I was in the bus with St. George and the dragon. They were great!Originally Posted by Cubbev
I was in the bus with St. George and the dragon. They were great!
"Get yourself together, Jones" - Ray Davies
I almost feel guilty now for not turning him around and leading him back with our group to Capplestone Gate. (Hindsight is a wonderful thing now I know that's where his group had just arrived.) At least I spoke to him to find out what he (thought he) was doing and was able to pass that on to the marshal who came out in search of him shortly afterwards. I'm glad he found him and got him to safety, hopefully quickly because from what I recall it wasn't far to the checkpoint.
Hi. This is wrong. It's not what happened at all.
My name is Dave Moor, a member of the organising committee of The Fellsman. I have created this account so The Fellsman organisers can respond to some of the comments on this forum. Personally I have held every position on the committee with the exception of the Treasurer's, I have even spent a couple of years as the Safety Officer on the event. You will probably not get an immediate reponse from us as we tend to consult a couple of other committee members before we post reponses. We do not like, and want to avoid, knee jerk responses which we are not prepared to follow through.
Now to the subject of this post, the enforcement of the grouping rule. In the past I have disqualified entrants in person for breaking their group during the event. This is not an easy thing to do to people who have completed 40, 50 or 60 miles, but for their, and other entrants safety, we feel it has to be done. Enforcing the rule is difficult because we rely on our checkpoint teams noticing split groups as they arrive at their location, obviously we can not monitor what happens between checkpoints.
If a split group is brought to our attention we WILL disqualify the whole group. We are currently investigating two instances of split groups on this years event. One resulted in the event Doctor attending a hilltop checkpoint to care for a entrant with advanced hypothermia and resulted in Mountain Rescue being called out to carry him down from the hill. When we have identified the members of these groups they will be disqualified.
Splitting groups is something we take very seriously, and as you can see, it can easily have serious repercussions. Whilst we appreciate everybody wants to see the results we don't feel we can release them until we have got to the bottom of these issues. Under normal circumstances we would have dealt with split groups on the event, however this year our priority was getting everyone down safely, both entrants and staff, which meant rule enforcement had to be delayed.
I'm sorry this has taken so long to get posted, the autentication email for the account registration got lost in the post.
Last edited by TheFellsman; 03-05-2012 at 09:25 AM.
Well having re-appraised my 'performance' on the day and my wimping out at Cray, what I thought were maybe symptoms of (at least the beginnings of) hypothermia were probably not that at all but were hypoglycemia instead. For sure I was cold, really cold, but my feet, hands and head were all fine and it was only my body core (my torso) that felt icey cold; cold from the inside almost, maybe not at all helped by my first layer being damp from sweat.
What I was though at Cray was absolutely and completely starving, weak, really sleepy, I was slurring and I had very blurry vision. Having looked up hypoglycemia on wiki they all seem to be classic symptoms. Me eating two saucepan fulls of rice pudding and fruit salad back to back and two jam sandwiches pretty much as soon as I could in the tent at Cray demonstrates just how hungry I was. I had a huge baked potato with chilli as soon as I got back to Threshfield too (and seem to have been stuffing my face with food pretty much ever since then).
I think I got into some kind of food deficit by not eating properly at Dent (and again later at Redshaw) and would have probably done much better had I built up a energy surplus by eating, even though I felt slightly sick, at Dent. I should have asked for a jam sandwich or something as I always can eat those - I doubt I could've digested the sausage rolls on offer and was leaving Dent before I heard some other runner order baked beans (I forgot they were on offer).
The really really frustrating thing is that my legs were absolutely fine and they could have run on I'm sure. I even ran a couple of miles on Sunday afternoon and have run every day since then. As matey used to say in the Fast Show.... Booger!
Last edited by Stolly; 03-05-2012 at 10:45 AM.
Fantastic Grough write up by the way) and thanks for the update Fellsman
You may well have had HYPOGLYCEMIA - a low blood sugar.Well having re-appraised my 'performance' on the day and my wimping out at Cray, what I thought were maybe symptoms of (at least the beginnings of) hypothermia were probably not that at all but were hyperglycemia instead. For sure I was cold, really cold, but my feet, hands and head were all fine and it was only my body core (my torso) that felt icey cold; cold from the inside almost, maybe not at all helped by my first layer being damp from sweat.
What I was though at Cray was absolutely and completely starving, weak, really sleepy and I had very blurry vision. Having looked up hyperglycemia on wiki they all seem to be classic symptoms. Me eating two saucepan fulls of rice pudding and fruit salad back to back and two jam sandwiches pretty much as soon as I could in the tent at Cray demonstrates just how hungry I was. I had a huge baked potato with chilli as soon as I got back to Threshfield too (and seem to have been stuffing my face with food pretty much ever since then
I think I got into some kind of food deficit by not eating properly at Dent (and again later at Redshaw) and would have probably done much better had I built up a energy surplus by eating, even though I felt slightly sick, at Dent. I should have asked for a jam sandwich or something as I always can eat those - I doubt I could've digested the sausage rolls on offer and was leaving Dent before I heard some other runner order baked beans (I forgot they were on offer).
The really really frustrating thing is that my legs were absolutely fine and they could have run on I'm sure. I even ran a couple of miles on Sunday afternoon and have run every day since then. As matey used to say in the Fast Show.... Booger!
Haha. Thanks Mike ts what I meant. I've altered my post accordingly
basically Hypoglycemia is just a megga Bonk/crash in runners speak, problem is though it leads quite quickly into exposure/hypothermia/exhaustion.
I had my blood sugar tested by Strider every 5 miles during the Hobble race a few years ago and it was surprising how much by blood sugar went up and down despite constant eating...
This is something that I really have to keep tabs on. I've bonked when cycling and on runs before, literally felt like I couldn't keep my eyes open. I get quite anxious if I'm running with people that don't stop to eat but have learnt that I just need to do what I need to do regardless of the pressure to push on, even if its a race. It's a toughie. Until you experience it and then understand what has happened, its very difficult to know how important it is to keep fuelled up even when you think you are ok. On the Fellsman I ate little and often and supplemented with two energy gels and it worked for me. By Park Rash I was feeling really sick so it was all I could do to stuff down some custard creams and a cup of tea but I forced myself to do it and fortunately I made it to the end but I'd like to understand this issue better. Perhaps an FRA day course on survival in the mountains covering hypothermia and this as well as other issues might be a goer? I'd do it!
Despite all the controversy, this thread has thrown up some really important issues and people sharing their experiences has taught me a lot so its been really worthwhile in my opinion.
'The birds are the keepers of our secrets'
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