2025 Montane Spine Race: 12-16 January 2025
“Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life ...
But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose somethin' else.
And the reasons? There are no reasons.
Who needs reasons when you've got the Spine Race?”
Pre-race
End of January. Hunched over the keyboard, one eye glued to the clock, the other to the laptop screen.
Click refresh on the browser.
Click again.
Clock ticks past the hour.
Click again.
Fuck.
Click again.
Phew.
Registration for the Spine Race is never easy. A speed-typing race to complete the entry form before the desperately-too-few 150 places sell out. It’s easier getting tickets to see Oasis. But my keyboard performance this year was much better than in 2022 and 2023 and I had secured entry to the 2025 Montane Winter Spine Race. First hurdle cleared.
I was already super-motivated and excited, having just finished Spine Challenger South in 6th place and pretty much hitting all my targets for the race. Confidence was so high that I even started to put together my race kit and went out for a couple of runs with my full Spine Pack on. This was February.
Of course, I had the small matter of the rest of 2024 to get through, and two big races, the Eiger 250 (which I raced with Antonio Codina) and the Tor des Geants. Both races went well, despite picking up injuries along the way, and while it took me several weeks to recover from Tor, I was able to start training again in early October and completing a fun 60km race while on holiday in Cappadocia reassured me that my fitness hadn’t completely evaporated during the post-Tor downtime. So I entered November with a 10-week training block to prepare specifically for the Spine, with spirits high and a desire both to finish the race and to see how fast I could push myself.
Having a proper training block also enabled me to address a number of things that had been increasingly hampering my performances – I finally had an operation to replace the lenses in my eyes, so that I would no longer need to worry about changing contact lenses or glasses misting up during races; I had cortisone shots in my heels to take care of the chronic inflammation that had steadily been getting worse over the course of 2024; and I started to do altitude training with the help of the Altitude Centre to see if that might improve my breathing and reduce the risk of mid-race asthma (minutes after finishing Challenger South, I had suffered quite a severe asthma attack and was understandably pretty scared of this happening on the course). With my son James also now a recently-qualified S&C and weightlifting coach, I spent time picking his brains in developing a more structured and ambitious strength program, focused on significantly improving my lower body strength and muscular endurance.
By the end of December, I was feeling in great shape, setting plenty of PRs on my treadmill incline sessions, and getting much better pace / HR numbers when doing longer trail runs in the Surrey Hills. I’d even managed to squeeze in a quick 50k practice run between Langdon Beck and Garrigill with Antonio, where we’d been treated to beautiful nighttime conditions with frozen snow on the ground, clear skies and no wind.
Surely this was the time that I would break my duck on the full Winter Spine and finally kiss the wall of the Border Hotel. In winter. After 268 miles.
Like every starter, I was glued to the weather news and forecasts for at least a week before the race, and it became apparent that this year we were going to get genuine “Spiny” conditions. Heavy snowfall covered the North of England. Temperatures plunged below -10C. The patrons of the Tan Hill Inn were locked in for several days as all the access roads to and from were blocked with snowdrifts. And the forecast was for all that snow to still be on the course for at least the first couple of days, before thawing as temperatures were expected to soar closer to +5C to +10C in the second half of the race. Ice and snow followed by a boggy mess. With high winds thrown in for good measure. It would certainly be very testing from a kit perspective.
Antonio and I had booked a room in the Rambler Inn, just up the road from registration and from the start, which would make everything infinitely easier on the morning of the race. No need to worry about shuttle buses, an extra half-hour of sleep and more wiggle room to go back and forth if we had any issues with kit check, drop bags or trackers. Kit check went smoothly, as did the pre-race briefing, with the only diversion being a change in the location of CP1 from Hebden Hey scout hut to Hebden Bridge town centre, which would shorten the first stage by maybe 30 mins but add an extra hour and several hundred metres of ascent to the second, long stage to Hawes. I’d bumped into Kevin Bowen on the way in, who was volunteering this time round after finishing his second Winter Spine last January – he’d be manning the Hawes CP as well, so I looked forward to seeing him later in the race.
Back in the hotel, it was packed that evening as we had dinner, but not particularly with Spiners – far more day trippers, along with a sprinkling of people from the Spine safety and support teams. We dot-watched the Challenger and Sprint runners who had left Edale earlier that day to see if their pace could give us any guide as to the underfoot conditions we were likely to be facing. It wasn’t encouraging! The leading group were all going at least 30% slower than expected – astonishingly their splits were even slower than my own splits for Challenger South last year! Conditions must be horrendous. We hastily started revising our own expected timings, and what it might mean for eating / sleeping strategies etc. I’d come into the race expecting to finish in somewhere between 100-120 hours, with 100 hours as an ambitious but in principle achievable target. I was fitter, stronger and more experienced than 12 months ago. But the conditions – and the splits we were seeing – made that look like a pipe-dream now. Perhaps 130 hours might be more reasonable?? It was impossible to know until we actually got on the course tomorrow.
