by David Kelly

On Sunday September 11^th 2011 at 4.15am you don’t expect to see many people about the streets of Lewisham when it’s pitch black with rain flogging down sideways. But as I shut the front door of the colleague’s house I had stayed at in Brockley to the TA centre on Blackheath, the light from my headlamp bobbing about the pavement ahead of me, the roads were oddly busy with traffic, probably people on their way home from a wild night out. I plodded up the hill to the race start to meet a group of nervous, lycra-clad competitors, sitting on fold-out chairs in the army centre, checking their backpacks for the crucial items they would carry for 13 hours till the finish in Brighton. If they made it there.

Pascal, the friend I trained and signed up to this madness with, was one of them, and managed a wan smile as I came over from the registration desk

“Gorgeous morning. Fancy a run to Brighton?” I chirped.

“Yeah” Pascal responded in his usual minimal speech “I barely slept. You were right to stay somewhere nearby, the trip here under the rain was awful”.

Most competitors elected to stay in nearby hotels, partly for the companionship of meeting other entrants, but mostly because of the 5am registration time. Not a good time to be stuck behind a lorry fretting about making the 6am start.

The rain stopped as we gathered around the Extreme Running flag planted on the top of Blackheath common. I say everyone gathered there, but a sizeable 75 or so entrants didn’t make it to the start, bringing the competition from about 200 to 120 runners. This just illustrates the seriousness of entering this sort of run, where months of training tend to reveal whether even attempting the distance is worthwhile. An ankle sprain or a stomach bug the week before the race are enough to put off the toughest runners from being stranded on the top of Black Cap in the South Downs, and having to be rescued by an irate marshal. I’m not sure whether they get paid, but the organisers of this event sure deserve it, as the guy we gathered around showed by talking us through changes to the maps and motivating us for the race start.

“I don’t know if you care about it” he began, after housekeeping was finished with “but today is the anniversary of the terrible events of September 11^th 2001”.

We were quiet.

“We’d like to have a minute of silence where you can reflect on it or on anything else that’s important to you”. He sounded pretty final about the importance of the silence, which everyone respected.

Moments later, we were making our way down Blackheath towards Bromley, chatting and exchanging stories about training, nutrition, and jokes about the madness of what we were doing. Runners stayed in groups, aware that the first 20 miles are a warm-up, and it is ill-advised to go full steam until at least a couple of checkpoints are under our belts. Pascal and I caught up with Mark, a Runnersworld forum acquaintance whom we had recognised a part of the route with. Another entrant, Liam, was running the course for the first time and asked to ‘tag along’ in the hope our knowledge of the course would help him.

Liam was pretty savvy, because orienteering makes or breaks this race, which in my opinion ought to be called “The London to Brighton ORIENTEERING Run”. I had recce’d one part of the route twice – Forest Row to South Chailey – and gotten horribly lost both times, even with an Ordinance Survey map clearly marked with the race route. I think of myself as a decent map reader, but running with a map – even if it is the running-friendly booklet Extreme Running send out a few weeks before the race – is a very different game. Try memorising the smallprint of your mobile phone contract the next time you’re rushing down a set of stairs, out the door on your way to work, while finishing your breakfast, to get an idea of what it involves.

The route was pretty straightforward to the first checkpoint at Keston. We pulled up in good spirits to the applause of the supporters, still chatting like a bunch of mates in a social club, picking up a few banana halves and digestive biscuits at the food station.

“How’s your knee?” I asked Pascal.

“I’m feeling it”. Always minimalistic.

Back in June when we started our training for the infamous London to Brighton (L2B) by doing laps of Richmond Park, Pascal had caught a grass-covered wooden post on his ankle and landed spectacularly on his left knee. Months of visiting osteopaths, swimming and cycling instead of running, and finding every solution offered under the sun hadn’t cleared up his injury. After a few miles of each training session, Pascal’s knee would flare up and he would either have to stop, or ignore it. Neither is wise in ultramarathon training, which in itself is not a very wise activity, as my GP seems to think (she sighed and shook her head when I mentioned it).

From here on, the course finally took us off streets and roads to public footpaths. The L2B has been designed as a trail run, basically following the meridian between the two cities. This involves hopping on and off public footpaths, driveways, fields, farms, the occasional road and public bridleways which are otherwise only known to locals. Hence the navigational difficulty. Even with the map in hand, the “Public footpath” sign needed to stay on course could be covered in foliage – or in some puzzling cases, pulled down – making it pretty much invisible. During our first recce together, Pascal’s conclusion after scaling a dozen stiles through Chailey was “this is delirious”.

By Moat Farm (checkpoint 2), I was hurting. I don’t usually ache or get stitches during long runs, so it worried me when every muscle started to ache and my stomach went into violent spasms before I’d completed half the distance. After all, I had packed away three plates of pasta and red beans the night before the race, and a massive bowl of porridge at 4am, and my body had every right to protest given the treatment it was being given by 9.30am on a Sunday. As the South Downs started to come into view in the distance and we began to see some of the sock-knocking sights of the hills behind us, my stomach was in full revolt, and antacids weren’t helping.

“David I need to walk for a bit.” Pascal was hurting too, but his was serious. He wasn’t the type to stop running unless something was really wrong.

We got to checkpoint three, running the occasional stretch, and I saw on Pascal’s face he wasn’t getting any better.

“We’re not even halfway and my knee is in agony. I’m dropping out.” He said.

This was a huge deal. Three months of training, well over £100 in entry fees and travel costs, not to mention the expectations and ambition of finishing this run. Pascal had completed the legendary “Ultra-trail de Mayotte” race ten years ago, but was having to drop out of this dinky little 56 miler because of a bum knee. But as an experienced mountaineer, Pascal knew his own limits, and I knew what this was costing him.

