St Sunday Mountain Race

Maybe Carroll Shelby isn’t the first person most people think of while sprinting down the side of a mountain in the middle of Cumbria, but we are where we are. You see I glanced at my watch and realised my heart rate had been red lining for almost two hours. But do you know how it felt? It felt incredible.

And so I remembered a treadmill session earlier in the year. It was on my lunch break and I’d been watching Ford vs Ferrari while putting in the extra miles. There’s a sequence where Matt Damon, playing Carroll Shelby, talks about the feeling of driving at 7,000 RPM.

There’s a point at 7,000 RPM… where everything fades. The machine becomes weightless. Just disappears. And all that’s left is a body moving through space and time. 7,000 RPM. That’s where you meet it. You feel it coming. It creeps up on you, close in your ear. Asks you a question. The only question that matters. Who are you?
– Carroll Shelby, Ford vs Ferrari

And that’s how it felt. I knew that I couldn’t sustain zone five. But I didn’t really have another strategy. I’d signed up to the St Sunday Mountain Race after Lavaredo 80km. I was feeling discouraged about how longer distances are going for me recently and thought a 29km would be a great blast for a bit of fun. The only plan that I ever had was to send it, to race like there was no such thing as strategy or planning, like I was five years old again and the only thing that mattered was beating the boy next door.

Of course, as is the trend from the last eighteen months, I got unwell. Two days after registering I got a chest infection and it lingered. Normally I can still run a bit when I’m ill but this time I just couldn’t. I didn’t really recover until the day before the race and so I toed the line with no expectation apart from having a fun day in the hills.

No expectation, that is, until Charlie starts the count down and that familiar voice in the back of my head says, “but what if being poorly hasn’t affected anything and what if you’re currently the best you’ve ever been?”

Next thing you know I’m sprinting across a cricket field alongside the first place lady, leading the field out into the fells. It just felt nice to run and not care about anything other than adrenaline. As we made our way onto the first climb the pack sorted itself into a fairly natural order. It’s a steep first 2km from Patterdale up to Birks, with 450m of climb. By the top of Birks I’d settled into a group, not right up front but comfortably in the top twenty.

The tempo was high as we pushed over St Sunday Crag and onto Fairfield via Cofa Pike. The Cofa Pike route is by far my favourite way to summit Fairfield and pushing up it in race conditions felt good. It was clagged in up top–standard Fairfield–but the route was marked pretty well and I had a GPX too so was able to stick to the line and shout if I saw anyone else on one of the other trods.

The next section through to Red Screes was by far my favourite little section of racing. Four of us were close in together and swapped places regularly as we vied for the best lines and leapt across bits of trail. Midway down to the col beneath Red Screes itself one of the other lads mentioned he was 18, and another 26, so I was feeling pretty good to still be competitive at 41.

Competitive, that is, until we hit the top or Red Screes and the technical descent to the pass yawned in front of me. I knew it didn’t favour me so just focussed on getting down at my own best pace, it’s a great fun section with plenty of chances to use your hands coming off rocky bits. I’d clearly lost some ground coming into Kirkstone Pass but felt good. I was definitely top twenty and probably in the top three for my age.

It was not to feel good for much longer. A jovial chat with the aid station volunteers, plus a missed opportunity to glug coca cola, and I was across the road climbing out of the pass. I started to lose the guy immediately in front of me. I could see the second place lady slowly starting to make ground behind me. I pushed on as best I could. I just needed to get to the top of the climb and then stretch my legs out over the flat sections.

The flat section came, but my legs would not go. I cheerily informed the lady as she passed that she was in second and her overall position too. And off she went. It was slow progress and I started to see more dots appear behind me. Dots that became men, and men that would then pass me at that.

The steep drop from Stony Cove Pike and climb up to Thornthwaite Crag finished me off. I was majorly exhausted and my body wasn’t responding to fuel. I start to do my best jog / walk intervals and watched as runner after runner past me on the section between High Street and Angletarn.

I always like to goal set and realising that my pre-race target of sub-5 hours lay behind me I decided to try for sub 5:30. It didn’t look likely as I came through the checkpoint just beyond the tarn but as Patterdale came into view I managed to get my pace up for the downhill.

After you come into Patterdale you’re redirected round a small hill and more trail, the finish seemed so close and yet was so far and my watch was showing almost 2km over the advertised distance. I passed a couple of guys in similar struggles and tried to encourage them that we could all finish sub 5:30 if we shifted, but they didn’t follow.

5:28 I went through a gate. There was a guy ten seconds or so behind. I didn’t want to slam it on him so held it. As soon as he was through, it was full send down the road. I turned onto the cricket field with about 30 seconds to go and 200m to run. Did I do it? Hell yeah, I did. Somewhere found a sprint finish and pipped in under the 5:30 mark.

It should’ve tasted good but to be honest the whole thing just tasted of defeat. I’d went from a great first half to a really bad second half. I asked my body to perform and it refused and there’s not that much more to be said.

There’s a lot of variables, a lot of over analysis, and a lot of dissatisfaction.

Onwards.