man who really should have known better. It was closing in on one a.m. and we were doubled over holding our ribs squealing with laughter. Then came the terrifying spectre of an understandably very grumpy Campsite Manager Paddy Mallon. He stood silhouetted in the half light of the doorway of the marquee clothed only in a too small tee shirt and a figure hugging spray on pair of voice altering underpants. By the look of the small bulge in his budgie smugglers it was a colder night than we’d thought. One narrow eyed Clint Eastwood look from Mallon and a few choice words (none of which you’ll find in the Bible) and we were silenced … and embarrassed. Paddy was right to be irritated and we apologised the following morning but honestly Paddy if you’d gone anywhere but a Marathon campsite dressed like that you would have got five years.

Father and son Trevor and Cameron Martin, who finished 12th in the B Class, hurtle into the control below the summit of Cock Mountain.

Day two began with a bit of clag over the tops but it soon lifted and the cooler conditions made for better racing conditions. Certainly there appeared to be fewer cramps. Overall it was a tough course. No honeypot routes for the hard men, women, boys and girls of the 2021 Mourne Mountain Marathon. They were taken from the village of Attical and start point at Sandy Brae into the rough terrain of the Southern and Western Mournes. A slog in the bog. A wrestle or two in the elephant grass. Not a huge amount of runnable ground. A true test of endurance, persistence and navigation. There were many spectacular performances. Too many to name them all but it was fabulous to see so many competitors in the Under 23 category. Let us hope this encourages even more of the younger mountain lovers to enter the 2022 event.

“Small Distinct Spur” near the Pigeon Rock Crag. Just a few controls to go.

The C Class was fascinating. Father and son pairing of Chris and Tom Perry won it with the all female duo of Rachel Collins and Kathryn Barr second and the Father and daughter combination of Colin and Molly Brennan third. Plenty of family fortune in the C’s. And congratulations also to Mike Nangle who competed with his son Lewis. Mike completed his 20th Mourne Mountain Marathon. Not consecutively. Neatly spread out over the years. In fact very few people know this but Mike flew Spitfires during the Second World War. Single handed he brought down 87 planes. Unfortunately, due to his poor eyesight, only 33 were Messerschmitts. Fortunately for Mike his desperate misfortune is sealed in a top security Ministry of Defence vault. Let’s hope his awful secret is never revealed. After the war Mike worked as a consultant for Churchill (the insurance company…not Winston)

Glorious scenery in the stunning Mourne Mountains

A word of congratulations too for local legend Moire O’Sullivan now an author of several books. “Mud, Sweat and Tears” was the publication that inspired me to take up fell running. Since then Moire has added “The Hound From Hanoi”, “Bump, Bike and Baby” and “A Quarter Glass of Milk” Moire won the Vets in the Elite Class with Paul Mahon but despite the exertion Moire still managed to think up a brand new insult every time she saw the events favourite Secret Marshall. Moire that was an outstanding effort. You must be good because not once could I think of a witty retort. I’ve had a long look at all of the results and I could go on and on about a wide range of stunning displays but why don’t you go and look for yourself. The number of teams entered was well up on last year. The one day “Score” category returned and all in all it seemed that, yet again, the Mourne Mountain Marathon had been a sizzling success.

I’ll leave you with the image below. This was, genuinely, my instant emotional reaction when I found the control that Terry had buried inside the tor on Hen. I was shocked Terry… shocked I tell you! Whatever will the “Sadist of the Slieves” come up with next? If I jokingly suggest putting a control amongst the sediment on the floor of Spelga Dam I just know he’ll think about it. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Mourne Mountain Marathon Blog 2020 by Mark Robson

When the Kardashian reality series came to an end (devastating news for hard core fans like me) Netflix moved quickly to find an equivalent replacement. Naturally, they zoned in on the “Wimpies” who you’ll know better as C classers Pauline O’Hara and Denise O’Hagan. Netflix want to call it “Wimpie Wonderland” which is such a catchy title and I hear that negotiations have begun. The girls worked quickly to find an agent and they revealed to me that they’d had secret talks with the CIA and the KGB. If you know Pauline this won’t surprise you. “The Wimpies” told me this is in confidence so maybe I shouldn’t reveal it but they said they had a really productive meeting with Vladimir Putin. Really I’m releasing this information to help safeguard the health of Mourne Mountain Marathon Chief Organiser Jim Brown. Apparently in his pre-race “Teams to Watch” feature Jim failed to mention the fabulous Female Veteran pairing of O’Hara and O’Hagan (Or the Mighty O’s as they are known by those in the fell running world who know real talent when they see it.) Upsetting the Wimpies is not a good idea. Jim, you think this year was bad with all that hand sanitiser kerfuffle. Wait till next year when the Wimpies turn up with Novichok in a perfume bottle. Extra weight in the rucksack, yes, but they won’t need much.

Wimpies in ecstasy when they find the Novichok in the rucksack

The Course Planner is Terry McQueen or Ferdinand the Second of Aragon as we teasingly call him. Ferdy, if you don’t know him, was a great lad. Between endless jests and japes he still found time to establish the Spanish Inquisition. Ferd invented such torture devices as the “Heretic’s Fork”, “The Pear of Anquish” and “Judas Cradle” (Go Google … they’re all great craic.) Terry is nothing like as cruel as the Black Legend but he does, in the nicest possible way, get his inspiration from Ferdy. How I laughed when I got to the that late control on Meelmore. “This is so Terry” I wheezed through my arse to my purple faced partner Martin Lannon while trying to ignore his barely audible gasp of, “Is there a defibrillator at the finish.” On the C Class Day Two route card Control 10 is described as “Small re-entrant on shoulder” This was “Terry Code” for “I know you’re all knackered and just want to get home so I thought that, despite you attacking the control from exactly the right angle, and contouring perfectly, I’d hide it under a peaty lip so that if you don’t actually stand on it you’ll never see it.” In tribute to McQueen and this remarkable piece of placement I’ve ordered “The Pear of Anquish” on Amazon. Terry, I’ll be round on Friday.

Astonishing weather and a tough challenge

Terry’s marvellous wife Alison (the real driving force of the Marathon – sorry boys) told me at the campsite that the husband was hoping to shift the challenge of navigation to another level next year. He’s thinking of hiding a control (just one) INSIDE a crag so that the only way to get at it is by dynamiting the rock.

One of Terry’s famous hidden controls – Lord Lucan is just out of shot sitting beside a Japanese soldier.

I think I should tell you that the inclusion of dynamite amongst “essential items” was quickly ruled out by Health and Safety. I mean how would you explain it to Mountain Rescue? “We were climbing the Southern slopes of Bernagh when one of the competitors exploded.” “Exploded you say? Well where is he now?” “Hard to say. I saw a leg heading towards Donard and I think his kidneys are slithering down the Devil’s Coachroad.” No Terry. That would be going too far and I think you know it.

No time for the photo shoot – keep moving!

By the way, on the same subject but on a serious note, I think there should be a timing mechanism fitted in the campsite toilets. We all know that feeling. Standing bleary eyed in the cold in a long queue, desperate for that dump on the second morning and that little red thing on the bog handle simply refuses to shift to green no matter how hard you look at it. The toilet timer could be at eye level on the inside of the door and you’d be allowed a strict three minutes. Now here is a suitable use for the dynamite. If you go over the three minute window, well, it’s your own fault. BOOM! Now I know this would cause a little bit of a problem with flying debris of various textures and might take a while to clean up but, on the positive side, it wouldn’t half speed up the ablution process. I hope the Marathon committee takes this suggestion on board.

Jim Brown and Terry McQueen just after they’d primed the toilets with dynamite.

But now a serious note that really is a serious note. What a job the organisers did in these unprecedented corona virus times. There was a range of measures designed to help keep everyone as safe as possible. There were government regulations to adhere to with regards to social distancing and mask wearing. Touch points were minimised. (How ingenious were the spring loaded foot operated water points at the campsite?). Everywhere you looked there was a hand sanitiser pump, and you also had to bring a bottle of your own. Usually you share a tent at the Marathon but here, unless you were already part of a household or “support bubble”, you had to bring one each. This addition to the equipment lead to the joke of the weekend. (From me, of course). At the campsite I said to the McQueens, “There’s something weird about the atmosphere this weekend.” Terry and Alison looked horribly offended. “What’s wrong with it.” said Alison in that soft hard to hear whisper of hers. I said, “Alison, it’s too tense!” …. see what I did there “Two Tents!”. Oh for God sake never mind. I’ll use it at the Comedy Store.

Following Covid guidelines at Registration.

Fortunately we were in the open air and, as we all know, the virus prefers confined spaces but, to be honest, I thought it was remarkable that the event went ahead at all. The OMM, scheduled for October, was cancelled by the Scottish Government on the 17th of September. This is the first time in 53 years that the Original Mountain Marathon, which has been held at various mountain ranges all over Britain, has had to be called off. I know for a fact that Jim Brown was nervous that the same fate could hit the MMM. So a huge well done to everyone who went that extra distance to get the event on and completed. At the end I asked Jim what his emotion was. He said one word, “Relief”

Jim Brown and Paddy Mallon prepare to waken the competitors at the campsite on Day Two

An Elon Musk invention – invisible tents – brilliant!

Back to the race. The perfect visibility was, of course, a disaster for McQueen. He still, after all these years, does that naked dance (human sacrifice optional) at the bottom of the garden on the Thursday at midnight before every race. The neighbours have videoed it and you can find it on the Dark Web. The ritual is supposed to deliver low level blanket fog for the entire weekend. Just to make it more interesting. At the campsite me and Alison were chatting about the old days and she told me that Terry was devastated when Grimsvotn erupted in May 2011. According to quotes attributed to Terry from the official Broadmoor report the Gods had promised him that the Icelandic Volcano would blow in September of that year. Terry told the nurse that an all enveloping ash cloud would have provided the ultimate test. He spent days in tears and at one point almost ripped his way out of the straitjacket.

Hard at work in the fabulous Mourne Mountains.

Which brings me to my own race. My partner would have been one hundred percent within his rights to put me in a straitjacket. I found myself free late in the week of the event so checked the Marathon Facebook page on Friday morning. 57 year old Martin Lannon was looking for someone to step in late. Martin’s from Downpatrick originally but now works as a GP in Pontefract, Yorkshire and had taken the boat over on Thursday. At the last minute his partner pulled out. My first disappointment was to find that we didn’t qualify for the Mixed Vet category. Turns out that’s for a Male/Female combo not Protestant/Catholic. I’m very much the former being from a very posh part of coastal North Down and Martin is very much the latter. He’s one of 12 children (Pope Francis the rhythm method doesn’t work. How much evidence do you need?) BTW there’s definitely a case for a “Fossil” category. I mean one team’s combined age (no names) must have been over 140. I saw them on the hill sucking Sanatogen tablets (they work well with dentures)

Robson enters an insanity plea on behalf of his team with partner Martin Lannon

This was Martin’s first Mountain Marathon and, by Martin’s own admission, navigation wasn’t a strength. In fact he hadn’t done any. By Martin’s own admission knowledge of the Mournes wasn’t a strength. By Martin’s own admission he could have been fitter. At one point Martin said this was like, “A 28 handicapper entering an event for scratch golfers.” I am well known for having the tolerance levels of Pol Pot but fortunately Martin had a completely Robson proof personality. Every grump from me (there were hundreds, or maybe thousands) was met with phlegmatic acceptance and a soft smile. I suspect Martin’s very popular at his Pontefract surgery. He has all the personality traits that I was born without. The main one being patience. Another one would be empathy.

We were slow but the sun was out the weather was warm and we had a skip in our step. It was simply great to be alive and out in the mountains. Wasn’t it? Marty struggled a bit on the uphill and struggled a bit on the downhill and struggled a bit on the flats. You know your partner is in trouble when he starts sliding feet first on his belly down the steep bits with his body in the stable spread position desperately trying to use his testicles as brakes.

I honestly don’t know how Martin kept going. Heart of a Lion that man. At the end of day one Martin looked like a man in serious need of spiritual intervention. Martin was lucky that there were wasn’t a vet at the campsite or it would have been a tearful cuddle and a quick injection. I’ll never forget the sight of Martin sitting in his tent, with a shoelace wrapped tight round his bicep, the end of it held in his teeth, mainlining two gallons of the hand sanitiser. This was Mountain Marathon goes Trainspotting. But Martin’s a Doctor. I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.

Martin talks to pink elephants after mainlining the sanitiser.

However I deeply admired his courage and determination. Lesser men would not have made it to the finish. In fact I was the one who came closest to pulling out thanks to a seized back and an attack of my old friend arrhythmia on the second day. But on we ploughed. And we finished. 45th in the C class. But a finish is a finish.

“Jeez! Look at those Muppets. Is that Robson + Lannon? What the HELL are they doing?”

Afterwards Marty came out with a phrase I’d never heard before, “Mark you’ve the patience of an oyster.” Must be a Downpatrick expression. I also came out with a line that Marty had never heard of. After a lot of puffing and panting and shrieks of “It must be here” I eventually found one of McQueen’s mystery controls. Yet again hidden as well as Shergar. I muttered in McQueen’s general direction, “May your next shite be a hedgehog.” That made Marty laugh. I’m sure Terry will laugh too.

A team marks up their map from the route card. One word of advice. TAKE YOUR TIME!

To give you an idea of my mood, well, here’s a true story. I would know a lot of the organisers and some of the marshals and many of them know me quite well too. Unlucky people. I was shuffling down to the final cut off point “Wall Corner” Control 9 Day Two and Marty was up the hill behind me. I reached two marshals (who I didn’t know) at the control. One shouted, “Team number?” I guldered “60” The Marshal replied “Martin and Paul Lannon?” I puffed, “No. Martin Lannon and Mark Robson. There was a late team change. It’s just not on your sheet.” I got a stern look, “Sorry but you can’t make late team changes. You’re disqualified.” OMG I thought I was going to detonate – like a campsite toilet. “You’ve got to be (expletive deleted) joking.” I was fuming. Then I heard a little giggle from behind the wall. And there sat my old pal ultra runner and former training partner Greg McCann. He’d said to the guys, “If you want to see what a psycho looks like tell Robson he’s out of the race.” Well you got me lads. You got me. Bastards.

It truly was a stunning weekend

But I’m going to leave the final words to Martin Lannon who suffered the twin agonies of a first Mountain Marathon combined with having me as a partner. Yes I was frustrated and grumpy but by God I’d met my match. He sent me a WhatsApp a few days after the race. Here are a few quotes to let you know what a gem of a man I spent two days with.

