High Peak Marathon - 4/5th March 2011

This is the 5th time I've run this race which, despite being overnight across some fairly grim moorland, is one of my favourites!  Colin Bishop and Chris Maylor who ran as part of my team last year were unavailable as they were organising the New Chew race the following day (lame excuse!) and so Ronnie Turner and Dave Swift (both Tod' Harriers) joined Craig Stansfield and I - we were the Peperami Pacers.  We'd been out to recce the Swains Head to Bleaklow Head section at night and we'd had one previous run out as a team over the Derwent Edge section so we were reasonably prepared.  I was confident we were all strong runners of a similar ability but I had concerns over the navigation.  Basically, Ronnie and Craig's skills lie elsewhere (they would agree!) and although Dave is pretty decent, this sort of terrain at night is fairly testing.  So, for the first time on this race, I assumed the main responsibility for the navigation - and it turned out my skills were going to be tested!

The weather looked promising with no rain forecast and temperatures around freezing.  We hoped for it to get colder as the bogs might freeze and provide easier running conditions.  We arrived early at Edale Village Hall and were kit checked and tucking into some pre-race jam sandwiches with over an hour to spare.

We set off at 11:22pm under clear skies and within minutes were stripping off layers as we made our way up to the first checkpoint at Hollins Cross (I can't remember a year when I have run this race in so little kit - I wore just a base layer and windproof for all but 20mins of the race, one guy ran in shorts!)  Craig upped the ace on the descents from Lose Hill and then Win Hill and we were all in good shape approaching Stanage Edge and the first feed station at Moscar.  Just before Moscar we were passed by eventual winners, Flipper's Gang, who sailed past sounding ominously fresh!  Last year I had stupidly breezed through Moscar without eating much so I was determined to down as much as I could in the 2mins we were stopped.  Unfortunately, this backfired as I had my one bad patch of the race for the following hour.  The half-mile on the road down to Cutthroat Bridge seemed to shake everything up and then the modest climb up to Derwent Moor seemed to be more effort than it should be.  The next couple of checkpoints I was trying to ignore to urge to vomit and maintain a decent pace but I felt pretty awful.  Fortunately, Craig suggested a switch to some savoury food and pulled a Peperami from my rucksack.  For the second year on the trot (I nicked a couple from Chris last year mid-race) the 'offal stick' did the trick!  Within 10mins I was feeling much better and we cracked on to Cut Gate, just short of half-way.

The race only really begins here though and the trod from Outer Edge trig point to Swains Head was as wet as ever.  Far more of a concern was the fact that the stars had disappeared and I was struggling to see more than 10 metres in front of me as the clag had descended!  This was the worst possible time for bad visibility as we left Swains Head CP on the hunt for Bleaklow Stones.  Locating a collection of a dozen innocuous stones in miles of featureless, boggy wilderness is tricky in good conditions but in thick fog in the middle of the night it's ridiculously tricky.  There is a staked route to follow but that means spotting the stakes which are often snapped/uprooted/missing/invisible behind the 8ft high peat hag!  We were doing well until we approached what I thought was the plateau on which the stones sat.  From here I took a new bearing but the ground seemed to fall away.  Were we on the plateau or had we missed it?  Or had we gone over it?  To make things worse another team was in a similar position (the only reason we could see them was because they passed within 10 feet) and it was difficult not to be swayed by their, extremely confident sounding, navigator.  Together we messed about for over half-an-hour before eventually I had had enough (team morale hit a low point!) and set the bearing I should have trusted earlier and set off.  2 minutes later I spotted a stake and within 5 minutes we were at the Bleaklow Stones CP.  Lesson learnt: ignore others, trust the compass and trust your own instincts.  To be fair, I felt I learnt my lesson pretty quickly as just 5 minutes later on our way to the next CP I met our friends Team Krypton who insisted that we were heading in the wrong direction, they were having their own navigation troubles it seemed.  This time I stood my ground and within 15 minutes we arrived at Bleaklow Head.

The most difficult section of the race was over and after focusing on the navigation I was feeling great.  We stormed off down the PennineRushup Edge as we passed Lord's Seat and within minutes we were back at Hollins Cross before the final decent back into Edale.  We arrived back in 10hours 41minutes.  A personal best for me, tinged with the disappointment that we could have been so much quicker if we'd nailed the navigation.  Sub 10-hours is certainly on the cards but that will have to wait until 2012.  Thanks to all the organiser and marshalls who sat out in some dreadful conditions all night dressed up as bears/santas etc!  It's a unique event that makes no sense whatsoever which is probably why I love it...