Way Highland West Challenge (part 1)
Some of you may remember from away back that as a result of missing the midsummer West Highland Way race due to injury, I was planning on having a crack at it on the shortest day of the year.
Well, I did it, along with an ultrarunning friend of mine, David MacLelland.
Here's the report I wrote in the wee hours on Christmas day. It's a bit rough and I'm working on a better report with pictures but some of you may prefer the rough version.
Way Highland West.
December 22nd-23rd, 2006
It's 5 o'clock in the morning of Christmas day and I've barely slept a wink since finishing my run at midday on the 23rd. Not because I'm excited about Christmas but because of a tsunami like urge to record my experience onto something more permanent than my leaky memory.
This isn't so much a report as therapy. If it's a bit rough around the edges, forgive me.
Background info
My run was born out of disappointment at missing this year's race due to a metatarsal stress fracture sustained in training. I found it hard to come to terms with missing the mid-summer race and after a couple of months I had the notion of running it on the shortest day of the year (instead of the longest). The idea had a pleasing symmetry, particularly when combined with the thought of running it in the reverse direction from Fort William to Glasgow. Calling it the "Way Highland West" was a narrative imperative. I floated the idea amongst amongst the WHW & hill running community and all but three thought I was barking. Of those three, only one was keen, my friend David McLelland who had run the race earlier in the year.
Training
Fitness-wise, I'd had a year of ups and downs. I started the year with three months of 200+ miles and dropped my 5K PB to 19:09. In April my foot bust, May 0 miles (but lots of x-training), June (after an 8 week layoff) 86 miles, July 26 miles (long holiday in the States), August 158, September 139, October 179 (Loch Ness marathon 3:29), November 239 & December 55.
With hindsight is was easy to see that throwing myself into those 200+ mile months so early in the year after running 130s to 140s the year before was just asking for trouble.
Having survived the Loch Ness marathon David and I started working out logistics, gear and training. The weather was always going to be the joker in the pack and all we could do in preparation was to train in whatever conditions prevailed and invest in lots of technical running gear. Knowing that we spend a lot of time in the dark we did several of our long training runs in the evening to test out our head torches. I think we chose well with the Princeton Tec apex torches. They served us well although I'm sure some of the other new high-powered LED head torches would also have worked.
Training went well up to the end of November when we did our longest run (mostly in the dark) over Conic Hill (38 miles). December brought torrential rain and my wife's aunt to stay and training took a nosedive. I wasn't too worried however as the run was never going to be about speed and I was more terrified of suffering another stress fracture than I was of not being fit enough.
The run
After a night spent at Bank Street Lodge in Fort William, David and I, along with my sister and daughter acting as support crew (SC) headed out to the official signpost marking the end of the West Highland Way. At 8:00 am we jogged off into the darkness up Glen Nevis through the forest roads. The brooding bulk of Ben Nevis, Scotland's highest mountain was lost in low cloud but the valley floor with Christmas lights twinkling on a large tree was rather enchanting. The sky was lightening quickly but the denseness of the forest in parts meant that we needed our head torches of the first half hour of running. Despite the torrential rain earlier in the month, conditions underfoot weren't too bad at all. A steady fine drizzle was annoying though, particularly as I had forgotten to pack my contact lenses and spent the next 60 miles wiping my glasses. On the whole, the weather was kind to us in the sense that it could have been a whole lot worse. It was relatively mild (est. 6-8C) but much of the time we were running through a steady fine rain.
We met our SC at Lundavra, just 6 miles into our run, not so much because we needed anything but try and alleviate their boredom. Having helped out with support in the summer race, I was acutely aware of how tedious it can be. As it happened, whilst putting my head torch away, I spotted my nipple tape in my bag. Oops! Very nearly ran 95 miles without any nipple protection. So, as it turned out, it was a timely meeting.
About 10 miles into our run Peter Duggan came back up the path from Kinlochleven to join us and accompanied us down into Kinlochleven and back out over the Devil's Staircase to Altnafeadh & Kingshouse. We met our SC again in Kinlochleven. Murdo had predicted that we'd probably see no more than 5 walkers on the WHW at this time of year. As we jogged towards Kingshouse, we passed walkers 4 & 5, the last we were to see. As we passed, I thought one of them was asking me for the time, I looked at my watch and realised that he was saying "Is it Tim?" Turned out to be a chap from my year at university who I'd spammed with a begging sponsorship email. Fortunately he wasn't the axe-wielding grudge-holding type and was accompanying his daughter for part of the WHW. I sure his daughter's plans to be on the WHW at the same time were coincidental, whether his being there at that time was coincidence or planned I don't know.