“On the Friday please cast your mind back to our first phone conversation. One of your first sentences after I pointed out I was a novice went something like this, “Martin, I’m only in it for a social weekend.”Approximately one minute later you asked how old I was. When I said 57 your exact words were, “We might win the Vets section”. When you told me your tent was lighter than Norah Batty’s knickers I thought to myself that eejit is going to sleep under a hankie nailed down with four drawing pins.

Remember near the end when we were already resigned to finishing at the very back of the field? I was desperate for a drink. Literally gasping … and you shouted, “There’s no time to stop for a drink Marty, we gotta go!” An innocent bystander overhearing that might have thought we were in contention for a Gold Medal when I was actually trying to recall the phone number for Adult Safeguarding!”

He was playing the theme tune from the movie “Deliverance” – which somehow seemed appropriate

You see there’s always a story or two to tell after every Mourne Mountain Marathon. This one, for some reason, has made me feel rather sentimental… or maybe just mental. Martin finished the race looking like a jellyfish in a blender. But the final line on his final WhatsApp to me was, “During the last half day I swore I would never do this again. But now I’m thinking …maybe the D Class next year.” You see, that’s what this event does to you.

It’s all over for another year. Completing an MMM is ALWAYS an achievement

From The Dark Side ! Mourne 2 Day 2017

It was the first time I’d held a loaded gun. It was a .44 Magnum and Jim Brown, the Chief Organiser of the event, disappointingly, had pleaded with me not to kill anyone. As Jim explained the committee hadn’t paid for the adequate insurance cover. Flesh wounds were fine though and so off I went on Day One feeling very powerful indeed as an official Secret Marshall. Having competed in previous years, so far matching my GCSE results of 5 C’s and 2 B’s, this was a Virgin appearance as a member of the “working crew” A chance to see how an amazing event like the Mourne 2 Day actually functioned and how the BARF Club, assisted by a seriously competent and multi tasking back up crew, managed to pull it all together, apparently seamlessly.

I set off to my appointed roosts, a four control cluster area on the slopes of Binian, with the express instructions to enforce Golden Rule Number One, “Teams must visit all controls in their pairs and carry all of their kit”. As I rumbled up Binian I practised looking fierce and what I would say if anyone dared to sneak into a mountain side control alone while his knackered buddy guarded the rucksacks in the thicker air back at sea level.

“You gonna go back and get your partner ? This being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you’ve gotta ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk? “

What a shame. I had planned to shoot Eamonn McCrickard but he and his “Golden Era” Elite partner Deon McNeilly, remarried after years apart, know the rules. Bugger !

The morning was bright but the conditions soon deteriorated and it became a wet and windy soul munching kind of day. There’d been so much rain already this summer. Tollymore had introduced Glen River White Water Rafting as an outdoor alternative. The Mournes had morphed into a vast expanse of peaty quicksand with mud thicker than Bill Gates wallet. There was a lot of suffering to come for the hundreds of teams taking part.

The clouds begin to roll in …the waterproofs would soon be on… and not taken off !

Late in the day I encountered my old C Class rivals Gerry Mahon and Mike Nangle. Mike saw me and immediately broke into nuclear grumble mode. A regular state for him. His Mountain Marathon had had a disastrous start. Gerry smirked over his shoulder while Mike detailed his Saturday morning horrors. The night before Mike had put his beloved Mudclaws into the car so that he definitely wouldn’t forget them.

At the finish with Gerry Mahon, in Seagull pose, and Mike Nangle. Gerry clearly still enjoying the suffering of his pained partner.

Then ! Disaster. Wife loads Mike’s car up with with rubbish and takes it to the dump. The beloved fell shoes are now the dearly departed fell shoes. Apparently Mike’s Mudclaws (he used to sleep with them under the pillow) are currently being re-cycled. Cue fast dissolving harmony in the Nangle household. The result – divorce – but even worse he had to wear Gerry’s spare pair of Mudclaws – good – but one size too big – bad. His feet were like “Well squashed roadkill” He looked so miserable I almost took out my Magnum. Better dead I thought. I hate to see animals suffer. Actually I liked that vision a bit too much !

There weren’t too many leaving their tents that night. On Day One they had endured the kind of relentless Irish icy precipitation that actually penetrates the blood on a molecular level. Bio-chemists says it’s unique to the Emerald Isle. Mike and Gerry retreated to their sleeping bags. They sucked their thumbs and when they got bored with that they sucked each others. Mike picked up a freak and unique condition. Trench Finger. He told me all about it while grumbling on Day Two. “Can’t grip the bloody compass” That’s what I love about these titanium tough mountain people. They just get on with it. 

Taryn McCoy and Jackie Toal competing in the Elite Class. Are women tougher than men ? Read “Survival of the Fittest” by Dr. Mike Stroud (Ranulph Fiennes old polar partner) Stroud is an expert on human endurance. He has some intriguing theories.

The sky cleared on Day Two and spirits soared

Pauline O’Hara and Denise O’Hagan applying Marshall Law with Kerry Hall. I think they might be in the BARF Club

The teams who had taken part in the one day “Score” event had now departed the scene. This was a first for the Mourne 2 Day and the reviews appeared to be generally very positive. My training partner Greg McCann and daughter Aine had finished a superb third. The difference between me and Greg, a top orienteer, is that I think I know what I’m doing but he actually does. And here was proof.

NO ! You put the dibber in the control box. It doesn’t work if you ram the cane up your nose.

I slept in the car which was Five Star accommodation compared to what the rest were enduring in the campsite. For Day Two I had an official checkpoint job halfway up Chimney at an old Quarryman’s hut. I was teamed with Mourne 2 Day Treasurer Kerry Hall and fellow first time volunteer Marshall Chris McFarland. Chris is an interesting character and the exact personification of ideal Marshall material. He found himself a perch close to the control. Chris called it his “Power Rock” …. I’m serious here… and shouted at incoming pairs. “Ver is zee partner” in a loud and terrifying voice. He occasionally added “Schweinhundt” which I thought was unnecessary. But the method worked. Next year Chris has asked for a loud hailer and sound system. He needs neither.

The Chimney Mountain Three. “Quiet Man” Chris is in the foreground. I’m wearing double headgear to protect my hearing.

At the finish line there were many stories of heroism and terrifying tales of ascents and descents of the Devil’s Coachroad and off piste adventures into the Cove Cliffs. It really is a seriously demanding event and now that I’ve seen it from both sides I’ve even more respect for those who compete and those who make it work.

Regular Scots pairing of Alasdair McCallum and Tommy Begley beginning to smell the finish line

The calmest man is the one person who would be excused for binge eating Immodium. The Head of Results, Timing and Safety Mark “Brains” Pruzina. I would have been a wobbling, dribbling, tearful mess. And then there’s our beloved Course Planner. This yearly post marathon blog would not be complete without mention of the evil plotter. Terry McQueen with his Hannibal Lecter smile. A census taker once tried to test Terry. He ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti. Every competitor will understand my carefully selected annual metaphor.

“Brains” with Apple … how appropriate for a computer buff and Terry McQueen… with a stick… how appropriate for a man whose courses beat the sh*** out of everyone competing

Now for my excuse. There’d been a reason for missing the 2017 Mourne 2 Day … I’d “accidentally” competed in an Ultra three weeks before the Mourne 2 Day … and I was knackered…. and it was all Greg McCann’s fault. You see Mr.McCann is an Ultra runner. We met for an introductory run. “We’ll go at a slow pace” smiled Greg, “That’ll suit you” A well meaning comment but a huge insult all in the same breath. “You should do a couple of races” he cackled. A winter of training was followed in March by a gentle 50 miler in the boiling heat of an African Safari Park ….. this turned out to be an NDE (Near Death Experience but without the tunnel of Golden Light and welcoming Angels). That race is detailed elsewhere on this blog site. If you like killer snakes and jolly tales of predatory animals ripping carotid arteries you’ll have a real laugh reading it. I have included the photograph of a fellow NDE sufferer below so that you know I am not lying about the heat…!

Unfortunately during my Spring time in Africa I picked up Hepatitis E. I didn’t even know there was an “E”. Maybe there’s a whole alphabet of it …. I dread to think what Hepatitis X is like. Anyway back to my vowel based version. “Very common in African Pygmies” said my Doctor. I couldn’t remember eating one of those. “AFRICAN PIGMEAT” ….  no need to shout Doctor ! Anyway the result was a nasty liver virus and 16 hours a day in bed for the best part of a month. There’d been a ten week incubation period. June wasn’t a huge amount of fun.

During our winter of tortoisian slouching round the Mournes Greg (family flowers only please) had persuaded me to enter the above race. A race he had done. “You won’t get in though. It’s the 10th running so there will be big demand” I entered just so I didn’t look like a complete wimp and hoped and prayed Greg was right. I did the Camino Trail, visited Lourdes, joined the DUP, embraced creationism and faced Mecca for additional spiritual support. The “Tour Des Lacs” … the race Greg had suggested … was a tough technical 82k route with 5,100 metres of climbing including a beastly summitting of the Pic Du Midi De Bigorre at over 2,800 metres.

I turned all atheistic when to my horror my entry was accepted. Maybe Mecca was in the opposite direction. Navigation has never been a strength. Greg grinned and I vomited. “A nice introduction to high mountain Ultras” said Greg without changing his expression. “Nice” ?? Don’t you love people who can lie with absolute sincerity. 

The Pic Du Midi De Bigorre …. terrifying for a man who finds Butter Mountain intimidating !

Due to the after effects of the Hepatitis (My Doctor said I was the first person to eat a Pygmy and survive) I honestly didn’t have the strength to do much training for the http://www.grandraidpyrenees.com The later Hill and Dale runs nearly killed me. I met a tadpole at the start of the Moughanmore race. He was a frog when I finished. It looked like I’d have to bin the planned Pyrenees Plod. But there is one advantage to being a Non Practising Presbyterian of Scottish ancestry. You see I had paid for the flights and there was no re-fund. So I HAD to go. The plan was to get my money’s worth by enjoying a few days in the Pyrenees and try to make it to Checkpoint Two at 31k. Anyway I wanted to uphold my reputation as the Karl Pilkington of Trail Running. Everyone at the start was encrusted in that Southern European way with impossible sun tans… and rope muscled. I was pasty and chubby. I hid at the back behind a lamppost.

“Tour Des Lacs” The clue is in the title.

Virtually no-one spoke a word of English. The race village Saint Lary-Soulan just about hangs onto France close to the Spanish border. Apparently the language is a sort of Basque/Catalan/Franco-Spanish combo dialect. I thought my GCSE classroom French would suffice. Every time I tried it I got these strange looks. My confident proclamations were probably translating into something like, “Can you help me my undergarments are full of diesel” or something to that effect.  

0430 on race day. Nervous as hell and failing horribly to look cool.

So off we went … three mega climbs on the route. Stunning scenery. There were a lot of lakes. It was like Fermanagh on amphetamines. Very quickly I discovered that my clever summer training plan of doing virtually nothing had been a miscalculation. Add in the after effects of eating that Pygmy (I’ve written to the family – it was an honest mistake. It was dark. I was hungry. He was asleep. These things happen)

I had ONE pace. 1.87 miles an hour. Uphill, downhill, flats. It didn’t matter. I kept surviving the humiliation of check point elimination by ever decreasing margins beating the cut off at the Pic Du Midi by four minutes. France clearly suited me I was moving at the pace of a sedated escargot.

Look closely … the Pyrenees are upside down which makes them very hard to hold onto. I told you it was a technical race.

One of the problems with being old and slow is that you spend a lot more time in the dark. For me that meant approximately 13 hours in the pitch black… two at the start and the other eleven after nightfall. The final long lonely wet and windy climb up to the Col De Bastenet at 2,500 metres was an experience I won’t forget for a while. At the checkpoint there were several people lying in the tiny marquee in survival blankets shivering and throwing up. They looked like they’d just read one of my blogs. 

The lovely Marielle and Cecille who kept me company to the end.

Fortunately at this point I was able to hook up with two locals. The fine ladies above. Twenty kilometres to go, mostly in the dark, but with company. The mental lift was incredible to be honest. We stumbled into the final checkpoint at Merlans half an hour OUTSIDE the cut off. The Race Director was there. Fortunately a man of empathy. I tried to explain, through a cascade of tears, that I had made a long journey from Ireland and to eliminate me now would be a cruel cut indeed. Or maybe I was saying, “My cheeseboard is collapsing inside my hovercraft” Anyway he got the message and said we could carry on as long as we took a sweeper. One of those impossibly tanned rope muscled types I’d hidden from at the start. How embarrassing.

The only member of BARF in the field. You may only become a BARF member if you can prove a certain level of eccentricity. “Bohemian lunacy” It’s in the constitution.

Twenty six hours and thirty two minutes and 934th out of 937 finishers. But FIRST Irishman. Maybe they’ll build a plaque at the finish.

The end of another shuffling summer. My lawyer says it’s risky under libel law to describe myself as a runner. My admiration for anyone who takes part in any mountain endurance event has been enhanced even further. I still feel like an imposter looking in. Having the pace of a snail with superglue for slime is a kind of confirmation. Helping out at the Mourne 2 Day was one of the highlights. Seeing an event from the observers position was enlightening. Now to think about next year. My chances of making the Salomon Ultra Team may have gone but “Saga Holidays” and “Complan” are showing interest. A sponsorship deal. Time to negotiate.

 

 

 

 

AFRICAN ULTRA HORROR

 THE ZUURBERG MOUNTAINS – SETTING FOR THE ADDO ELEPHANT PARK ULTRA TRAIL 

I paid full attention to the final race instructions. Snakes ! Listing the ones we might meet on the trail. The ones that can kill you. Hissssssss ! Cape Cobra, Boomslang (Male and Female – nastier bite from the ladies apparently – surely not !) and the good old Puff Adder.

Most snakes scarper when larger mammals approach but not Puff the Magic Dragon. He lies there, cleverly camouflaged, and waits for you to stand on him or generally irritate him. The bite can kill you or lead to massive inflammation and loss of fanged body part. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to take a dump in the bush. The thought of two prongs in the nuts and then having to watch them turn into fleshy basketballs. Followed by death probably. This wasn’t going to be a Hill and Dale.