Start Edale to CP1 Hebden Bridge (72km, 2,000m vertical)
Alarms rang and Antonio and I got up. The Rambler had arranged breakfast goody bags for us down in reception, so after getting ready we took our drop bags down to the village hall to be processed and then came back to the Inn to have breakfast. Coffee, juice, flapjacks, croissants, bananas, it was perfect pre-race starting fuel, and it allowed us to stay out of the cold right up until the last moment when we had to go down again to have our trackers fitted and move to the start line. I bumped into a bunch of familiar faces on the way – Ed Dailey, who had come back for the Full Spine after finishing Challenger North last year, Jonny Ulett, Basil Heaney, Hannah Rickman, Vicky Grace (also being coached by Marcus Scotney), plus quite a few famous faces whom I’d not met before. Although there are lots of “ordinary” runners like myself in the field, the top of the elite field was really stacked in both male and female categories and aside from our own individual races, it would be interesting to see how those particular battles also played out across the next few days.
Antonio and I had been warned about the extremely icy conditions pretty much from the beginning of the course, so I decided to start in ice spikes, hoping to avoid the faff of stopping to put them on only a few minutes into the race. I’d even gone so far as to pack an extra pair in my pack, figuring that the extra weight was a small price to pay for the insurance of having spares in case of them breaking, what with all the (ab)use they would likely be getting in these conditions – I’ve never quite got over my distrust of spike robustness after having so many pairs of YakTrax disintegrating after only a few kms of use.
It was cold, but not oppressively so, and I’d decided against wearing my windproof top as with some gentle climbs early on followed by the big climb up Jacob’s Ladder to the Kinder plateau, I figured that I would warm up very quickly and equally didn’t want to have to stop to remove layers, instead wearing a hat, detachable arm sleeves and a buff to regulate my temperature.
The countdown to the start began, and we were off. Almost immediately the front-runners disappeared up the road that led to the official start of the Pennine Way, and I concentrated on keeping up a solid pace that saw me slowly moving forward through the pack. Out of the 160 starters, I’d planned to run this stage so that I was in somewhere between 20th and 40th place when I arrived at Hebden, hopefully sometime between 6pm and 7pm that evening. It was certainly icy on the footpaths that led out of Edale and every so often there would be a patch of sheet ice to negotiate. I was glad to have the comfort of the spikes, and doubly glad that despite the tips being quite worn down, they were still gripping extremely well.
By the time I reached the bottom of Jacob’s Ladder and the first climb, I’d already warmed up as expected and was very happy with my layering. The steps were easy enough, but as soon as we reached the upper part of the climb, the path became more clogged with snow and we found ourselves picking through the footsteps of those that had broken trail before us. Any deviation away from their steps, and you were quickly finding yourself knee-deep in soft, powdery snow. That said, conditions could have been an awful lot worse, and I suspect we were all incredibly grateful for the trail-breaking work that the Spine Challengers had done for us the previous day.
As we topped out on the climb, we emerged above the low clouds into sunshine and blue skies. An astonishingly beautiful cloud inversion, the Kinder plateau a pristine snowy wilderness, more like the planet Hoth from The Empire Strikes Back than something on Planet Earth, the figures of the Spine runners like so many tiny ants. It’s times like this that you realise why we are so lucky to do what we do. I must have grinned all the way to Torside.
As the path meandered across the plateau towards Kinder Downfall, and then onwards towards the flagstones that led to Snake Pass, it was clear that the footsteps didn’t always follow the actual path of the Pennine Way – with the path itself being blanketed in snow, the trail breakers had had to make a best guess as to the correct route, and everyone afterwards had just followed their footprints. Anything else was suicidal given the depth of the snow, and so there was somewhat of a procession of competitors literally following in each other’s footsteps, carving a gradually deepening channel through the snow. In some places, such as the flagstones, the snow had been trampled quite flat. In others, you were dipping into and out of knee-deep footholes and passing other people was nigh impossible.
After Snake Pass, Devil’s Dyke and Bleaklow saw a lot of walkers and families out enjoying the conditions, with plenty of laughing kids, barking dogs, sledges and snowballs. Genuine Christmas Card scenes. What is usually a boggy mess was firm underfoot, and I was surprised at how quick progress was compared to the expectations I’d had the previous evening. I’d seen a few familiar faces pass me and then pull away – Benji Byrne, Sarah Perry and Hannah Rickman – but I tried to stay relaxed and focus on running my own race at a pace that I felt comfortable to me. 3h30 had passed when I pulled into Torside – not as quick as the 3h10 that my 100 hr schedule had indicated, but a good deal earlier than the 4h pace that was consistent with an overall 130hr finish. Maybe conditions were not going to be so bad after all.