At Altnafeadh, a couple of miles short of Kings House, we had a brief stop but the wind and damp clothes caused me to get cold. We both had many changes of clothes but the combination of cool damp drizzle, wind & running meant that dry gear didn't stay dry for more than a few minutes. In the end, warm and damp seemed the best that we could hope for. Although the terrain had been rough, I'd been feeling good up till then but the cold sapped my enthusiasm and it was with a rather heavy heart (and legs) that I set out across the Black Mount, a bleak and lonely corner of Rannoch moor. David seemed unaffected by the conditions, probably largely down to his much better fitness (he's a 120 mile a week chap) and better technical gear. Still, we made good time across the moor to Victoria bridge where we met out SC again and then on to Bridge of Orchy .
It was now 4:00 pm and the sun had set and it was back on with the head torches. These were to be our companions for the next 16 hours. From here until we reached Drymen, 12 miles from the end, our universe contracted down to two pools of light at our feet. Although it was frustrating not to be able to see the scenery, having such a tiny field of view meant that one never became too intimidated by distances or hills, simply because you couldn't see them.
Way Highland West Challenge (part 2)
At Tyndrum we met David's parents who were taking over the support crew role for the night shift. We were both hungry and knowing that there was a fish'n'chip cafe there we decided to go to the cafe to refuel with plates of chips & mugs of tea. In terms of boosting my energy levels, the chips worked wonders. Unfortunately, they also marked the onset of a chronic indigestion/nausea that stuck with me for the rest of the run making hard to get the necessary calories down. I'd been taking salt capsules fairly regularly but on this occasion they didn't seem to be doing anything for my gastric emptying. Perhaps eating a big plate of chips and running straight afterwards was just too much to ask of them.
After Tyndrum we worked our way down to Beinglas farm which marks the last easy access point for a support crew north of Loch Lomond. It's a hilly section but we'd been running well and felling pretty good. We knew that it would be 13 miles before we'd see our support crew again so we took a thermos of coffee with us to sustain us.
The stretch from Beinglas Farm to Inversnaid is infamously bad. It's not so much a path as an assault course. In the daylight it's bad enough but in the dark it was horrid. After all the rain that had fallen and record high water levels in the loch, sections of it had disappeared in small landslips or were just submerged under water. Other bits were covered in debris that had floated in off the loch. The signposting is none too hot either going from north to south. On a few occasions we were glad to have two heads working on navigation rather than just the one.
At Inversnaid we stopped to have our coffee. By now it was about 1:30 am. The hotel there was covered in signs saying "Closed" but oddly, there were plenty of lights on and the front door was open. Given the choice of shivering outside and drinking our coffee or sitting inside in the warmth, we opened the door and called out to see if any staff we about. Not hearing anything, we walked into the bar and sat down to drink our coffee. After about 5 minutes a man walked past us without say a word. Either head torch wearing runners at 1:30 am on the 23rd of December when the hotel is closed are a common sight or his brain just failed to take in what clearly shouldn't have been there. After about another 5 minutes as I was coming out of the loo, I bumped into another chap. This time it seems our invisibility had worn off and he briefly quizzed me as to what the heck we were doing there. After mumbling something about a charity run he dismissed us as crackers (can't think why) but didn't throw us out.
Inversnaid to Rowardennan was hillier but easier underfoot and after meeting up with our SC again and enjoying some bacon sandwiches, we were ready for the last two testing sections. Rowardennan to Balmaha is stupidly hilly for a path that supposedly follows the edge of the loch. If there's a pointless hillock that the path could go over, over it goes. Again sections of the path were either washed away or flooded. Nothing too bad though and we didn't have to make any major diversions.
After another stop at Balmaha, it was time to go over Conic hill. Not particularly high (the path rises to about 350 metres) but the temperature dropped as we climbed and the mist from our breath irritatingly insisted on rising in front of our head torches because of the breeze at our backs.
At 8:00 am we reached Drymen with just 12 miles to go. We had a 30 minute stop to refresh and discard our head torches as the sun was rising. It was a glorious morning and despite our exhaustion (well mine anyway), we enjoyed the spectacle of the lightening sky and the low sunbeams playing across the rolling fields along that stretch of the WHW. I was past being able to run continuously but could manage a reasonably good run/walk ratio.
A number of my club mates and other WHW runners had arranged a training run along the WHW from Glasgow northwards and after a while we started passing them to the accompaniment of cheers and handshakes, Included in the group was our very own Dario. It was a huge boost to the spirits to see so many friendly and familiar faces at that stage of the run.
After 27 hours and 52 minutes we jogged through the underpass to Milngavie train station where a small family reception party had gathered, complete with banner! It was enormously relieving to have finished. Lots of hugs and kisses all round.
It was tougher than I had anticipated, largely down to constant dampness for the first 60-70 miles. Nothing extreme, but enough to make it hard to avoid periodic chilling or overheating. My nutrition could have been a lot better too but you live and learn.
http://www.zen31010.zen.co.uk/images/wayhighlandwest/thefinish.jpg
Tim