 CHECKPOINT ONE AND STILL ABLE TO FORCE A SMILE 

The race was the 50 mile version of the Addo Elephant Park Trail Race. 8,000 feet of climbing included. The route was through the Zuurberg Mountains scene of a famous massacre of the British troops during the Boer War. Apparently the stench of rotting corpses was horrific. I wondered what I’d smell like after a few days dead with melons for testicles.

 

There were two shorter races and a beastly 100 miler for Broadmoor escapees. Location an hour North of Port Elizabeth in the thickest African Bush on the Eastern Cape. A “friend” thought it would be a good idea for a first Ultra. What are friends for ? Killing is the answer.

 

The organisers e mailed to say they would endeavour to keep the predatory animals in the park well away from the runners. ENDEAVOUR ! Now there’s a word. “Excuse me Mr. Lion there’s a race on do you mind feasting elsewhere” In the small print they said you were not allowed to wear headphones during the event so you could be aware in the “Unlikely event of disturbing a dangerous animal” I felt a bowel movement and I hadn’t even left for SA yet. I suspected those Puff Adders were going to get loads of opportunities to taste Irish bollock.

 

The advice was to train appropriately to attempt to replicate the potential conditions of a race in a Safari Park in the African summer so I cleverly did the opposite by packing in a winter of peat plodding in the icy Mournes with the patient Ultra king Greg McCann giving me plenty of great advice. Like “Have you ever thought of having yourself sectioned”

 

Race week arrived and a heat wave was forecast. How happy was I ? The average temperature on race day was 100 degrees Fahrenheit but in the well named Valley of Tears it reached 120. That’s where Jan Smuts of Boer fame slaughtered the Brits. It nearly slaughtered me. Even after sunset the lowest temperature was 82F. That acclimatisation training in the week before I left in that snowstorm on the summit of Donard would surely work to my advantage.

 

My 50 miler started early…. before sunrise. I was staying at a nearby Game Lodge and headed to my car early doors. There was a Zebra standing right beside it. It saw me … farted loudly … and bolted. To be fair that’s the way most mammals react when they first meet me. The race began at 0530 just before the African dawn. It was so romantic I almost kissed myself. And we were off. 81 of us. I was the only Irishman. I didn’t really have to tell you that did I ?

 

The sun came up fast, as it does on the equator, and we faced just short of 12 hours of baking heat. It was a heat that just totally enveloped you. Crushed you. Smothered you. Burnt your soul. I had this feeling that God had placed a super heated concrete block on my head and was trying to drive me into the baked African dirt. God, to give him credit, was well within his rights. I’ve been a sinner.

 

There were checkpoints every 6 miles or so. All of them well stocked with loads of goodies including boiled salted spuds. Didn’t they realise this would give an Irishman an unfair advantage ? Like Lance Armstrong on EPO. Before the race my lovely chum Oonagh Hunter, herself a noted trail athlete, a multiple completer of the three day AfricanX and an Ironman (Woman) as well, had arranged coffee with her old schoolchum SA Ultra star Linda Doke who had raced on the same Salomon team as Kilian Jornet.

With Linda Doke .. all smiles … cos she hadn’t told the Leopard story yet….!

Linda inspired me with a personal experience from the 2016 100 mile race – which she won. At night in the pitch black of the bush she spotted a large dark patch on the trail. Not being able to identify what is was with the narrow beam of her headtorch Linda ran round it. Turned out it was a pool of fresh blood. The result of a Leopard kill. It had leapt from the bush and pulled a Buck to its death. The kill had been witnessed by runners ahead. Thanks Linda. Another bowel movement.

 

But there were also bundles of rather more invigorating advice from Linda. Hydrate like a madman, take regular salt tablets, eat real food at the stops and use the gels as emergency boosts. Keep the electrolyte levels high. Dip your wrists .. in fact as many body parts as possible … during the multiple river crossings. But don’t moon at the Hippos … apparently that makes them very cross. And they drown you. More advice: Get the aid station volunteers to pour water over you at the checkpoints. Keep cap and neck buff as damp as possible. Be strict with your pace. Slow and steady. Shame that last bit as I’d planned to sprint the whole way.

 

Despite the quality briefing I was really struggling not long after the half way point. I think I was showing the first symptoms of heatstroke. Dizzy. Skullcrushing headache. Nausea. One lad collapsed unconscious on the trail. Luckily there was a Doctor, a fellow runner, in the following group. The Doc stabilised him and a Medic arrived. By now ten runners had dropped out. I was stuffed and feeling very lonely. Then I heard footsteps behind me. I’m not last ! What a boost. Turned out it was the race sweepers … or Grim Reapers as I called them.. Dylan and Misty. Dylan recommended that I pull out at the next checkpoint … number four. He told me I was over an hour behind the next runner and had no chance of making the seven p.m. cut off at checkpoint seven.

 

I really did think my race was over and at checkpoint four I sat down in the shade of the gazebo and contemplated the horror of failure. Dallas… yes he really was called Dallas… one of the Chief Marshalls repeated what Dylan and Misty had said… but he did add an extra line. I went all Clint Eastwood … it made my day. Dallas said best to stop as the next segment … a three mile long straight uphill section … would be sure to finish me. I sat there thinking “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’m capable of. A steep uphill section ? I’d like to see you slogging up Bernagh in a blizzard. Feeling lucky punk” See … Clint Eastwood. I visualised how Dallas would look locked inside a barrel of Texas oil but by accident I had found a great motivator. Anger. And off I went. From some where the strength returned. I imagined being back in the Mournes. Except these Mournes were in a blast furnace. But it was a seminal moment.

 

After the climb we were on an escarpment and at last there was a breeze. Two undulating sections. I got to checkpoint six. I was bright red and ruptured .. it was still over 100 degrees …. and there he was my nemesis … Dallas…. astride his quad bike like Bruce Willis. “You have an hour to cover the next six miles or you’re out. It’s an hour to the cut off time. You’ll have to shift” I seriously considered ramming my walking poles into as dark a place as my depleted energy stores would have allowed. The anger returned. My feet were by now two slabs of mashed mincemeat. I’d been “powerwalking” – without the power bit – for a long time now. I was now at truffle pig pace.

Dallas had gone on ahead waiting with the Sword of Damocles at checkpoint bleedin Charlie. I wobbled in ten minutes after the cut off. I stared at Dallas almost daring him to pull me out. I had secretly sharpened my walking poles on the sharp scree of the last climb. The Death of Dallas would be a slow and painful one. Like a a Matador with a bull I knew exactly where my little spears were going. I think he saw the psycho in the eyes. I think we tight band of Irish fell runners all have the capacity of that look. A subtle mix of determination and madness. Dallas waved me on. He had just saved his own life. (The Dallas bashing is of course for comic affect. He was in truth a great lad. Dallas cajoled and encouraged. He kept me moving. Mind you the bit about making me angry. That’s true !) 

 

The final leg. All in the dark. About 8 miles through forested bush. Snake country. Add about a dozen river crossings. The organisers – Beelzebub and Pol Pot presumably – thought it would be fun to save brutality for the finish. There was a fair chunk of climbing too. It took me over three hours to do that relatively short distance. Empty tank. Frightened … I’m not ashamed to admit it. I was stumbling about looking for race route markers. Little orange ribbons hanging from thorn bushes. I joke you not. At least they had tiny reflectors on them. Which helped. But they weren’t easy to pick out. Especially when you had to watch every footstep on rough ground while trying to look up at the same time. The river banks were high above the rivers themselves so one slip and it was a long way down into a watery abyss. And then there’s the chance of your headtorch picking out eyes in the bush. What is it ? A harmless Zebra or one of those bloody Leopards ? In the Mournes you know it’s a sheep or, in the forests, a deer. Scary … it really was. 

 

After a while I spotted two wee lights through the trees in the distance. I caught them. Two guys in the 100 mile race and, thank the Lord, they were as slow as me. Two Afrikaners and we made the Long Walk to Freedom (had to get that line in) The last couple of miles felt like eternity. The mind was now playing devilish tricks. At one point my fuggish brain convinced me that I would be here for all time. Fumbling from one orange ribbon to the next in the pitch black until the Universe exploded.

Eventually, after, to be precise, several decades the finish inflatable appeared. I wanted to make love to it. I wanted it to have my children. I wanted to include it in my will. 71st and last of the finishers in 16 hours 35 minutes. They talk about emotions at the end of something like this and I know many readers of this blog will have completed many more difficult and challenging races than the Addo Elephant Park Trail Race but only one word had any meaning to me at this stage. Relief. No happiness. No endorphin release. No tears of satisfaction. Just pure relief that the agony and fear had come to an end.

When I look back there were two keys to completion. The anger I talked about … but that lead to a feeling of ownership. If you take ownership of ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING there is a much better chance of success. Own the pain. Own the terrain. Own the race. Own your fear. See everything “negative” as partners on your journey and success will be much more likely. It worked for me. Maybe I’m a little weak. Don’t know. But it was the toughest thing mentally and physically I have ever done. 56 years old and my first Ultra completed. Maybe this wee blog will inspire someone to give it a go or maybe encourage some of you old hands to go for something a little more exotic. Like the risk of death by snakebite or dismemberment by Lion in 100 degree heat in deepest Africa. And meeting Dallas. Think about it. You’ll love it.

 

FOOTNOTE: Dallas turned out to be a great lad. He was just nudging me along in that South African no mercy way. We even swapped e mail addresses. Buddies now that it’s over. Thanks to to my NLP guru Brendan McCourt. The ownership bit has a lot to do with him. To Karen who got the energy into my body. Brian, the owner of the Kudu Ridge Game Lodge, also became a good friend. We had rugby in common. And finally to Sheena O’Keefe and the organisers for making a brutal event as comfortable as possible. The organisation was spot on and the friendliness of the people was probably the fondest memory.

AFRICAN ULTRA HORROR

 THE ZUURBERG MOUNTAINS – SETTING FOR THE ADDO ELEPHANT PARK ULTRA TRAIL 

They didn’t mention the snakes when I paid my entry. Well they wouldn’t would they. They did in the final instructions. Listing the ones we might meet on the trail. The ones that can kill you. Hissssssss ! Cape Cobra, Boomslang (Male and Female – nastier bite from the ladies apparently – surely not !) and the good old Puff Adder.

Most snakes scarper when larger mammals approach but not Puff the Magic Dragon. He lies there, cleverly camouflaged, and waits for you to stand on him or generally irritate him. The bite can kill you or lead to massive inflammation and loss of fanged body part. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to take a dump in the bush. The thought of two prongs in the nuts and then having to watch them turn into fleshy basketballs. Followed by death probably. This wasn’t going to be a Hill and Dale.

 CHECKPOINT ONE AND STILL ABLE TO FORCE A SMILE 

The race was the 50 mile version of the Addo Elephant Park Trail Race. 8,000 feet of climbing included. The route was through the Zuurberg Mountains scene of a famous massacre of the British troops during the Boer War. Apparently the stench of rotting corpses was horrific. I wondered what I’d smell like after a few days dead with melons for testicles.

 

There were two shorter races and a beastly 100 miler for Broadmoor escapees. Location an hour North of Port Elizabeth in the thickest African Bush on the Eastern Cape. A “friend” thought it would be a good idea for a first Ultra. What are friends for ? Killing is the answer.

 

The organisers e mailed to say they would endeavour to keep the predatory animals in the park well away from the runners. ENDEAVOUR ! Now there’s a word. “Excuse me Mr. Lion there’s a race on do you mind feasting elsewhere” In the small print they said you were not allowed to wear headphones during the event so you could be aware in the “Unlikely event of disturbing a dangerous animal” I felt a bowel movement and I hadn’t even left for SA yet. I suspected those Puff Adders were going to get loads of opportunities to taste Irish bollock.

 

The advice was to train appropriately to attempt to replicate the potential conditions of a race in a Safari Park in the African summer so I cleverly did the opposite by packing in a winter of peat plodding in the icy Mournes with the patient Ultra king Greg McCann giving me plenty of great advice. Like “Have you ever thought of having yourself sectioned”

 

Race week arrived and a heat wave was forecast. How happy was I ? The average temperature on race day was 100 degrees Fahrenheit but in the well named Valley of Tears it reached 120. That’s where Jan Smuts of Boer fame slaughtered the Brits. It nearly slaughtered me. Even after sunset the lowest temperature was 82F. That acclimatisation training in the week before I left in that snowstorm on the summit of Donard would surely work to my advantage.

 

My 50 miler started early…. before sunrise. I was staying at a nearby Game Lodge and headed to my car early doors. There was a Zebra standing right beside it. It saw me … farted loudly … and bolted. To be fair that’s the way most mammals react when they first meet me. The race began at 0530 just before the African dawn. It was so romantic I almost kissed myself. And we were off. 81 of us. I was the only Irishman. I didn’t really have to tell you that did I ?

 

The sun came up fast, as it does on the equator, and we faced just short of 12 hours of baking heat. It was a heat that just totally enveloped you. Crushed you. Smothered you. Burnt your soul. I had this feeling that God had placed a super heated concrete block on my head and was trying to drive me into the baked African dirt. God, to give him credit, was well within his rights. I’ve been a sinner.

 

There were checkpoints every 6 miles or so. All of them well stocked with loads of goodies including boiled salted spuds. Didn’t they realise this would give an Irishman an unfair advantage ? Like Lance Armstrong on EPO. Before the race my lovely chum Oonagh Hunter, herself a noted trail athlete, a multiple completer of the three day AfricanX and an Ironman (Woman) as well, had arranged coffee with her old schoolchum SA Ultra star Linda Doke who had raced on the same Salomon team as Kilian Jornet.

Linda inspired me with a personal experience from the 2016 100 mile race – which she won. At night in the pitch black of the bush she spotted a large dark patch on the trail. Not being able to identify what is was with the narrow beam of her headtorch Linda ran round it. Turned out it was a pool of fresh blood. The result of a Leopard kill. It had leapt from the bush and pulled a Buck to its death. The kill had been witnessed by runners ahead. Thanks Linda. Another bowel movement.

 

But there were also bundles of rather more invigorating advice from Linda. Hydrate like a madman, take regular salt tablets, eat real food at the stops and use the gels as emergency boosts. Keep the electrolyte levels high. Dip your wrists .. in fact as many body parts as possible … during the multiple river crossings. But don’t moon at the Hippos … apparently that makes them very cross. And they drown you. More advice: Get the aid station volunteers to pour water over you at the checkpoints. Keep cap and neck buff as damp as possible. Be strict with your pace. Slow and steady. Shame that last bit as I’d planned to sprint the whole way.