It looked like the far side of the valley was slightly less covered in snow than conditions so far, so I took off my spikes before crossing the reservoir dam and stowed them in a side pocket for easy access in case I needed them again. I soon caught up with a small group ahead of me – Matt Neale, James Elson, Harry Firth, Connor Barrasford. I vaguely knew some of them – Matt from previous races, James from his Centurion podcasts – and with Matt having both a huge amount of Spine experience and a similar-ish pace to me I decided to tag along and we made our way up onto Black Hill. It was still slow going – the already-narrow path was further narrowed by the snow “kerbs” on either side and it was energy-sapping work to maintain forward progress. It slightly improved after Black Hill as the path broadened out, and once we crossed the A635, it was possible to start running again on the good quality track around the Wessenden reservoirs. The sun had gone in and the temperature had dropped in the meantime, so I put on all my spare gloves to head off the risk of getting Raynaud’s in my fingers, although my body was still pretty warm with the faster pace.
I’d lost touch with the Matt Neale / James Elson group and was now running with Josh Lee. The next few kms went by quickly as while there was still snow on the ground, it was loose enough that the path and flagstones were still visible and made for much easier running conditions underfoot, although a brisk breeze had picked up and it continued to get colder. By the time we reached the road and MRT tent at Brun Clough, I was ready to put on my windproof top and drink a hot cup of coffee to warm myself back up again, just as Elaine Bisson came in behind me. I carried on running with Josh and we quickly reached the next milestone at Nicky’s Van and the M62 crossing, not bothering to stop as we wanted to get as much ground as possible behind us before darkness fell, which it started to do around the time we reached the White House Inn and Blackstone Edge reservoir. I half-ran, half-walked the next section, trying to keep the pace up as best I could – the track was good but everything feels harder in darkness, even with both head torch and chest torch on full blast. I slowly gained on a couple of red tail lights in front of me, catching back up again with Sarah Perry and Benji Byrne as well as with the Matt Neale / James Elson group I’d been with earlier, as we covered the final patch of moorland towards Stoodley Pike.
Almost as soon as we passed Stoodley Pike and started the descent towards Hebden Bridge, the snow began to peter out and it was possible to jog at a reasonable pace while still keeping an eye out for the occasional patch of ice. I’d switched my Garmin over by now to the Winter Sprint course – the same GPX tracks as the diversion to the new CP location – and kept glancing at it to make sure I didn’t miss the turnoff. Luckily there was a Spine Safety Team at the place where the paths split and the diversion began, so I turned right and was soon on the asphalt section that led into the town proper. A headtorch came towards me, confusing me for a second as my initial reaction was that they were going the wrong way, and it was only a few seconds afterwards that I realised that it was Hannah who had gone past me, and that she was coming out and onto the next stage after a lightning-fast turnaround in CP1. Minutes later, I was making my way through Hebden Bridge itself and up the steep, narrow street that leads to the checkpoint.
Almost immediately on arriving I was greeted by Michael Burke, an old friend from Summer Spine 2022 and both UTS and Dragons Back in 2023, who after completing the Centurion 100-mile Grand Slam and Winter Downs 200 in 2024 was now on chef duty for the Winter Spine. It was lovely to see him again, and that is one of the great joys of the Spine family – you’re always bumping into people that you know from previous races and it’s just incredibly motivating and energising to see so many friendly and familiar faces across the course.
Quentin, whom I’d met and chatted to on the train from Sheffield to Edale, was already there and looked in great condition – it was heartening to see that he was having a good race and enjoying the conditions. I stopped for about 40 minutes, getting in plenty of fluids and food as I reckoned I was probably running a bit light in terms of hydration, such was my keenness to keep up a good pace on this first leg. Three portions later, I was on my way again, having quickly checked my feet and changed into fresh sets of socks and underwear before the long 100km+ section that would come next.
CP1 Hebden Bridge to CP2 Hawes (105km, 3,242m vertical)
Hebden Bridge is a lovely town – the kind of place that Elon Musk and Donald Trump probably hate. But going through it twice in one night and then having to climb back another 200m to get back to the Pennine Way doesn’t make it feel as lovely as it should. There were quite a lot of headtorches now going past me on their way into the CP as I slogged up the climb back to rejoin the Pennine Way. I reached the turning, but couldn’t see any sign indicating that the diversion was now over. My Garmin watch decided now, of all times, to spontaneously reboot, and just as I was starting to panic that I’d somehow taken a wrong turn somewhere, along came Antonio Codina and Basil Heaney. Having not seen Antonio in the checkpoint, I’d been a bit worried about him as normally our paces are pretty similar, but he looked in great shape and he and Basil quickly reassured me that I hadn’t missed the turning and was literally standing right on it. We wished each other well, and then went our separate ways, me turning right onto the path that leads down through Charlestown followed by the steep climb up to Slack and onto the moors.