He promised to call the emergency number on our map to be picked up, and I took off for the rest of the run, as we had discussed beforehand. You make plans for this sort of thing when preparing as a running team. But it still felt odd taking off through the familiar trails we had recce’d together as a solo runner. I got into my own headspace as I made my way down to South Chailey past reservoirs, ponds, wild grouse and rabbits. The antacids kicked in and my stomach collected itself, and the aching muscles became familiar as the friendly exhaustion I knew from training. I let go of thinking about what hurt and let the breeze and the stunning Sussex landscape work its magic.

Plenty of runners were lost by checkpoint three, as I kept finding irate runners reappearing onto the course having strayed off somewhere. The kissing gates, cows obstructing them and massive patches of mud were slowing everyone down, but I had factored this into the run, building a 50 minute lead on the punishing cut-off time of 4 hours by checkpoint 3. In a little park volunteers filled my water tank, and gave words of encouragement, saying I had “broken the back of it”, which was kind, but untrue.

I changed clothes and left behind some extra food I had been carrying at checkpoint two, which the brilliant race organisers took to the race finish for me, so I was relying on the food at the aid stations entirely at this point. My stomach had settled, but I certainly wasn’t hungry, only not eating wasn’t an option. I grudgingly packed down some chunks of roast potato which had been dipped in salt water, an oddly digestable food which helps store the necessary water and carbs at this point. I didn’t really know how far I’d gone, and actually chose not to find out. I didn’t have the standard GPS watch or even a heartrate monitor with me. Just my map booklet, a compass and a watch to check I was inside the cut-off times.

It’s an odd choice not to put technology on your side when running 56 miles, but I made it. I find that my life is measured enough as it is, directed by stuff I own or am told to use. When I’m running, I want to pay attention to my body and my surroundings, and if I can manage without any gadgets, I will. Might sound romanticised, but after all, the Romantics were the forefathers of these sorts of activities. Losing yourself in the English countryside and drinking in the beauty of the surroundings. Somehow I can picture today’s Byrons and Shelleys covered in mud and compass in hand, and not holed up in a country estate spouting verse. When running, I prefer to make do with little more than Wordsworth would have used to make his way around the Lake District, even if that compromises my chances of finishing. Luckily my romanticism paid off.

The way through checkpoint 4 at Hornsted Keynes to checkpoint 5 was mostly through forest. Lavender, ferns and lupins on either side of the trails offered some distraction from the task at hand. Navigation got gradually easier, and the South Downs towered over me in a distance that was gradually ebbing away. Massive grey clouds seem to always be swirling over the Downs, and that afternoon was no exception. I hadn’t wanted to dawdle at checkpoint 4, finding it increasingly harder to get going again after stopping, but by checkpoint 5 I decided to lie back and give my legs a short rest. After the usual refuelling (bananas and biscuits were getting pretty sickly at this point, I have to say) I got my gear together to plod onwards into the final stretch when Mark pulled up.

“David, Pascal hasn’t pulled out. I saw him at the last checkpoint as I was leaving”, he called after me.

I was stumped, and then realised that Pascal hadn’t wanted to slow me down, and told me he was pulling out so I would go on without him. “Bastard” I grinned affectionately, and headed on.

Black Cap was ahead, and I was determined to enjoy it. We crossed a field which only L2B entrants are allowed to access for this event, to scale the steep 800metre climb to the top of the dreaded hill. I say dreaded because it’s the highest elevation of the course, and runners talk about it as a dreaded enemy, but I have to admit it was fantastic. It’s a walking path carved into a rocky nature reserve, and steep as it is, it’s a joy to walk, and impossible to run. Everyone walks it, which makes for an oddly comforting break in the L2B course. And the view at the top is indescribably beautiful. The South Downs roll off to the sea and the wind lashes the grasses mercilessly. I stopped for a photograph.

The road to Brighton was hellish, even though I knew it would be. I shouted and swore a lot of the way. The course was on trails chewed up by mountain bikes, and the sea wind makes it virtually impossible to run without twisting an ankle. The narrow trail runs along busy roads, up and down hills, seeming to lead further away from Brighton as you approach it. With swollen ankles, every muscle screaming and the wind knocking you sideways, you’ve got to pick your way among lumpy stones, mud patches and inexplicable and invisible injury-friendly holes in the grass.

The race finish was a mess, as the organisers had been forced to change it a week before the race, which wasn’t their fault, but the signs they put up were more confusing than anything else. Runners came from all directions, finding their way to the Extreme Running banner and the diehard supporters gathered on a green overlooking the sea. The feeling of crossing the line among the shouts of the supporters must be something close to coming home after battle. A cocktail of exhaustion, confusion, delight and delirium. I wanted to collapse, dance, vomit and sing all at once.

“You made it”, said Pascal, tapping me on the shoulder. I turned around.

“Were you ahead of me?”

“No, I dropped out after checkpoint 5 in the end” he said with a smile.

Again, I knew what this had cost him. 75 kilometres out of 90 and he had had to stop. His knee picked up after pain killers kicked in when I left him, but gave in just at the end and asked to be driven to the finish to greet me. Once again, huge respect for knowing his limits; I don’t know if I’d have been as wise.

I spent the next 24 hours in the sort of mind state I think only Buddhist monks are familiar with. A sort of deep tranquillity came over me, and none of the aching, the cramps, the sore ankles, or even London Underground messing about on the way home came anywhere near bothering me. And, as I had been told by another entrant, my soup that night tasted better than anything I’d ever eaten.