 

Despite the quality briefing I was really struggling not long after the half way point. I think I was showing the first symptoms of heatstroke. Dizzy. Skullcrushing headache. Nausea. One lad collapsed unconscious on the trail. Luckily there was a Doctor, a fellow runner, in the following group. The Doc stabilised him and a Medic arrived. By now ten runners had dropped out. I was stuffed and feeling very lonely. Then I heard footsteps behind me. I’m not last ! What a boost. Turned out it was the race sweepers … or Grim Reapers as I called them.. Dylan and Misty. Dylan recommended that I pull out at the next checkpoint … number four. He told me I was over an hour behind the next runner and had no chance of making the seven p.m. cut off at checkpoint seven.

 

I really did think my race was over and at checkpoint four I sat down in the shade of the gazebo and contemplated the horror of failure. Dallas… yes he really was called Dallas… one of the Chief Marshalls repeated what Dylan and Misty had said… but he did add an extra line. I went all Clint Eastwood … it made my day. Dallas said best to stop as the next segment … a three mile long straight uphill section … would be sure to finish me. I sat there thinking “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’m capable of. A steep uphill section ? I’d like to see you slogging up Bernagh in a blizzard. Feeling lucky punk” See … Clint Eastwood. I visualised how Dallas would look locked inside a barrel of Texas oil but by accident I had found a great motivator. Anger. And off I went. From some where the strength returned. I imagined being back in the Mournes. Except these Mournes were in a blast furnace. But it was a seminal moment.

 

After the climb we were on an escarpment and at last there was a breeze. Two undulating sections. I got to checkpoint six. I was bright red and ruptured .. it was still over 100 degrees …. and there he was my nemesis … Dallas…. astride his quad bike like Bruce Willis. “You have an hour to cover the next six miles or you’re out. It’s an hour to the cut off time. You’ll have to shift” I seriously considered ramming my walking poles into as dark a place as my depleted energy stores would have allowed. The anger returned. My feet were by now two slabs of mashed mincemeat. I’d been “powerwalking” – without the power bit – for a long time now. I was now at truffle pig pace.

Dallas had gone on ahead waiting with the Sword of Damocles at checkpoint bleedin Charlie. I wobbled in ten minutes after the cut off. I stared at Dallas almost daring him to pull me out. I had secretly sharpened my walking poles on the sharp scree of the last climb. The Death of Dallas would be a slow and painful one. Like a a Matador with a bull I knew exactly where my little spears were going. I think he saw the psycho in the eyes. I think we tight band of Irish fell runners all have the capacity of that look. A subtle mix of determination and madness. Dallas waved me on. He had just saved his own life. (The Dallas bashing is of course for comic affect. He was in truth a great lad. Dallas cajoled and encouraged. He kept me moving. Mind you the bit about making me angry. That’s true !) 

 

The final leg. All in the dark. About 8 miles through forested bush. Snake country. Add about a dozen river crossings. The organisers – Beelzebub and Pol Pot presumably – thought it would be fun to save brutality for the finish. There was a fair chunk of climbing too. It took me over three hours to do that relatively short distance. Empty tank. Frightened … I’m not ashamed to admit it. I was stumbling about looking for race route markers. Little orange ribbons hanging from thorn bushes. I joke you not. At least they had tiny reflectors on them. Which helped. But they weren’t easy to pick out. Especially when you had to watch every footstep on rough ground while trying to look up at the same time. The river banks were high above the rivers themselves so one slip and it was a long way down into a watery abyss. And then there’s the chance of your headtorch picking out eyes in the bush. What is it ? A harmless Zebra or one of those bloody Leopards ? In the Mournes you know it’s a sheep or, in the forests, a deer. Scary … it really was. 

 

After a while I spotted two wee lights through the trees in the distance. I caught them. Two guys in the 100 mile race and, thank the Lord, they were as slow as me. Two Afrikaners and we made the Long Walk to Freedom (had to get that line in) The last couple of miles felt like eternity. The mind was now playing devilish tricks. At one point my fuggish brain convinced me that I would be here for all time. Fumbling from one orange ribbon to the next in the pitch black until the Universe exploded.

Eventually, after, to be precise, several decades the finish inflatable appeared. I wanted to make love to it. I wanted it to have my children. I wanted to include it in my will. 71st and last of the finishers in 16 hours 35 minutes. They talk about emotions at the end of something like this and I know many readers of this blog will have completed many more difficult and challenging races than the Addo Elephant Park Trail Race but only one word had any meaning to me at this stage. Relief. No happiness. No endorphin release. No tears of satisfaction. Just pure relief that the agony and fear had come to an end.

When I look back there were two keys to completion. The anger I talked about … but that lead to a feeling of ownership. If you take ownership of ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING there is a much better chance of success. Own the pain. Own the terrain. Own the race. Own your fear. See everything “negative” as partners on your journey and success will be much more likely. It worked for me. Maybe I’m a little weak. Don’t know. But it was the toughest thing mentally and physically I have ever done. 56 years old and my first Ultra completed. Maybe this wee blog will inspire someone to give it a go or maybe encourage some of you old hands to go for something a little more exotic. Like the risk of death by snakebite or dismemberment by Lion in 100 degree heat in deepest Africa. And meeting Dallas. Think about it. You’ll love it.

 

FOOTNOTE: Dallas turned out to be a great lad. He was just nudging me along in that South African no mercy way. We even swapped e mail addresses. Buddies now that it’s over. Thanks to to my NLP guru Brendan McCourt. The ownership bit has a lot to do with him. To Karen who got the energy into my body. Brian, the owner of the Kudu Ridge Game Lodge, also became a good friend. We had rugby in common. And finally to Sheena O’Keefe and the organisers for making a brutal event as comfortable as possible. The organisation was spot on and the friendliness of the people was probably the fondest memory.

AFRICAN ULTRA HORROR

 THE ZUURBERG MOUNTAINS – SETTING FOR THE ADDO ELEPHANT PARK ULTRA TRAIL 

They didn’t mention the snakes when I paid my entry. Well they wouldn’t would they. They did in the final instructions. Listing the ones we might meet on the trail. The ones that can kill you. Hissssssss ! Cape Cobra, Boomslang (Male and Female – nastier bite from the ladies apparently – surely not !) and the good old Puff Adder.

MY VERY GOOD FRIEND THE PUFF ADDER. PARTICULAR FONDNESS FOR IRISH CUISINE.

Most snakes scarper when larger mammals approach but not Puff the Magic Dragon. He lies there, cleverly camouflaged, and waits for you to stand on him or generally irritate him. The bite can kill you or lead to massive inflammation and loss of fanged body part. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to take a dump in the bush. The thought of two prongs in the nuts and then having to watch them turn into fleshy basketballs. Followed by death probably. This wasn’t going to be a Hill and Dale.

 CHECKPOINT ONE AND STILL ABLE TO FORCE A SMILE 

The race was the 50 mile version of the Addo Elephant Park Trail Race. 8,000 feet of climbing included. The route was through the Zuurberg Mountains scene of a famous massacre of the British troops during the Boer War. Apparently the stench of rotting corpses was horrific. I wondered what I’d smell like after a few days dead with melons for testicles.

SOME TOUGH RIVER CROSSINGS – WITH BIG HIPPO DOWNSTREAM – DON’T LET GO !!!!

 

There were two shorter races and a beastly 100 miler for Broadmoor escapees. Location an hour North of Port Elizabeth in the thickest African Bush on the Eastern Cape. A “friend” thought it would be a good idea for a first Ultra. What are friends for ? Killing is the answer.

HOT !

 

The organisers e mailed to say they would endeavour to keep the predatory animals in the park well away from the runners. ENDEAVOUR ! Now there’s a word. “Excuse me Mr. Lion there’s a race on do you mind feasting elsewhere” In the small print they said you were not allowed to wear headphones during the event so you could be aware in the “Unlikely event of disturbing a dangerous animal” I felt a bowel movement and I hadn’t even left for SA yet. I suspected those Puff Adders were going to get loads of opportunities to taste Irish bollock.

 

SUNSET – SALVATION FROM THE HEAT ? NOT EXACTLY STILL READING 82F ON MY GARMIN !

The advice was to train appropriately to attempt to replicate the potential conditions of a race in a Safari Park in the African summer so I cleverly did the opposite by packing in a winter of peat plodding in the icy Mournes with the patient Ultra king Greg McCann giving me plenty of great advice. Like “Have you ever thought of having yourself sectioned”

 

Race week arrived and a heat wave was forecast. How happy was I ? The average temperature on race day was 100 degrees Fahrenheit but in the well named Valley of Tears it reached 120. That’s where Jan Smuts of Boer fame slaughtered the Brits. It nearly slaughtered me. Even after sunset the lowest temperature was 82F. That acclimatisation training in the week before I left in that snowstorm on the summit of Donard would surely work to my advantage.

 

My 50 miler started early…. before sunrise. I was staying at a nearby Game Lodge and headed to my car early doors. There was a Zebra standing right beside it. It saw me … farted loudly … and bolted. To be fair that’s the way most mammals react when they first meet me. The race began at 0530 just before the African dawn. It was so romantic I almost kissed myself. And we were off. 81 of us. I was the only Irishman. I didn’t really have to tell you that did I ?

 

The sun came up fast, as it does on the equator, and we faced just short of 12 hours of baking heat. It was a heat that just totally enveloped you. Crushed you. Smothered you. Burnt your soul. I had this feeling that God had placed a super heated concrete block on my head and was trying to drive me into the baked African dirt. God, to give him credit, was well within his rights. I’ve been a sinner.

TOUGH GOING

 

There were checkpoints every 6 miles or so. All of them well stocked with loads of goodies including boiled salted spuds. Didn’t they realise this would give an Irishman an unfair advantage ? Like Lance Armstrong on EPO. Before the race my lovely chum Oonagh Hunter, herself a noted trail athlete, a multiple completer of the three day AfricanX and an Ironman (Woman) as well, had arranged coffee with her old schoolchum SA Ultra star Linda Doke who had raced on the same Salomon team as Kilian Jornet.

Linda inspired me with a personal experience from the 2016 100 mile race – which she won. At night in the pitch black of the bush she spotted a large dark patch on the trail. Not being able to identify what is was with the narrow beam of her headtorch Linda ran round it. Turned out it was a pool of fresh blood. The result of a Leopard kill. It had leapt from the bush and pulled a Buck to its death. The kill had been witnessed by runners ahead. Thanks Linda. Another bowel movement.

ROBSON STRUGGLING BADLY BUT STILL DOING MY TRUFFLE PIG IMPRESSION

 

But there were also bundles of rather more invigorating advice from Linda. Hydrate like a madman, take regular salt tablets, eat real food at the stops and use the gels as emergency boosts. Keep the electrolyte levels high. Dip your wrists .. in fact as many body parts as possible … during the multiple river crossings. But don’t moon at the Hippos … apparently that makes them very cross. And they drown you. More advice: Get the aid station volunteers to pour water over you at the checkpoints. Keep cap and neck buff as damp as possible. Be strict with your pace. Slow and steady. Shame that last bit as I’d planned to sprint the whole way.

 

Despite the quality briefing I was really struggling not long after the half way point. I think I was showing the first symptoms of heatstroke. Dizzy. Skullcrushing headache. Nausea. One lad collapsed unconscious on the trail. Luckily there was a Doctor, a fellow runner, in the following group. The Doc stabilised him and a Medic arrived. By now ten runners had dropped out. I was stuffed and feeling very lonely. Then I heard footsteps behind me. I’m not last ! What a boost. Turned out it was the race sweepers … or Grim Reapers as I called them.. Dylan and Misty. Dylan recommended that I pull out at the next checkpoint … number four. He told me I was over an hour behind the next runner and had no chance of making the seven p.m. cut off at checkpoint seven.

KEEP HER LIT BIG LAD – JUST TWENTY MILES TO GO

 

I really did think my race was over and at checkpoint four I sat down in the shade of the gazebo and contemplated the horror of failure. Dallas… yes he really was called Dallas… one of the Chief Marshalls repeated what Dylan and Misty had said… but he did add an extra line. I went all Clint Eastwood … it made my day. Dallas said best to stop as the next segment … a three mile long straight uphill section … would be sure to finish me. I sat there thinking “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’m capable of. A steep uphill section ? I’d like to see you slogging up Bernagh in a blizzard. Feeling lucky punk” See … Clint Eastwood. I visualised how Dallas would look locked inside a barrel of Texas oil but by accident I had found a great motivator. Anger. And off I went. From some where the strength returned. I imagined being back in the Mournes. Except these Mournes were in a blast furnace. But it was a seminal moment.

 

After the climb we were on an escarpment and at last there was a breeze. Two undulating sections. I got to checkpoint six. I was bright red and ruptured .. it was still over 100 degrees …. and there he was my nemesis … Dallas…. astride his quad bike like Bruce Willis. “You have an hour to cover the next six miles or you’re out. It’s an hour to the cut off time. You’ll have to shift” I seriously considered ramming my walking poles into as dark a place as my depleted energy stores would have allowed. The anger returned. My feet were by now two slabs of mashed mincemeat. I’d been “powerwalking” – without the power bit – for a long time now. I was now at truffle pig pace.

Dallas had gone on ahead waiting with the Sword of Damocles at checkpoint bleedin Charlie. I wobbled in ten minutes after the cut off. I stared at Dallas almost daring him to pull me out. I had secretly sharpened my walking poles on the sharp scree of the last climb. The Death of Dallas would be a slow and painful one. Like a a Matador with a bull I knew exactly where my little spears were going. I think he saw the psycho in the eyes. I think we tight band of Irish fell runners all have the capacity of that look. A subtle mix of determination and madness. Dallas waved me on. He had just saved his own life. (The Dallas bashing is of course for comic affect. He was in truth a great lad. Dallas cajoled and encouraged. He kept me moving. Mind you the bit about making me angry. That’s true !) 

 

The final leg. All in the dark. About 8 miles through forested bush. Snake country. Add about a dozen river crossings. The organisers – Beelzebub and Pol Pot presumably – thought it would be fun to save brutality for the finish. There was a fair chunk of climbing too. It took me over three hours to do that relatively short distance. Empty tank. Frightened … I’m not ashamed to admit it. I was stumbling about looking for race route markers. Little orange ribbons hanging from thorn bushes. I joke you not. At least they had tiny reflectors on them. Which helped. But they weren’t easy to pick out. Especially when you had to watch every footstep on rough ground while trying to look up at the same time. The river banks were high above the rivers themselves so one slip and it was a long way down into a watery abyss. And then there’s the chance of your headtorch picking out eyes in the bush. What is it ? A harmless Zebra or one of those bloody Leopards ? In the Mournes you know it’s a sheep or, in the forests, a deer. Scary … it really was. 