The climb up to Slack is always a bit horrible, even in good conditions – steep, overgrown cobblestones, narrow, rock-strewn paths between steep stone walls, muddy farmland – and it was all made worse by the snow, particularly where the snow was obscuring the rocks underfoot. Lots of half-turned ankles and twisted knees. Half an hour of cursing later, I’d passed through Slack and was back onto the moors proper. Although I’d spent a bit longer in Hebden CP than originally planned and had lost a few places as a result, the food and rest had certainly boosted my energy levels and I was making good progress, with a couple of red tail lights in the distance soon coming into view. With them as motivation, I tried to keep my pace up going passed the Walshaw reservoirs and eventually found myself catching up with Quentin on the climb up towards Top Withens. He’d taken a couple of wrong turns – very easy to do in the dark – and we stuck together for company as we carried on past the ruined farmhouse and down towards Ponden.
After passing through, we climbed back onto the moors and the wind began to pick up significantly, biting through my relatively thin windproof top and starting to make me feel increasingly cold. I didn’t particularly want to stop to put on extra layers as I was worried about them blowing away in the wind, so tried to keep our pace up as much as possible so that we could get back down to Cowling and some shelter again. The underfoot conditions – snow obscuring the actual path so the footprints were largely over rough, clumpy heather – made it more challenging. We caught up again with Sarah Perry – and would spend pretty much all this stage yo-yoing back and forth with her – and I could feel (or at least imagine that I was feeling) my core temperature beginning to drop. The end of the moor and the road down to Cowling really couldn’t have come too soon. We stopped for a few minutes to have some snacks and give me time to put on my down jacket as well some windproof overtrousers, while Sarah cruised past us, like a perfectly-calibrated metronome.
Lots of fiddly farmland followed, often with large puddles that had frozen into sheet ice tens of yards wide. We eventually figured out that the quickest way to cross them was to shuffle with both feet staying on the surface, as with both feet grounded our shoes had just enough grip to be able to move us across without slipping over. Saved us having to put on and take off spikes, or look for detours around these mini ice rinks. Half an hour later we had dropped down into Lothersdale where Gary Chapman and the Thornton-in-Craven Triathlon Tent provided a veritable oasis in what was otherwise a pretty bleak night. Gary and the team were wonderfully hospitable as always, with hot chocolate and plenty of biscuits lifting our spirits as well as our energy levels. I was particularly grateful, as the combination of 4 pairs of gloves / mitts and high winds had meant that I was struggling to access the gels and snacks in my pockets and was running seriously underfuelled. If I was going to stay on top of it, I would have to spend more time stopping wherever there was shelter so that I could take off my gloves and eat.
More bleak moors and farmland. Another stop at the honesty-box tuckshop just after Thornton-in-Craven, and an opportunity to have some crisps and Kendal Mint Cake. Then Gargrave and a brief toilet break. This section does seem to go on forever. Then the long section by the river just before Kirkby Malham. The horizon was beginning to lighten up, and as we climbed up and over towards Malham village we were able to switch off our headtorches at last, before stopping again at the tables by the Buck Inn for some more snacks and an opportunity to pack away our head torches. While we were sitting down, Sarah passed us (yet) again.
We were pretty uncertain what we were going to face at the top of Malham Cove – the upturned molars that make up its top can often be extremely icy, further complicated by the gaps between them potentially being covered in soft snow to form treacherous mini-crevasses. We re-attached our ice spikes before the climb, and while that was certainly the right decision, the conditions up top were not as bad as we feared, and before long we had crossed the limestone pillars and were heading up Ing Scar towards Malham Tarn, being snapped by a rather hardy photographer along the way. There was still plenty of snow on the ground, but it wasn’t deep enough to cause any major problems and we reached the aid station at the abandoned research field centre at around 9am, a couple of minutes behind Sarah.
Again we probably stayed there a bit longer than either of us had anticipated, taking the opportunity to have some more hot drinks and snacks, and the support team there very kindly lent me a thick down jacket to help keep me warm inside the CP – following my near-hypothermia experiences on the Arc of Attrition last year, I was paranoid about getting cold whenever I stopped for any length of time. Which was probably a wise decision since as soon as we had left the aid station and commenced the long climb up Fountains Fell, the weather started to deteriorate again, the wind picking up strongly with gusts of maybe 40mph or more, and any semblance of a track disappearing in more deep snow and clumpy heather. It was almost impossible even to see the footprints of the previous runners. Quentin and I caught up with Sarah again, and at this point I took the decision to press on ahead on my own – it was getting increasingly cold and windy, and I knew that the best way for me to keep warm was to keep moving as quickly as I could. Often on the Spine the climbs over Fountains Fell and Pen y Ghent are highlights as you arrive there in the early morning and get to see a beautiful sunrise, but with visibility close to zero, there were no such positives and the climb seemed to take forever. But I was at least making ground on other runners, finding myself catching up with Darren Greasley during the descent, although in my own mind it felt like I was proceeding at a complete snail’s pace.
After dropping back down a couple of hundred metres, the wind lessened and conditions improved again, but only for a while as although there was a diversion in place due to dangerously icy conditions on the top of Pen y Ghent, the diversion was still covered in snow and what is normally a gentle downhill path, very runnable, become more of a power hike. Eventually I reached Horton, with my hopes of being able to stop again at either a local shop or pub to warm myself up and buy some savoury snacks dashed by literally everything in the village being closed. In my own mind I’d kind of gotten myself into a bit of a hole – easy to do when you’re on your own and the conditions are challenging – and was increasingly convinced that I was going incredibly slowly and was going to struggle to finish the race if it carried on like this. The reality was that I was picking up places (having also just passed Hem Rana who was resting in the Horton toilets) and, relatively speaking, doing really well on this section. But my brain had decided that it was all going sideways.
The trail out of Horton up to the Cam High Road is normally not too bad – undulating and on decent track – but today it was covered in thick, snow with the footholes filled with icy water. Frustratingly slow going and did not help my state of mind in the slightest. It seemed to take forever to reach Cam End, but at least conditions on the Cam High Road itself were better than I feared. Unlike last year, when I had been able to pretty much run the entire road right down to Hawes, the snow and ice meant that it was only hiking pace, but conditions here were better than down below, and I reached Kidhow Gate and the Safety Team there quicker than expected. Pretty much as soon as I arrived, the wind was suddenly transformed from a strong-ish but manageable crosswind to a raging gale. The light was fading so I stopped to put my head torch back on.
The wind howled and shrieked. The footpath was buried beneath the metre-high snowdrifts that clogged the channel between dry stone wall and the slope of the hill. Faint foot holes in the snow lay in the broken ground to the right. Every third footstep sank into icy water. I wanted to stop, but ever second not moving was a second of falling body temperature, a second closer to hypothermia. I wanted to put on an extra layer, but as it was the wind was threatening to rip the layers I had on from my body. I wanted to get off this fucking hill, but any kind of forward progress was imperceptibly slow. What on earth was I here for? Why the hell was I doing this? Is it all worth it?
The track down to Hawes is normally runnable, but it was entirely impassable, with zero visibility in the low cloud, no shelter from the wind and my body became increasingly cold. Every so often a gust would knock me forwards or sideways. I cannot remember ever facing conditions – both underfoot and in the air – as challenging as those. It was a ridiculously slow stumble over broken ground. It normally takes 30-40 minutes to cover the 4km from Kidhow Gate to the right turning off the Cam Road towards Hawes. It took more than hour. Even after the turning, there was little respite and it was only after another 2km and 200m of lost elevation when I reached the farm tracks and the wind gradually subsided. My face was frozen, brain scrambled and it was almost in a daze that I made my way through the streets of Hawes towards the YHA and CP2.
I arrived at the checkpoint in a real state. Kevin Bowen was there at the entrance. I was literally in tears – at having gotten off the hills; at having gotten through some hellish conditions; at seeing a kind and familiar face again. I was pretty incoherent and extremely emotional. The volunteers in the Hawes CP were absolutely amazing. They brought me a bowl of hot water so that I could get my feet warmed up again. Several bowls of hot soup and portions of hot food. And I must have drunk a couple of litres of squash to get myself fully rehydrated. I had really let things slip over the past few hours in terms of any semblance of self-care. James Elson was there already, Hem came in a few minutes after me, and I quickly checked my phone to see how other people I knew were coping with the tough conditions – on the plus side, Antonio and Basil were still going strong while Quentin and Sarah were making their way through the Cam High Road right now; on the down side, the drop out rate was much higher than normal with plenty of strong runners DNFing during that punishingly long stage.
I was feeling utterly physically and mentally drained, so decided to deviate my original plan, which was to have my first sleep at CP3 Langdon Beck, and instead try to get a couple of hours sleep in the bunk beds here in order to replenish my energy levels. I needed a full Ctrl-Alt-Del system reboot. In retrospect, I’m not sure whether that was the right decision. My heart rate and breathing were still all over the place, and despite wrapping myself in a warm duvet I was continually shivering. I must have tossed and turned for a couple of hours, before taking some paracetamol, as much to calm me down as to dull the various aches and pains I was feeling. I did manage to get some fitful sleep, perhaps 1-2 hours in total before I got up and decided that I should better press on. Almost 5 hours had passed since I arrived in the CP. I felt marginally better than before, and at least the depressingly negative thoughts had gone. Also, both Antonio and Basil had arrived by now and were warming themselves up, and while I must have come across as a bit of a headless chicken as my mind was still racing back and forth, talking about it with other people at least reassured me that I wasn't the only one who had found that section really tough. I had a chat with Andy from the Support Team as well – with plenty of both Spine and Tor des Geants experience himself, this definitely helped me calm down and get myself mentally ready for the next stage.
This time I put on all my layers from the get go, my heavy duty waterproofs now replacing the lighter ones that I’d been using up till now. It had started to rain, and the forecast was for more high winds tonight before hopefully better and warmer weather from the following morning. I said goodbye to Kevin and thanked the whole CP team before heading out into the night. It was 2am, I’d spent 7 hours in the checkpoint, and while I’d lost only a few places, I was now 2 or 3 hours behind the people in front of me. This was now far less about competing, and far more about completing.