 

After a while I spotted two wee lights through the trees in the distance. I caught them. Two guys in the 100 mile race and, thank the Lord, they were as slow as me. Two Afrikaners and we made the Long Walk to Freedom (had to get that line in) The last couple of miles felt like eternity. The mind was now playing devilish tricks. At one point my fuggish brain convinced me that I would be here for all time. Fumbling from one orange ribbon to the next in the pitch black until the Universe exploded.

GRATUITOUS PHOTO OF AN ELEPHANT. HAD TO BE DONE. AFTER ALL IT WAS THE ADDO ELEPHANT PARK ULTRA TRAIL RACE. WILL YOU BE THERE NEXT YEAR ?

Eventually, after, to be precise, several decades the finish inflatable appeared. I wanted to make love to it. I wanted it to have my children. I wanted to include it in my will. 71st and last of the finishers in 16 hours 35 minutes. They talk about emotions at the end of something like this and I know many readers of this blog will have completed many more difficult and challenging races than the Addo Elephant Park Trail Race but only one word had any meaning to me at this stage. Relief. No happiness. No endorphin release. No tears of satisfaction. Just pure relief that the agony and fear had come to an end.

When I look back there were two keys to completion. The anger I talked about … but that lead to a feeling of ownership. If you take ownership of ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING there is a much better chance of success. Own the pain. Own the terrain. Own the race. Own your fear. See everything “negative” as partners on your journey and success will be much more likely. It worked for me. Maybe I’m a little weak. Don’t know. But it was the toughest thing mentally and physically I have ever done. 56 years old and my first Ultra completed. Maybe this wee blog will inspire someone to give it a go or maybe encourage some of you old hands to go for something a little more exotic. Like the risk of death by snakebite or dismemberment by Lion in 100 degree heat in deepest Africa. And meeting Dallas. Think about it. You’ll love it.

ADDO ULTRA OVER AND TIME TO RELAX AT THE KUDU RIDGE GAME LODGE. DON’T PANIC NATURE LOVERS THE HEAD IS A PLASTIC MOULD – THE RHINO’S – NOT MINE. THOUGH BY THIS STAGE ANY GREY MATTER I DID HAVE WAS WELL AND TRULY FRIED.

 

FOOTNOTE: Dallas turned out to be a great lad. He was just nudging me along in that South African no mercy way. We even swapped e mail addresses. Buddies now that it’s over. Thanks to to my NLP guru Brendan McCourt. The ownership bit has a lot to do with him. To Karen who got the energy into my body. Brian, the owner of the Kudu Ridge Game Lodge, also became a good friend. We had rugby in common. And finally to Sheena O’Keefe and the organisers for making a brutal event as comfortable as possible. The organisation was spot on and the friendliness of the people was probably the fondest memory.

Mourne Mountain Marathon 2016

I was supposed to be tapering for the MMM. The Seven Sevens in August was in the diary to prove to myself that the legs were strong. So there I was using the Mourne Wall as a granite pulley system grasping the dry stone brickwork with both hands to help me haul myself up Bernagh – the Seventh Seven on the route.

The Battleground

Legs are supposed to me made of muscle bone and sinew. Mine felt as if they had been injected with wallpaper paste. But you keep going don’t you ? As I stumbled down the Glen River path towards the sanctuary of the finish line, Ian Bailey, the soon to be record breaking winner, who had started several weeks after me, levitated past and I swear that the great man wasn’t even perspiring. Bailey beat me by over THREE HOURS which means that he could have included a family picnic as part of his race route and still beaten me comfortably. The MMM was but five weeks away. I had every right to be nervous.

That is me at the rear and totally overdressed. All the gear and no idear ! .. And being beaten by a pensioner. To be fair to both parties that pensioner is local fell running legend Ricky Cowan. 

Trickie Rickie’s Quickie

To be honest, as usual, the season hadn’t gone well. I really thought 2016 would be a breakthrough year. Ricky Cowan was a constant thorn. I wouldn’t say Ricky was old but he was one of the few to actually witness the Big Bang. As evidenced by the above photo the great man of the hills was still doing enough to beat Robson a man ten years his junior. Ricky has met the Queen (Victoria) and took his Mountain Leader assessment alongside George Mallory. Maybe I should consider retirement.

The Mourne Mountains. A playground for the insane middle aged.

MMM and KGB! I Don’t believe it!

This was all very disappointing as I had put a cunning plan in place. Shortly after last years MMM I kidnapped a member of the famed Newcastle AC club. The poor girl thought I fancied her but the truth is she had been identified as the perfect training partner. Someone who could help me improve my fell running times and also make the odd cup of tea. Victoria Canavan was her name. The fell running community was in uproar when they discovered that one of the posh gits from the BARF club had moved in on the local talent. But I wasn’t stupid. It was a pre-meditated strike. This was a girl who was suspected of being part of the Russian doping scandal. In fact, in the Mourne area, she was known as Victoriana Canavanavich. It was all state run apparently. Joe McCannavanavanavich of the Newcastle Club had been spotted lunching with Vladamir Putin at O’Hare’s Bar in the Main Street. And there was talk of EPO which made me giddy. I knew I couldn’t get better on talent alone – mainly because I didn’t have any ! Drugs and romance. The perfect combination.

Zaphod Beeblebrox ? Or Canavanavich suffering from Stockholm Syndrome ?

Pain in Spain

We went for a training week – sorry romantic break – to the Picos De Europa range of mountains in Northern Spain. It was there, according to her, that I tried to kill my Russian girlfriend – the sort of thing you normally leave to Bond. A jolly day out was marred slightly when our route back to the car – via a precipitous and narrow mountain path – was blocked by an impassable Avalanche. We were four hours into our jaunt and close to salvation.

But sure it was a nice sunny day. What could possibly go wrong ? As I uttered the words, “Sorry dear there’s nothing else we can do but go back the way we came” we heard the first cracks of thunder. Within minutes we were engulfed in a full blown blizzard. Canavanavich’s mood changed.

The Russian in the blizzard smiling through veiled frozen tears.

In fact she went all Siberian. But I didn’t panic. Victoria, apart from telling me a hundred times, through a veil of freezing tears, that we would die a horrible death in the wilderness, kept her composure. I knew I had to save her. I used every ounce of mountain craft to keep my new love alive. Chivalry…? No not really. The Russian had not yet revealed the name of her EPO contact. I had to keep Canavanavich breathing.

Can you spot the horse’s arse ? A welcome break in the Picos De Europa. Canavanavich must still be alive. She’s taking the photo.

Into the Valley of Death

Things had looked a lot better in early May. The Annalong Horseshoe Fell Race had been successfully completed. A 13 mile jolly through driving rain and fog thicker than the skin on the school custard. Yet again I went about my humble yet heroic business of helping people in a crisis. Coming off Cove I heard the cries of the Wherethefuckarewe Tribe lead by local international star Paulette Thomson. A bunch of hardy and experienced competitors who had slipped off the racing line. If I hadn’t got them back on course Thomson and Co might have accidentally won the Annalong Valley Cliff Diving Championships and met a grisly death under the Cove crags. Being a hero goes against my modest inclinations.

The truth is getting a body off the mountain is such a pain. The bloody thing weighs a ton. Better to keep folk moving. Until you get near the finish line of course. Then all bets are off. The real Robson emerged. I was with the Russian. We encountered a group of Southern Irish hill walkers at the North Tor of Binian. The last climb. One hiker yelled through the clagging mist and screaming gale, “Is this the way to the car park ?” I remember thinking “I wish I had packed the small revolver” – and shouted back, “I’m here to race – not to save lives” Where had Mother Theresa gone ? The Russian was horrified. No gallantry medal for me. Instead I had made Victoria Cross.

But the miles were in the legs although I had picked up an injury. “Right Thumb Knuckle Lock” incurred through feverishly gripping the compass for over four hours. Anyway job done and nobody died. As far as I know. 

Great weather and perfect vis for Day One

THE BIG SHOW – MOUNTAIN MARATHON TIME

The Course Planner Terry McQueen once again thought he was Steve (although his dress sense would suggest he is more Alexander). By his own admission the “B” course was “Right on the edge” McQueen didn’t elaborate but I suspect he meant “Right on the edge of sanity”. Brutal stuff on day one with 1,500 metres of climb and some kinkily placed controls.

Try finding that wee orange flag in THICK FOG !

McQueen is a closet vampire. The sun rose at the campsite on the morning of Day Two and the crusted dried blood at the corners of his mouth revealed McQueen’s night time habits. Here is a man who likes his jugular. Terry had howled at the moon keeping the tented residents awake but it worked. On Day Two he had his wish. Thick fog was rolling in with the promise of rain. The mist would soon be down in the valleys.

A test of the navigation on Day Two

There was an unnerving mix of alligator infested swampland and mudslide descents. There was also an evil four control “Super Cluster” on the top of Bernagh. One description read, “North Tor, extreme NE, base”. It would have been easier to find Atlantis !!!! Another said “Boulder” when it was actually a pebble. And all in thick murky mist. This was like doing a Rubix Cube blindfold. A malicious cackle drifted through the mist. Mean McQueen.

Canavan demonstrates perfect map marking body position. Robson eases the pressure on his piles.

And then there was my Marathon partner. I had reduced her to screaming silence. Victoria had demonstrated remarkable patience alongside the “Meldrew of the Mountains”. She only threatened to kill me once. Staggering patience over 45k (with over 8,000 feet of climbing !) But, incredibly, our combined skill set of grump and guile ended up with Robson and Canavan on top of the podium. Amazing isn’t it. We won the Mixed Vets. And there was me thinking a mixed vet was a transgender animal surgeon. You live and learn. My first prize of any kind since finishing an excellent third in the year eleven sack race in 1971 (the rest of the field stumbled and fell – idiots !)

We never quite got the hang of the strapping system on those damn rucksacks

After two days of steep climbing, puffing, panting, scrambling and sliding we felt like the survivors of a sparring session with Conor McGregor. Peat and Heather were encrusted beneath our fingernails. Lovely couple Pete and Heather.

A successful outing then for Robson/Canavan. Butch and Sundance ? Hinge and Bracket ? Or maybe the Crankies. I’m Jimmy – the irritating one.

Next ? K2 on a tandem.

Elsewhere the powerful combo of Joe and Gwenda Kenneally showed that a husband and wife can win their category without domestic violence. Mixed Vets winners in the “C” Class.

Joe and Gwenda get their prize from Kerry

While my old nemisis (or is it nemisi ?) Nangle + Mahon again finished the “C” class. Astonishingly they remain competitive without doing any training whatsoever. The evidence to back that up is there for all to see on Facebook where Nangle’s posts ALWAYS include a large pint. Maybe it should be “Off Your Facebook” ?

Dastardly and Muttley or rather Mahon and Nangle

And then there was the “B” class pairing of John Keating and Ian McCracken. Both members of Mourne Mountain Rescue. They know every nook and cranny. The gynecologists of the hills. But McCracken was injured. Coming off Binian on Day One he went over on his already gammy leg and let out a cry of pain. Being members of Mountain Rescue they could have easily called for help by phoning each other. But on they went. At the campsite McCracken’s ankle swelled up alarmingly. It was the size of Rathlin Island. But he soldiered on alongside the eternally optimistic sympathy free zone that is J.Keating. To finish was a feat. 

McCracken is on the left of picture – the expression on his face proof that something is swollen

Yet again it’s many thanks to the MMM team who once more put on an amazing beautifully run event. Now we are off to Jackson Sports with our £50 vouchers. If you do codeine Mr.Jackson a bulk order is coming your way !

Running uphill and downhill through the rugged Mournes over and under summits through gulleys and marsh while trying to navigate – in a constant exhausted state – over two days and carrying all your gear including tent and food. And sometimes you can’t see anything – and then it rains. Apparently it’s fun. See you all next year for more happy truffling.

Mourne Mountain Marathon 2015

MOURNE MOUNTAIN MARATHON 2015

“The credit belongs to the man in the arena. Whose face is marred by sweat and dust and blood. His place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”  Theodore Roosevelt. 

Keep smiling … and pretend it’s not hurting ! September means Mountain Marathon time.

Alfred Hitchcock, noted for his love of the Dark Side, would have been thrilled by the attacks of the killer buzzard. Identikit scenes from Hitch’s fabled horror “The Birds” were being played out just up the road from Mauds. As families bought pokes the crazed bird swooped in the nearby forest. The local residents were terrified and parents kept their children close. The route for the Millstone Hill and Dale race in May had to be altered …. taking us up the Granite Trail…. to avoid the psychotic creature.

There he is the wee bugger ! Protecting his young. To be honest we were invading the buzzard’s terrain. Attacks probably warranted.

The buzzard had attacked several folk on their training runs. One poor lad needed multiple stitches in his bald pate. Apparently the buzzard took particular offence at the follically challenged. I was nervous and came over all Tippi Hendren because I myself come close to the baldy bastard category. Should I have a “Wayne Rooney Weave” or run under an umbrella ? “Man Up” I thought so I ran the race wearing nothing more than a protective yellow helmet. At least it would save me from concussion during the race. I’d been making downhill head plants a speciality. Marathon Men … And Women … need courage and I wasn’t going to let the ragged talons of a bi-polar buzzard affect my preparation. As usual the wonderful Hill and Dale Race Series provided the bedrock for my Mourne 2 Day build up. I could handle the scratch marks.

He’s being chased by the buzzard. It’s already nicked his shirt.

PEA SOUP FOR BREAKFAST 

I decided to take a more “goal oriented” approach to this year’s Mountain Marathon. Do as many Hill and Dales as possible. Climb a few Munros. Do as many legs of the Denis Rankin Round as possible. http://www.denisrankinround.com Go for a PB at the Seven Sevens and, for the first time ever, (well I am 55, it’s about time!) enter one of the mid range races. I went for the classic Spelga Skyline a 13 mile rumble round the Western Mournes. I woke on the morning of the race…. the 4th of July – right in the middle of Ulster’s baking summer.. and slowly parted the curtains. Rain and Fog. “Get dressed wimp” I screamed internally. “Go back to bed” I screamed outloud.