CP2 Hawes to CP3 Langdon Beck (72km, 1,948m vertical)
With the rain falling relentlessly, and the snow beginning to melt, I was expecting the road from Hawes to Hardraw to be flooded, but it was still passable and I was soon going through Hardraw and onto the long path that leads up Great Shunner Fell, the second biggest climb of the whole Spine Race. It started off not too bad, but as the climb went on the wind strengthened, the rain started to blow sideways, and the path disappeared under ever-larger patches of snow that made it increasingly hard to identify the right line to follow. You followed footsteps for a while and then they petered out. 30 or 40 yards later some flagstones appeared and you dog-legged to follow them, before they in turn disappeared under more snow. You crossed snowfields in an effort to get back on the right line and the soft snow collapsed beneath you. It was frustratingly slow. And I was getting wetter, the driving rain seeping through even my waterproof Spine jacket. The only highlight was that, despite the rain, the cloud cover was thin enough for the full moon to shine through it, in places creating a full, semicircular moonbow on the low clouds that lay ahead. Aesthetically, magical. Practically, a dispiriting night.
After reaching the summit cairn, I was expecting conditions to improve on the descent but it was not much easier, and once again I was reduced to trudging down what is usually a runnable path. Eventually I reached Thwaite, cold and miserable, and half-eyed an empty telephone box as a possible spot for an impromptu bivvy as I plodded through the deserted village. At least a couple of Spiners ultimately ended up taking trail naps crouched inside it. I decided to press on and get to Keld, where I was holding out hope that the Village Hall would be open to provide some respite from the elements. As I made my way along the rock-strewn path that traverses the Eastern side of Kidson, despite the sleep I had managed in Hawes, my eyelids started drooping again and I had to keep slapping my face (yes, I know) to keep myself awake. I desperately needed to take a nap, and given it was still dark, decided not to push on to Tan Hill but to go the 200 metres or so off the Pennine Way to see if the Keld hall was open.
Luckily it was, and with a sofa, kitchen, packets of crisps, cup-a-soups and chocolate all available, I quickly texted Spine HQ to let them know that I’d be stopping for a short rest while I ate and laid out my wet outer layers to dry on the radiators, before huddling up in my sleeping bag on the sofa for a quick nap. I’d set my alarm for 30 minutes but I must have slept through it as it was beginning to get light when I woke up. I stuck a £20 note in the honesty box, wrote a thankyou note in the visitors’ book and quickly left to rejoin the Pennine Way, feeling an awful lot better with warm clothes, no headtorch and replenished energy stores. It was only later that I discovered that my text had not arrived as Keld was in a mobile signal-free dead zone and so I was issued a warning at the next checkpoint as they’d seen my tracker stop for more than half an hour so had dispatched a Safety Team member to check if I was OK – all this while I was asleep on the sofa. Still, all this was still ahead of me.
Once I rejoined the Pennine Way, there was a figure just in front of me, and I soon caught up and discovered that it was Laura Swanton-Rouvelin, a superb runner who was in 5th place in the women’s race. We’d both DNFed at pretty much the same time at Malham Tarn two years previously, and in one of those odd coincidences Laura had also been 1st female in my very first 100 miler, the Devon Coast to Coast race back in 2019. Laura’s also had some fantastic performances in tough 200 milers such as the Hardmoors200 and Winter Downs 200, so it was lovely chatting to her, and although I felt in great in good condition physically, I was extremely grateful for the company, so we stuck together for the next couple of hours all the way to Tan Hill. After the tough conditions of the previous 2 days, it was starting to get much easier underfoot, and the relentless snow cover gave way to patches of snow and ice that at least allowed some kind of discernible path to be followed.
At Tan Hill there was a mini aid station set up in the back room, so I stopped for a few minutes to have some soup and coffee (and stroke the dog) before pressing on ahead on my own, as I was keen to get across the boggy morass of Sleightholme Moor before the thawing snow turned it into a complete quagmire. As it turned out, my fears proved completely unfounded – while the snow cover had gone, the underlying bogs were still largely frozen firm and it was almost perfect conditions for crossing the moor. With the wind having died down, the temperature getting warmer, and even the odd shaft of sun breaking through, it was positively pleasant for the first time in the race and I was off the moor and into the farmland that leads to the A66 underpass and the halfway point of the whole race. As I came down towards God’s Bridge, I passed David Mixell, one of the people who had overtaken me during my meltdown at the Hawes checkpoint and subsequent nap in Keld, which gave me both some encouragement that my race wasn’t going completely off the rails and a reminder that there were still people either side of me on the course that I could potentially buddy up with if I started to feel my spirits sinking. But there really wasn’t any need of that, at least for the moment, and I took heart that my strategy of stopping, resting and eating more was not costing me any time, allowing me keep my speed up when I was moving while also keeping my mind and body in a much better state. I resolved to continue to stop at every opportunity, and to generally just be a lot kinder to myself. I may not have been shooting the lights out, but I was doing OK and more importantly, I was starting to enjoy the race a lot more than before.
About an hour after the A66, I reached the farm at Clove Lodge, where a pit stop for Pennine Way walkers had been arranged in the barn by the owners – I took the opportunity for another 20 minute breather with tea and biscuits, and once again found myself yo-yoing, this time with David Mixell who passed by only for me to catch up again with him just after we reached Middleton and the turning that led along the River Tees towards CP3 and Langdon Beck. While night stages have their attractions, one of the dispiriting aspects of the Spine is that you frequently find yourself starting and finishing stages in darkness, and just as you have gotten used to moving faster, the few hours of daylight are past and you’re left with a much slower slog to reach the next checkpoint. Now that CP3 has moved from Middleton to Langdon Beck, the extra 15km of distance you have to cover makes that especially true, as much of it is on narrow footpaths alongside the river, not particularly difficult terrain, but fiddly and hard to get into any kind of rhythm. I took another 2½ hours before finally reaching the checkpoint, bumping into a departing Sarah on my way in. I was perhaps 10 hours adrift of what I had originally been hoping for, but on the plus side, feeling infinitely better than I had felt on entering the previous CP at Hawes. My race may not have been entirely back on track, but it wasn’t going completely off the rails either.
CP3 Langdon Beck to CP4 Alston (57km, 1,577m vertical)
It was at this time that I received my warning for the stop at Keld, and suitably chastened I resolved to text HQ well in advance of any potential stops I might make from now on. While the new CP had significantly lengthened the previous stage, this one was going to be a lot shorter, and it was also the section that Antonio and I had practiced on in November. The only difference was that due to icy conditions earlier in the race on the scramble up Cauldron Snout, Spine HQ had activated another diversion, following the track on the North side of Widdybank Fell and alongside Cow Green reservoir, which while longer, avoided a lot of the riverbank boulders of Falcon Clints which are always tricky in the dark especially when you’ve only had a few hours’ sleep over the previous 3 days.
Michael Burke was again on kitchen duties here in CP3, so I took the opportunity to have another couple of portions of hot food, followed by a proper shower. There were no duvets in the bunks, so I wandered around in my down jacket and ¾ length down trousers looking more like Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno character than a trail runner, before settling down for a short sleep. This time I managed a solid 90 minutes of sleep before the alarm went and I got myself ready again. I’d been in the CP almost 4 hours, definitely not the most efficient of stops, but still a shower, a nap and a change of clothes can definitely make you feel better, and after saying my thanks and farewells, I headed out, almost exactly at the same time as Basil Heaney was arriving.
It was just after midnight and – as is pretty typical for this part of the route as it passes over the Pennines watershed – a thick fog descended and visibility shrank to a few metres. I was grateful I had my chest torch as at least that pierced the fog far more effectively than my headtorch, but with the diversion signs not easily visible and the path across the first few fields indistinct, it took far longer than I expected to reach the reservoir and to rejoin the Pennine Way. Although it was foggy, at least the ground underfoot was largely free of snow, and the path from here was much more clearly visible, so the gentle climb up to High Cup Nick was a lot easier than it might have been, although the boggier sections had begun to noticeably thaw, a sign of what kinds of conditions we could expect later in the race. There were no lights either ahead of me or behind me (not that I would have seen them anyway in the fog), so I remained in my tiny bubble as I reached High Cup Nick and the long descent to Dufton. At least with the descent being relatively free of ice, it was possible to run large parts of it, and it was around 5.30am when I reached the village – 4½ hours to cover a section that had taken us only 3 hours back in November. Such are the effects of fatigue.
The Post Box Pantry was open 24 hours for the duration of the race, purely for the benefit of Spiners – a massive shout out to the wonderful owners – so I stuck to my strategy of trying to get food and rest as often as I could, while moving quickly in between, and had a cappuccino and flapjack before putting my head down on the table for 30 minutes, carefully ensuring that my text to Spine HQ had been received before doing so. It was amazing how quickly I nodded off – when you’re sufficiently tired, you’ll sleep anywhere at any time – and it felt like a fraction of an instant before my timer went off and it was time to leave. David Mixell was a couple of km behind me, and an Irish athlete, Brian Hutchinson, was about an hour or so ahead of me – Brian had also done Tor des Geants last September, finishing only a few minutes ahead of me, so I was really hoping to catch him up for a chat. It would be fascinating to see how he was finding the Spine compared to the Tor – two such difficult races but which challenge you in completely different ways. While I had found Tor to be physically one of the hardest things I've ever done, much harder than the Spine as a purely physical endeavour, the long distances unsupported between CPs, the long hours of darkness, the weather and underfoot conditions all made the Spine much more psychologically draining.