On the drive down from Bangor to the Mournes the fog became as thick as an Eskimo’s jock warmer. The temptation to do a joyrider style “Rathcoole Special”handbrake turn was almost overwhelming. I arrived at the Spelga Dam Car Park where I found several fell running luminaries doing the handbrake turn I had fantasised about ! I thought the only rubber you tough boys burned was from the sizzling studs on your Mud Claws. Not as flinty as you thought…Eh ! No names guys but you know who you are. One highly rated fell racer, whose name has been obscured to prevent embarrassment, wound down the car window… peeked out… wound up his window… and drove off !

Finding the way from the Spelga Dam Car Park to the starting point was a test of navigation in itself ! 

So there I was. Mark Robson the one paced truffle pig surrounded by the cream of Northern Ireland’s fell runners. Well I think I was surrounded by them. I couldn’t see them. But I was glad I started. I hooked up with Patricia McKibbin and Tim Kerr and we conquered the route as a team shuffling in at the back of the pack. The Course Sweeper, a man of camel breath but a kind and considerate sadist, cracked his bullwhip within earshot just to make sure we beat dusk. The only thing we beat that day.

The Mist Lifts at the Spelga Skyline.

The mushy pea soup backdrop of early morning was but a foggy memory by then. Remarkably it lifted quickly and completely about an hour into the race. As the eloquent Mourne Mountain Marathon Chief Organiser Jim Brown put it, “It was as if God had pulled back a huge duvet”. I know you’ll be in shock right now. It was the purest test of my expert journalistic skills to get the words Eloquent Jim and Brown into the same sentence. OMG I’ve just done it twice ! The good news, from a personal point of view, was that the Spelga Skyline had just been removed from the tick list.

The Spelga Three

THE COLOUR PURPLE

The Spelga Skyline Race Director was Aaron Shimmons a member of BARF. Yes… as in BOKE… but that’s the joke … I think ! The Belfast Association of Rockclimbers and Fellrunners. You may have seen them in their Purple running vests. Anyone who has read “The History of Witchcraft and White Magic in the Mourne Mountains” will know all about BARF. Can I further recommend “Human Sacrifice Isn’t All Bad” for additional information. Many times over the years members of BARF had slithered in my direction tempting me into joining. They promised mystical powers and the guarantee of one pound off my entry fee at ALL races. Mystical powers I could take or leave but the financial benefits fitted the budget plan of a tight arsed North Down Ulster-Scot. I rabidly filled in the entry form. Signed it with a drop of blood and I was in ! The sinister looking but rather friendly BARF committee suggested I write a post on their web site to encourage others to sign up. The post is below:

http://www.barfni.co.uk

MUMBLINGS OF A NEW BARFER: I used to admire those Purple People from a distance. I marvelled at the way they shone with such vibrant health. They never seemed to sweat. They were so smooth even the wettest peat refused to stick to their legs. I would end races bedraggled, puffing and drenched. If I joined the World of BARF would I too glide serenely across the Fells of Ulster…? But what if I was joining some bizarre cult ! A coven of Purpley mudclaw clad witches and wizards. But I was drawn into the vortex. For years I had resisted. Intimidated by words like “Ultra” and “Run”. Then one of the more shadowy club members whispered in my ear, “Just joining BARF will make you quicker”….. “It’s Magic !” he said as he sat hunched and muttering over a boiling pot of frogs. I took the plunge. I even enjoyed the blood letting initiation under the full moon on the summit of Donard. As the BARF members danced naked around me I at last felt that sense of brotherhood that had been missing from my life.

The BARFers were right ! The very act of joining will make you quicker. Robson post race at Seven Sevens.

The Seven Sevens on August the 1st 2015 would be my first outing as a fully fledged BARF member. On the day of the event I felt a strange spiritual tingle. I had done no extra training but I still managed my quickest ever time for the event. Those incredible men and women of BARF were right. Results don’t lie. I had entered their esoteric world with, literally, a skip in my step. “Welcome to BARF”, said their hooded leader. “The benefits are vast …. the Fell Warlocks will reveal to you the many secrets… as long as you pay your annual sub… and you will learn from the Great Masters of the Bog… BUT… don’t ever try to leave !!!”

Bizarre …. but perfectly placed. A comfy sofa had been dumped at the col below Slievenaglough. The 54 inch Plasma is just out of shot. I sat and watched SKY Sports while I ate my sandwiches.

VICTORIA’S SECRET !

The Denis Rankin Round is an 86 kilometre challenge with 6190 metres of climbing taking in all of the Mourne peaks over 400 metres. It’s in memory of Denis Rankin a pioneer of fell running and mountain marathon’s  in Northern Ireland. Tragically Denis died during a fell race in 2013. The challenge is to complete the Round within a 24 hour window… which is, of course, impossible and complete madness. Bugger that I thought. Instead I’ll do it my way. Picking off each one of the five legs on separate days over as many summer months as possible. This didn’t quite go to plan. One week, while feeling particularly resilient, I planned to do two legs on CONSECUTIVE days ! Tuesday was lovely. The sun was out. I bum shuffled the 15k from Silent Valley to Deer’s Meadow. Feeling good. Unfortunately, while out for a recovery ice cream in Newcastle, I ran into former Mountain Marathon nemesis Vicky Canavan. It was then that I discovered one of Victoria’s Secrets. Her self patented post run recovery nutrition of double Gin + Tonic and red wine smoothies. Whoops !

The Denis Rankin Round is a 54 mile circuit of all the peaks in the Mournes over 400m. To be completed within a 24 hour period. You cannot be serious !

Facebook Fiend

It got worse. Thanks to bloody Facebook and Strava the word was out. I woke feeling somewhat tender and scrambled. There was a message. It was from Kathleen Monteverde. A noted fell running distance specialist. “I see you are doing a Denis Rankin Round Leg today. I’d love to join you” I felt like the man who has just spotted his assassin in the crowd. Deer’s Meadow to Slievemartin was the route. 15.5k. I did my best. I really did. The start was uphill. The slopes of Pigeon. Kathleen was off. Running. Chatting merrily. I panted, clutched my heart intermittently, and did dangerous amounts of industrial arse blowing. Kathleen was making sure we were keeping within the time frame allowed on a “proper” Denis Rankin Round. So I dug deep and found the Killian Kornet within. We whizzed across the turf. Skipped over the hags. Soon we were on the summit of Slievemartin. I expected a representative from the Guinness Book of Records to greet us. But no ! Instead a grimace from Monteverde. “Oh Dear ! 3 hours 55 minutes” Kathleen scowled, “Couldn’t expect much more I suppose. We did walk most of it.” There was a hissing noise. It was my ego deflating. Crushed …. again !

Johnny Cash’s Out !

Nightmare ! Ten days before the Marathon my trusted partner Johnny Cash gets injured and pulls out. A serious thigh strain. Cash strapped – quite literally ! I was gutted for him… and for us. Johnny had scheduled in the Mourne 2 Day as part of his preparation for his season’s goal – the Berlin Marathon. Tears all round. Johnny also knew that if he HAD started the Marathon carrying an injury – and pulled out halfway through – I would have sliced him, diced him and fed him to that f****** buzzard ! Good decision JC !!!

Hawking Headache

John McBride, a man of considerable mountain experience, agreed to step in at short notice. McBride’s presence carried several benefits. A fantasy fulfilled – at last I had found an attractive older man… and it was also excellent news on the Vets Handicap front. Last week Stephen Hawking tried to code break the convoluted mathematical machinations of the Vets system – but quickly gave up and instead focused on the much simpler multiverse theory. Anyway… no matter … lots of juicy minutes to be shaved off our time. John is 60 (I had him carbon dated to be sure) and apart from the false teeth, titanium hips, plastic knees and leaky prostate (dangerous in a small tent) was in excellent shape. He mentioned that his revolving hairpiece could be an issue in high winds. I packed the duct tape.

Sorting the equipment. It’s always a struggle to get the duvet into the rucksack.

Top Gear

Following far too many catastrophic training days I had selected a pair of Salomon Fellcross shoes for the Marathon. It was about time. I’d been farting and falling and sliding about in my old Speedcross’s for far too long. They aren’t terribly well suited to the fells. Try running on greased seaweed. My colour coded black and blue buttocks were proof. Like something you’d get after a weekend of S+M social with Max Moseley. The Fellcross my friends. Go for the Fellcross.

High Pressure was the forecast… High pressure for the competitors too !

Marathon Men

Followers of this annual blog will know all about the devious Course Planner Terry McQueen. His range of cunning clues and control flags hidden better than a Nazi Gold train has made him about as popular as gangrene. He loves others to suffer. What Terry really wants is for a vicious Atlantic low to smash into the Mournes just in time for the Marathon. A biblical storm but there’s nothing biblical about his approach. Avid readers will know all about Terry’s Voodoo prayer mat. He woos the weather Gods with maniacal mantras. This summer Terry sacrificed SEVEN goats. Terry was thwarted. A high settled in. “Drat and double drat. My dastardly plan has been foiled again” wheezed McQueen.

The weather was far too nice for McQueen. A waste of seven perfectly innocent goats.

Terry does have his uses. He managed to negotiate a late drama when Stormont announced that no Orange Flags were to be flown in the Mournes outside the July fortnight. That was good  …. but Terry later embarrassed himself yet again. It’s becoming a habit. Yes… he had set fabulously challenging courses. Definitely the toughest yet. Yes … he had good reason to be pleased with himself. But when he sprang from the Organiser’s tent at the campsite in his high heels and spray on denim shorts shouting “I’m so Money Supermarket” … well, he just let himself down. Terry … you’re better than that.

Race Weekend

C Class Route Day One – a beast !

Robson and McBride were all set. A combined age of 115. Gold dust in the Vets Handicap. We had brought the essentials. Denture fixative. Incontinence diapers. Just the things we knew we’d need. McBride would be the perfect foil. John was noted for his mountain craft …. and, perhaps just as important, his patience and sense of humour. The C class, over 35k, included 2000m of mostly steep climbing and what felt like 500 miles of tussocky boggy terrain. Thanks McQueen. Terry should have played Lawrence Olivier’s role of the demonic Dentist Dr.Szell in the movie “Marathon Man”. It would have been a perfect casting. Good vis made for excellent racing conditions but it was hard going. There were lagoons of lactic acid at the campsite. It was most certainly a serious challenge.

The overnight camp. Tents packed with throbbing thighs.

Nightsweats followed. Terrifying dreams of vertical climbs and peaty quicksands. Actually it was just an accurate reflection of day one and day two brought another combination of soggy marshes and plaintive cries of “Up there ? You’ve got to be out of your mad cow diseased mind”. Robson + McBride were on fire. Slowed only slightly by the weight of their saturated surgical stockings. John was by far the stronger member of the fledgling duo on day two. With McBride at the helm the terrible two ploughed on and by day’s end they had beaten, by just over two minutes, the dreaded bete noire combo of Mike Nangle and Gerry Mahon who had gloated mercilessly when they pipped the world ranked Robson/Cash pairing in 2014. I could also have gloated in victory but I find the fell racing community a humble bunch so for me it’s a simple handshake and a consoling “Bad luck boys”. Although Nangle, on hearing the news of his defeat, did look as if he’d just washed down a lemon with half a pint of vinegar. To be fair that could be Mike’s normal expression.

Robson rests his buggered pins at the campsite.

It had been another epic weekend. Yet again the Mourne 2 Day had been superbly organised by the unfailingly efficient and consistently humourous organising committee. The courses were, by common consent, proper hard core. Post event a traumatised Robson + McBride returned to their respective care homes. Robson was so knackered he didn’t even have the strength to chase the nurses and slept soundly after a rejuvenating bed bath. McBride, an inspiration throughout, deserved a night of rest and carbohydrate re-loading. He was last seen slurping Complan through a straw.

Robson + McBride demonstrating the relentless shuffle for which they are famous

Mourne Mountain Marathon 2014

 

Has the weather for a Mourne Mountain Marathon ever been better ?

I felt for the Course Planner Terry McQueen. Here we were a few days out from the anniversary 35th Mourne Mountain Marathon and the dastardly synoptic charts were predicting a huge high pressure system to settle over the Mournes. That was the last thing Terry wanted. Previous readers of this blog will know that underneath Terry’s angelic smile and charming exterior runs a viciously sadistic undercurrent. Rain, hail, typhoons, polar vortex, tsunamis and impenetrable fog are McQueens idea of ideal conditions for a Mountain Marathon. It’ll test their navigation you see. Good vis is for wimps – that’s the McQueen philosophy. I’m reliably informed by Terry’s wife Alison that our Course Planner spent long nights naked in the garden indulging in pagan ritual at that little altar beside the barbeque casting sacred circles and invoking the elements with his Earth Energy Crystals. All to no avail. I’ve told you before Terry. Those False Gods are a waste of space. The BIG MAN had already made his mind up. This event would be bathed in sunshine. So we were set fair and the big weekend was almost upon us …. but of course as we all know …. the big back story to any successful MMM is the preparation………

Far too high up for a wee Ulsterman but a couple of days in the Andes was good MMM groundwork.

 

 

So there I was standing in the reception of the Tucuman Hilton in North West Argentina at six in the morning – rucksack packed – waiting for a man I had never met who was going to take me into the Andes for two days. I had found http://www.montanastucumanas.com via Google. Pablo would be my guide, An Argentinian ! How could he be called anything else. I had received one single solitary e mail from Pablo which said, “Two days. Two summits climbing. Bring blood group. We sleep in farm mountain. I collect you hotel. You pay cash. $200 US Dollars” It soundly vaguely like a threat. Were they Andean Bandits ? Anyway Pablo turned up with his young chum Esteban. The good looking gigilo (see below) boasted that he currently had FIVE girls on the go. I noted that he slept very well at the overnight refuge. Climbing big Andean hills was probably a respite from the relentless demands of his whirling private life. Anyway it turned out I was the only client for our twenty five mile two day trek which included the summits of Nunorco and Pabellon both at around 3,500 metres. Pablo didn’t seem to have packed any EPO. But sure wouldn’t the suffering give me an advantage for the third weekend in September ?

 

The Three Amigos in the Northern Andes…. Gigilo Esteban, Never Has Been Lothario Robson and the faithful guide Pablo 

 

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL 

I was in Argentina for a fortnight working for SKY with the Irish Rugby Team on their summer tour and this felt like the best way to spend a little downtime. Pablo, an Andean Mountain Guide with 20 years experience, assured me that he would go slowly after I explained that, after my winter frollicking around the Mournes, my red blood cell count would be a lot lower than Lance Armstrong’s was at his peak. I even showed him some photos of Donard and the way in which it swept down to the sea to make my point. Pablo simply didn’t get the concept of a gentle pace and my lack of altitude training so, with a permanent Jaegerbomb headache, I spent two days chasing Pablo’s arse while rasping through sandpapered lungs on legs that moved with the fluency of Frankenstein’s. Through the pain I reminded myself that this was all excellent foundation work for the Mourne Mountain Marathon.

LUNEY TUNES OUT

My MMM partner from last year was Ian Luney. He accused me of “doping” him after day one when in fact all I was trying to do was ease his leg/back/knee/brain/groin/hip pain enough to get him to the finish. Anyway it was nothing more than an elephant halting dose of codeine and anti inflammatories. He was pale on the morning of day two and later admitted that it wasn’t until a week after the event that he was able to return to his daily ablutions. It explained his constipated demeanour. So, instead of facing up to another MMM, as any real man would have done he instead got his wife Sarah pregnant (again ! Boy doesn’t learn !) and the baby was due around the time of the Marathon. Luney, not for the first time in his MMM career, withdrew….. A tactic he should have deployed on the night of the conception. Personally I suspect he got Sarah pregnant on purpose. I mean couldn’t he have back timed it and resisted his lustful urge on that fateful January eve. Luney knew rightly what he was doing. Another MMM with Robson was more than he could bear. I also suspect he dreaded the prospect of another defeat by the malevolent pairing of Mike Nangle and Gerry Mahon. Our smug arch enemies who had beaten us in 2013. Nangle and Mahon had been as humble in victory as people like that can be. The Facebook gloats only lasted a few months.

UP STEPS THE MAN IN BLACK 

And so I had to find another partner. I asked BARF member, fellow Hill and Dale campaigner and well know Hillsborough medicine man Dr. Johnny Cash. Johnny was immediately suspicious thinking that I just wanted him as a wing man so I could take the piss out of his name in the blog. I quickly assured Johnny that I was too big a man to stoop to lazy cheap shots like that and I promised to walk the line. Johnny turned out to be a top class and,more importantly, patient partner. My girlfriend’s daughters were hoping that I was actually competing with Joaquín Pheonix who played the real Johnny Cash in the excellent biopic. Sadly for them no. Anyway the last thing you want after a hard first day in the Mourne Mountain Marathon is a tent full of screaming teenage girls. Right ?

GERRY’S NOT A PACEMAKER

So I bumped into Gerry Mahon in McKee’s Garden Shop in Craigantlet one fine morning. We were doing our grocery shopping. We got chatting about the upcoming “Seven Sevens”. For those of you who don’t know it the “Seven Sevens” is a one day 18 mile race covering the summits of the seven highest peaks in the Mournes. It’s tough. Understatement ! Gerry seemed keen to do it and suggested partnering up on the day. Good to have company. I was wrong about this man I thought  – what a fine chap. I stayed in the Tollymore Mountain Centre the night before the race and was woken at 0530 to the drumbeat of rain hammering off the window. A quick look outside revealed that the entire Mourne Mountain range had gone. Gone I tell you ! You could just about see the top of Tollymore Forest. Thank God for Gerry I thought. Glad I’m not doing this on my own. “Beep ! Beep !” Text message. From Gerry. “Mark I have turned home. Got to Ballynahinch. Pissing down. Have a good one. Best of luck.” Do you ever have dark thoughts that you regret later ? Well I had dark thoughts …. except that I didn’t regret them later. I ate my breakfast working out ways to booby trap the Mahon/Nangle tent at the MMM. Gelignite might work but would add too much weight to the rucksack. Sarin Gas…? Could be the answer.

SEVEN SEVENS CARNAGE

We queued to sign in at the start. Pissing rain. No vis. Race commandant/machine gun tower attendant Jim Brown offered the cheery refrain, “Well at least there’s no wind” Seven hours later there I was pondering just what Jim’s definition of wind was as I leaned at a 45 degree angle into the gale on the summit of Lamagan. Jim wriggled out of it in his race report, “We were victims of quite a complicated weather system which was difficult to forecast accurately” Thank you Michael Fish ! It was generally accepted that these were amongst the toughest conditions seen in recent decades at the Seven Sevens. Almost one third of the field failed to make it to the finish. Andrew McGibbon of BARF got totally lost between the Dam and his next summit Meelbeg and ended up on the top of Bernagh. But heroically he back tracked all the way to Meelbeg, back over Meelmore and back up Bernagh again and then onto the finish. My personal hero was last man home Jim Baird who started at 0711 and finished in the dark amongst the scary monsters in Donard Forest at 22:28… Jim was out there for 15 hours 17 minutes and 35 seconds. Remarkable determination. Keep her lit Jim !

 

Even after the Seven Sevens was over I couldn’t remove the “Wherethef ***am I” expression. It had frozen into place.

RED ARROWS DISPLAY

Last year beautiful weather blessed the Seven Sevens and we were treated to the annual Newcastle air display. The Red Arrows were one of the highlights. A year on and the Red Arrows were even more important. The little ones on your compass ! It needed a fair amount of accurate navigation to get yourself round. The vis simply refused to improve. Down to a few metres at times. Wind howling. I felt so happy for Gerry  Mahon sitting up reading the papers after breakfast in bed. Be careful you don’t spill any hot tea down the front of your jim-jams Gerry. Now that would be unfortunate. I eventually made it to the finish where I drained several pints of hot soup and hugged everyone except the Met Office’s brightest new prospect Jim Brown. But what fabulous endurance mileage for the Mourne 2 Day. Now down to Jackson Sports for that Sarin Gas.

GAME OF THRONES

So I arrived at the Leitrim Lodge car park in the Western Mournes for a training day. The car park was shut I was told. Game of Thrones were filming there and their trucks and equipment jammed the whole area. Horses crapped freely on the quarry track. Not good news for me and my MMM partner Johnny Cash to find that our parking place was encased in a ring of fire. Now I know Game of Thrones brings in millions for our economy and, as Mourne Mountain Marathon Administrator Mark Pruzina pointed out, the landowners are entirely within their rights to let or lend an area to any group. Mark’s right – we need to respect that and contribute to the various access initiatives. But that wasn’t my issue. The problem were the “Jobsworth’s” – the security heavies – and their attitude. I was informed that if I even tried to access the hills via the Leitrim stile I would be trespassing and was told that “The police were aware of the situation” I could have been the first person in history arrested for attempting to summit Tornamrock. I decided not to risk a night in the clink.

Games of Thrones attempt to usurp Leitrim Lodge

LOSING OUR HEADS

Myself and my MMM partner then accessed the hills from the path underneath the stone cross and walked along the Ulster Way to get closer to the “action”. Not too close – we thought. But the Game of Thrones ring of steel was wider than we thought. Three members of the protection squad came our way. It looked like they were after us. We teased them for a while making the determined trio sweat chasing us up a hill and then, when they got reasonably close, we kicked on demonstrating impressive Hill and Dale leg power to leave them frustrated. Quite funny really. Although we might have ceased our chuckling if we had been pursued over Altnataggart by Sean Bean or Charles Dance and their horse backed chums waving their head cleaving swords. To be fair though the be-heading of two ramblers would have made for a juicy storyline.

“I’ll take you all on. You’d be no match for a mad Ulsterman”

GARVAGHY ROAD 

Then, on the way back, we encountered a group of girls and their guardian Pauline. Duke Of Edinburgh Silver campaigners resting at a stile. Next stop for them on their journey was Leitrim Lodge ! They knew about the problem and the fact that they would have to go round and not through the area. They weren’t concerned. In fact the opposite. They were quite excited that they might see a little of the making of Game Of Thrones. We got chatting. Remarkably – and Johnny Cash can verify this – the group was from DRUMCREE Girls Brigade !!!! It seems they can’t go anywhere without being re-routed !

MOURNE MOUNTAIN MARATHON RACE WEEK

 

Cash and Robson get the miles on on a training day

On the Monday of race week my brave partner Johnny Cash invited me down to his place so we could practice putting up the tent and discuss tactics. Fail to prepare and prepare to fail etc etc. Johnny’s lovely wife Ash made us a fine lasagne. The carbohydrate loading had started. There was also the small matter of a large boil on my back. Right between the shoulder blades. I wasn’t looking forward to the rubbing action of a rucksack on the festering mass during the demands of an MMM. That’s where having a Doctor as a partner can help. Johnny clearly enjoyed (a little too much I noted !) some muscular squeezage and quantities of rhubarb and custard were removed. It was during the “treatment” that Johnny happened to mention that he was a baptist and that he owned a caravan. I didn’t know what was worse – or funnier – doing the MMM with a man called Johnny Cash. Doing the MMM with John the Baptist or doing the MMM with a man who owned a caravan. I was very aware that the latter would eviscerate my street cred.

RACE WEEKEND: MOURNE MOUNTAIN MARATHON 2014 

Ah the South Western Mournes ! All that deliciously squishy bogland and wonderful trapdoor elephant grass which conceals hundreds of thigh deep holes full of peaty quicksand. What fun we had negotiating that. It’s a wilderness up there. Wild open heathland. If it had been misty I feel sure we would have lost several competitors to Baskerville Hounds. It could have been carnage. Terry’s wee orange controls were hard enough to find in the sunshine. But hey ! The Mourne Mountain Marathon is not supposed to be a weekend spa … The clue is in the title. I enjoyed my Tango with Cash on Day one. We only had one issue really. On one long, long, long, long… Oh my God it was long …. leg across the wilderness Johnny stopped and yelped, “Mark …. I’ve lost something ….. I think it’s my soul !”

The craic at the campsite was class as it always is when the sun shines. Crucially we had finished the day nine minutes ahead of the nemesis pairing of Nangle + Mahon but we knew, and they pointed this out, that they would be using their vast mountain craft and natural endurance to destroy us on day two. Nangle told me not be fooled by his seemingly undercooked preparations. He had managed to turn his hardcore training – A completion of the West Highland Way – into a seven day pub crawl. He backed up this groundwork with a quick walk up the Trassey Track to the Hare’s Gap and back followed by twelve pints in the Maghera Inn. “I’m a natural goat”‘ said Mike. No-one disagreed. Sadly Nangle + Mahon had an unfortunate second day and lost loads of time arguing over who had the better mountain craft. They stumbled into camp in a state of distress. I almost felt sympathy for these two broken men – sweaty globules sitting disconsolately on the grass at Killowen. I could have said that goat is only one letter short of gloat but I’ve got much more class than that.

 

Cash and Robson stagger into the finish and straight to wardrobe manager Paddy Mallon to collect a glorious pink MMM 2014 tee shirt.

But then horror of horrors the vet handicap corrected times were revealed. My mistake had been failing to enter Johnny Cash using the birthdate of his famous bourbon soaked and cocaine riddled namesake. Nobody would have noticed I’m sure. Thanks to my oversight the bus pass duo of Nangle and Mahon were deemed to be 30 seconds quicker after the controversial adjustment. They may have been soundly crushed/whipped/mangled (delete where appropriate) by a margin of one hour thirteen minutes and thirty three seconds over the ground – and that’s what really counts of course – but knowing those two they will take great pleasure from their Senior moment ! In fact I feel sick.

ANOTHER CLASSIC MARATHON 

We were blessed this year. Fabulous weather. A challenging course. Phenomenal organisation. The Mountain Marathon Committee may have been flapping underneath but if they were it didn’t show. It all looked very smooth and professional from our end.  Johnny Cash has promised to add the MMM to the re-mix of his greatest hits.

Mourne Mountain Marathon 2013

MOURNE MOUNTAIN MARATHON 2013

…. the journey !

“Under no circumstances are you to run that Hill and Dale Race next week” Those were the final words of my physio after another half an hour of enduring the “Sarah Key Technique”. That’s were Julia drills her heels into the base of my spine. I prefer to call it the “Kamir Rouge” method (Avid followers of global torture techniques will know where I’m coming from !) I had locked a facet joint. I thought that was something you smoked. So no racing. No training. Just rest…. said the Boss Girl at North Down Physio.

From Kamir Rouge to Red Face

Julia’s instructions did cross my mind two days later as I stood on the start line for the McVeigh Classic in Castlewellan Forest, the first race of the legendary Hill + Dale Series. It was lovely. Cold, dark with driving rain and a back that was quietly spasming beneath the waterproofs. As usual in my typical “Inspector Clouseau goes Fell Racing” fashion I got lost, missing a critical right turn close to the finish. I ended up on the distant Bannstown Road. It was dusk and darkness was closing in fast. I reckoned if I ran down the road for a while I would become familiar with my surrounds and somehow find the finish. Not so. In my panic I flagged down a landrover and climbed into what I can only describe as a landfill site. How the lady at the wheel (plump, effervescent, farmer’s wife type and my latest guardian angel) got so much rubbish into such a small space defied belief. But she was my saviour and she drove me back to the forest (not a short drive) and dropped me just far enough from the finish so I could sneak up on it and cross the line without anyone noticing my subterfuge. I realise that my engaging honesty (admittedly months after the event) will probably force an historic disqualification but hey I’ll take that on the chin. I am probably the first man in the history of the Hill and Dale Series to thumb a lift. In a way I am quite proud of my ingenuity. And that’s how my training for the 2013 Mourne Mountain Marathon began.

I don’t believe it !!!!!

** So I bumped into race organiser Eamon McCrickard at the start of the Slieve Martin round a few weeks later. He told me about someone (not me) who had thumbed a lift at the Castlewellan event. How we laughed at this individual’s stupidity. I sloped off feeling guilty and sheepish. Staggeringly it appears I wasn’t the only one to hitch a ride that night ! Maybe he/she was hiding under the rubbish in the same landrover. To be honest I would never have noticed. The lad McCrickard will no doubt be only too happy to verify this information if you require further substantiation.

See you in court

*** Due to evidence revealed after further investigation I have decided that if anyone tries to disqualify me from Race One of the Hill + Dale Series, well, let’s put it bluntly …. there may be legal action suckers. No-where in the regulations does it state that you CANNOT hitch a lift. In fact in the safety section it states quite categorically that, “All efforts should be made by runners to car share”. Which is exactly what I did. In fact next year I may take it one stage further and use a quad bike on the Loughshannagh Horseshoe. That way I may beat Jim Brown.

Electric start…..

The goal was to complete ten of the eleven Hill and Dale Fell Races as an effective kick start for the Lowe Alpine Mourne Mountain Marathon. It turned out to be quite a journey. The actual races, in terms of results, all followed a similar pattern. I would set off hard looking good for the first five or six metres – and then drop back wheezing panting and shuffling to eventually finish at the rear of the pack. I was asked if I would like to join BARF (British Association of Rockclimbers and Fellrunners) … actually I was thinking of forming my own club … BATT (Barely Able Truffling Tailgunners) for all those enthusiastic but less gifted who were destined, like me, to forever trundle in during the fading light of dusk.

Sad night on Moughanmore

But it’s the sad memories of the Moughanmore event that will be forever branded on everyone that took part in that race. At the start I had noticed Denis Rankin warming up. Denis, the Chairman of the Mourne Mountain Marathon organising committee, was not a man I knew well personally, but I had heard so much. An absolute legend and now, at 68, with a recent history of heart trouble and the additional burden of several stubborn and creaky joints, he was down in the Hill and Dale nether regions with the likes of me. The important thing was Denis was still out there. Determined to compete and run in his beloved Mournes. He passed me on the short shallow descent off Pigeon and I remember mumbling something along the lines off, “How is that venerable gent able to overtake me. He has a limp and is 15 years older”. I may not have used those words exactly and may have included some industrial language. Secretly I hugely admired his impenetrable spirit. Denis was pulling away but I was determined to catch him on the climb up Moughanmore and I was within five or six metres of him when the horror unfolded. Denis collapsed – virtually at my feet. At first I thought it was some sort of seizure and didn’t quite know what to do. I had done my first aid and basic CPR but in the classes one thing they fail to do is tell you what a cardiac arrest actually looks like. I shouted for help. It arrived quickly in the form of two descenders coming down from the Moughanmore summit. Caroline Stout and Johnny Cash. A GP and an oncologist plus a member of Mourne Mountain Rescue who was also competing. Just the people needed in this situation. I set off for the summit to make sure the Marshall there radioed down to the start for help and then ran back to Denis. In the circumstances he was receiving the best assistance possible. I headed to the finish to make doubly sure everyone knew that there was a serious incident unfolding on the mountain. Everything that could possibly have been done was done but sadly Denis Rankin passed away on the mountain side. As his daughter Kerry said at the service – where she spoke beautifully – her father died doing what he loved. I noted that it was easily the fittest funeral I had ever been to. Lots of lean, shiny and emotional fell racers who had raced with and against Denis for many decades. The following week at the Millstone Race a huge crowd turned out including many “BARFER’S” who were there to run in memory of Denis and many did the distance non competitively in a poignant mountain tribute . It was a powerful eulogy to a hugely respected man of the hills.

Pyrenean Mountain Puppies

With the Hill and Dale Series over it was back to the ad hoc hill work which was interrupted by a wonderful fortnight’s holiday with the lovely Louise in Collioure near Perpignan in the South West of France. If there’s one thing I love it’s sweating profusely on a baking hot beach to a symphony of screaming babies. Add in an apartment situated right beside a nursery school and a motorcycle scooter park… and .. well… you get the idea ! Nirvana ! Fortunately the Pyrenean foothills were nearby and I made several escapes. Long suffering Louise loves her sun, sea and sand … which is fine as long as I can get my fix of pain. We climbed the 9,500 foot Pic Carlit staying in a refuge the night before the climb. Louise was definitely the only resident with a hair dryer and nail polish in her rucksack !! … but fair play. Despite vertigo, altitude sickness and a couple of unnerving snow field crossings Lou made it to the top. She didn’t complain or swear at me once !

“I’d much rather spend a day suffering in the mountains than sunning myself on a nice beach”, quipped Louise as she forced a smile at the summit of Pic Carlit.

Behind the beach at Collioure there was a Fort. A sharp 200 metre climb to the gates. Ideal for repetitions. I created my very own private Catalonian Hill + Dale Course and enjoyed many happy hours scooting up and down. Something to keep the legs in shape before a return to the Mournes.

Luney Tunes In

My partner for the Mourne Mountain Marathon 2013 was Ian Luney … yes the same Ian Luney who pulled out last year at quite short notice due to a late change in his work schedule. Not Ian’s fault and I have long since stopped inserting pins into the wax doll ! If you read last year’s blog you’ll remember that I only found a partner at the last minute through the MMM website. My advert (“Young looking 52 year old man with powerful thighs and love of re-entrants seeks similar for mountain fun.”) worked a treat ! Thank you Richard Worledge for your patience. But Luney was back on board looking rather prosperous after his year off !! During his one break from the sofa he had managed to Father a child. Sarah + baby Alice are doing well. Dad was still carrying the remnants of his phantom pregnancy !!!!!

The Dream Team hits the hills

There were initial concerns during our first training day in the Hills. A five hour July jaunt in the Loughshannagh area. While climbing Doan Ian’s back started grumbling. Fortunately I was carrying my usual trip inducing mix of codeine and voltarol. Ian was forced to sidestep a few pink elephants on the way home but he made it. As long as his “groin’s don’t pop” he’ll be ok he says !!! God forbid.

Seven Sevens Summit Fever

August the 10th 2013. The day of the Seven Sevens. If you don’t know it that is a 20 mile jaunt through the Mournes ascending the seven summits of 700 metres or over along the way. The weather was perfect. High cloud, a nice temperature and a cooling breeze. I had a game plan. Electrolytes. Take a gel sachet every hour on the hour to make sure the salts and sugar levels remained constant. So why for the first two hours and three summits did I feel like SHIT ? Empty legs, nausea and slight dizziness. Maybe it was the 0650 start ? At that time of the day I am usually still dreaming about Baywatch (yes I AM that old !) and visions of those tight red swimsuits would give anyone the vapours. Strangely the symptoms abated at the base of summit number four – Binian. Maybe Pamela Anderson just doesn’t do it for me anymore.. but then she is 46. I’ll bet she wears industrial strength spandex support pants these days. Funny I saw a pair of those at the Marathon campsite a month later … more anon !!!!

It’s only pain !

The final couple of hours of the Seven Sevens were suffered in lip chewing silence. It really isn’t very good for your knees if you spend the day crushing the cartilage together during a series of perilous mountain descents. Especially 53 year old knees. Some wee bugger had slipped steel wool underneath my patellas somewhere in the middle of the slope off Meelmore. He then tickled my spine with barbed wire. It all made for an uncomfortable climax. The temptation to kiss the feet of the marshals at the finish was overwhelming. But that would have been embarrassing. Job done. There is no doubt about it. The Seven Sevens is not only a great race in it’s own right but is also a perfect preparation day for the BIG ONE !

New map for 2013 Marathon. No place is a bad place to compare and contrast the Harveys with the old OSNI map. Forensic checking for discrepancies essential !

Seven Sevens climax ! Slightly unnerving !

The run through Donard Forest to the Seven Sevens finish was very revealing. Completely  exposed was my inability to move quickly downhill. The true fell runners, who had started three hours BEHIND me, were overtaking me in huge blurred numbers in the last few K’s. I felt sluggish and humbled. For an accurate analogy think of Mo Farah racing Stephen Nolan !

The Mourne Mountain Marathon 2013

“The weather is looking good for the weekend” said one, “You’re in luck”. He hadn’t bargained with my clinical OCD. So I obsessively checked the synoptic charts and compulsively discovered that the outside fringe of Tropical Storm Humberto would flick by us on the morning of day one of the 2013 Lowe Alpine Mourne Mountain Marathon. Disorder kicked in when I discovered that this would probably mean thick mist and drizzle on BOTH mornings. By the way who would ever think of calling a storm Humberto ? Is that after Englebert Humberto-dink the legendary Mexican crooner ? The storm originated in the Azores – maybe that’s a clue.

The Mystery Tour

The start point was supposed to be a mystery – a half hour ride away by bus we were told. So when the driver bounced into the Tollymore Mountain Centre at 0800 shouting “Any marathoners for the bus for Leitrim Lodge” it sort of blew the mystery element ! Not the kind of bloke who would have lasted long under interrogation. I suggest that you would only have had to say “waterboarding” and he would have traded all national secrets. Anyway we were all funneled onto the bus. Personally I didn’t really think they needed the alsations.

OMG !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Day One… Who’s idea was the “F” in Fog ! (Play on words .. got it yet ?)

The organisers were delighted. Notably a chuckling Mark Pruzina and course planner Terry McQueen. You could see sweet F.A. at the start. A lovely combo of clag, mist and drizzle. “This’ll sort your navigation out”, they chirped, “It’s how it should be” they chorused as they huddled under a warm blanket sipping Hot Bush. But they were right. It certainly was a test… notably for the first five or six controls. One look at “narrow re-entrant, middle part” had me scrambling in my dry bag for an early hit of Imodium. Magically the mist dissolved and good vis accompanied us on the second part of the day. One control was described as “Between ponds”. Well it was between ponds but it was so mega boggy it felt like it was IN a pond. Luckily I had packed my armbands, and, with the help of a short rope and a lifebelt, we nailed it. Then our friendly course planner sent us up Slieve Muck. We hadn’t visited the delight of the “Hill of the Pigs” (Muc is Irish for hog … you’ve just been educated) for a couple of years and, of course, the clue is in the title. Climbing Slieve Muck carries all the fun of a naked wallow in cold pig swill. But, hey, it’s all part of the craic !

Partner Peril !

By this stage, and by his own admission, my partners legs had “blown”. Of course he blamed me. I shouldn’t have run down Eagle to Windy Gap. He had been forced to follow and the old pins perished. I explained to Ian what had actually happened. Due to his carefully balanced marathon preparation diet of pizza, pies and chocolate buns he had ended up a little “top loaded”. I quickly talked him through the main elements of Newton’s Laws of Physics. Basically the extra weight in his arse had exponentially “downloaded” through his quadriceps leaving him, medically speaking, bollocksed ! Fortunately Ian recovered slowly and we made it to the day one finishing line in a respectable time. The old duffers had made the campsite !

Silent Valley Oasis. Just needed a palm tree.

Campsite Cameos !

What a campsite. Silent Valley. Manicured lawns. There was even a foot spa…..a clever Paddy Mallon design…. basically a tap beside a skip. Aaron Shimmons asked for a leg wax. Maybe next year. The weather was stunning which definitely encouraged sociability. The craic was mighty ! Happy campers. Ian had warned me that there was a publicity seeker called Mike who was desperate to appear in the blog and, if he saw me, would try to make an impact. When a stranger appeared in front of me, dropped his trousers, and displayed his (tidemarked !) Speedos I knew this was the man. I’ve embarrassed him enough so it would be unfair to reveal the full identity of Mike Nangle, Managing Director of DNT Chartered Accountants. Later in the evening he sashayed over wearing a bizarre pair of silver paisley leggings. They had obviously been stolen from Liberace’s wardrobe. I’m sorry but the question has to be asked. What was Mike Nangle doing in Liberace’s house ?

Steve Spence and Aaron Shimmons were in a tent nearby. A little too young and trendy for the likes of us, the Stadler + Waldorf outfit, to communicate meaningfully with. Aaron has a good reputation as a fell racer. I think I have found his secret … or is it a hindrance ? Does the large smearing of gel in his hair act as a slipstreaming device or does it slow him down. Mmmmmm !

Day Two….. MMM means Mourne Marathon Mist !

By morning the beautiful overnight campsite weather had been replaced by more mist which was wrapped ominously around Binian. It was more of a Sea Haar and as we huddled around the start box you could see it creeping up from the coastline. More fun during the early controls was guaranteed. Again course planner Terry McQueen could be seen cackling as he breakfasted on raw intestines and a pint of iced yak’s blood. Mike Nangle and his partner Gerald Mahon had finished Day One behind the Dream Team of Mark Robson + Ian Luney. Nangle had a look of icy determination on his face. I just knew he was determined to beat us. Despite two comic falls as he tried to remove the silver paisley tights which appeared to have been melted onto his skin – he set off for the start with his mind in the kill zone. I heard later from Mike’s partner Gerald that they had made up good early time in the beastly haar enveloped climb up Binian. “No danger of us getting lost”, quipped Gerald, “It helps when your partner is a foghorn”

Home at last !!!!!

There’s no doubt about it there were some tough controls on day two. Good old Terry McQueen, when he isn’t feasting on entrails, secretes those little orange flags in all sorts of evil nooks and crannies. This year I am going to steal his Christmas presents, hide them all over the Amazon jungle, and give him my old school Atlas. Now you’ll see what it’s like matey !!!!

But what a wonderful journey it was on day two. A beautifully mixed up course with loads of route choices to make. Yes the start was rather testing … like most of the field I won’t forget Binian for a while ! But we made it and it was a hugely satisfying weekend. Massive thanks to my partner Ian Luney .. without whom I’d probably still be stuck in a bog somewhere with bottom lip trembling. A great adventure but it wasn’t without pain. At the finish my thighs were screaming like the front row at a Justin Bieber concert and even worse was the smug look on Mike Nangle’s face … he and Gerry had beaten us by a not inconsiderable margin. The only disappointment, Mike said, was that he had laddered his silver tights but he wasn’t too worried. Mike was sure he could get another pair on-line from Victoria’s Secrets.

Thanks guys … and Denis.

The Lowe Alpine Mourne Mountain Marathon is all about the volunteers. From Chief Organiser Jim Brown, Course Planner Terry McQueen, Paddy Mallon, who married humour to his campsite management, the patience and affability of Frank Morgan, the arid wit of Mark Pruzina, transport manager Gerry McAlinden, and Treasurer Kerry Hall. All brilliant. The atmosphere at the event was wonderful. The organisation top class. Of course the 2013 event will always be remembered with considerable poignancy. The death of long time Chairman Denis Rankin must have been such a savage and emotional blow. I’m new to fell running but I have heard so many tales about Denis and when I saw him I have to admit to being a bit awe struck. Jim Brown had known Denis for ever and made a touching speech during the prize giving on the patio at the Mountain Centre. Dawson Stelfox announced details of the “Denis Rankin Round” a tough challenge with the goal to take in all the peaks over 400 metres in the Mournes. A crack relay team did a test run in just under 24 hours. But it was Denis’s wife Madeline who captured the mood “Denis has brought us the sunshine. He’ll be looking down !” It felt like the perfect phrase with which to end the Mourne Mountain Marathon of 2013.

Peat and grime removed the sweet smelling duo celebrate completion.