I made a brief obligatory stop in the Dufton Town Hall monitoring station, with the medic there giving my left knee some extra K-tape strapping to ease what now felt like either some inflamed ligaments, or a tight adductor pulling on a tendon across the kneecap. I took a couple of painkillers and pressed on with the long climb up to Knock Fell, the Dun Fells and Cross Fell. I wasn’t particularly dreading the climb, as my climbing has improved no end over the last couple of years after tackling some big races in both the Alps and Wales, and once you’ve done the fifteen or so 1000m+ climbs of Tor des Geants, Cross Fell’s 700m of elevation gain doesn’t feel like a particularly big deal. But the first couple of kms are on super muddy chewed-up farm paths that back in November were frozen solid, but with the big thaw I was worried had become a slippery slobbering mess. They were certainly muddy, but the mud was luckily sticky enough that it didn’t slow progress that much, and before long I’d left it behind and was on the steep grassy slopes up to Knock Fell, just as the sky started to brighten.
With the ground higher here than at the top of High Cup Nick, the snow was more extensive, but still patchy enough that it was quite easy to follow the route, and while the intermittent flagstoned sections that connected Knock Fell, Dun Fell and Cross Fell were somewhat obscured by snow, there was enough visibility to stay on the path for the most part. And by the time I reached the top of Cross Fell, the clouds started to part and sunshine peered through. I half expected to see a hand from the heavens reaching down and choirs of angels appearing over the horizon. Instead, I found Greg’s Hut, John Bamber and the famous Chilliwhack noodles. Which was definitely much closer to what I needed. The noodles absolutely hit the spot, and I was soon joined by David Cummins, another familiar face as I’d finished just behind him on the Challenger North three years earlier.
The run down from Greg’s Hut is one of those Marmite sections that people either love or hate. Well, 99% of people hate it to be honest. But, I’m one of the 1% who likes it. Maybe because it’s the part of the race where I start to believe that I actually can finish. Maybe because after so many miles of not being able to easily run you finally have a section where you can get some kind of rhythm going. Maybe it’s because you know that Alston – and its famous lasagne – is only a couple of hours away.
In any case, the sun came out, I took off layer after layer, and made swift progress in gorgeous winter weather, the only impediment being that my 54-year old bladder decided that it would suddenly stage multiple fire drill exercises and I found myself having to stop every 10 minutes for gargantuan pees. Had my water retention so far been really that extreme? The only upside was that by the time I reached Garrigill, I’d probably shed at least a litre of fluid weight, so I’d be running a fair bit lighter now for the rest of the race.
My right heel by now was beginning to hurt quite badly and I couldn’t tell whether it was some kind of Achilles tendonitis, blistering or bruising, so just after passing through Garrigill, I stopped to take my shoes off and have a look. There was a huge blister right on the heel, with the skin around and under it also red, swollen and tender. So not just a blister, but possible some kind of bursitis as well. Bad news. I rummaged around in my first aid kit, found a needle to drain the blister (so much for my complaints about the obligatory kit requiring us to carry needles…), some Compeed to provide a bit of protection, and then I found some small pre-cut sheets of 5mm neoprene that I’d packed specifically for this kind of emergency, so was able to fashion a cushioned pad to further protect the swollen part of the heal from getting too much pressure from the heel counter of my Inov8s. I was forced to take off my waterproof socks, as with them on there would just be too much pressure on the heel even with the neoprene in place, and somehow the improvised rig seemed to work. It would be good enough at least to get me to Alston, where I could sort out something more permanent. With no waterproof socks, I crossed the four miles farmland trying to avoid muddy and boggy sections as much as possible, and much to my relief arrived at the Alston CP in the middle of the afternoon, ready for more food, more sleep and another opportunity to patch up my body.
CP4 Alston to CP5 Bellingham (63km, 1,741m vertical)
I’m pretty sure that the Alston CP is everyone’s favourite. It’s the last place where you can get a proper shower and bed, its food is legendary and it’s close enough to the end that you know that almost everyone who makes it this far will find a way of getting to the finish. It’s not quite a celebration, but it always feels a lot more lively than the last CP at Bellingham, by which time everyone is just desperate to get the whole thing over with.
I followed the usual ritual of stuffing my face with lasagne while simultaneously re-charging my watch and phone and taking a longer look at my angry-looking right heel. I had a much bigger stock of neoprene patches in my drop bag, so cut a hole in one of them to form a pad in the shape of a circular ring to put around the swollen area. Some K-tape strips over the top to secure it in place and bingo. The only question now was how to keep my feet dry. The next two sections were the boggiest on the entire Pennine Way, with Blenkinsopp Common and the Cheviots almost designed to find gaps in even the most secure waterproof sock setup. The heel cup of the Inov8 TrailTalons certainly seemed to be part of the problem, and I didn’t feel comfortable risking them again, so decided to switch to my Hoka Speedgoats, with their lovely soft heel cup and resoled with super grippy Vibram Peak District outsole whose massive tractor-like lugs would find purchase on even the slipperiest of muddy slopes. The only problem was that with the extra neoprene padding, my Dexshell knee-length socks were too bulky for my feet to feel comfortable, so I had to switch to wearing the much thinner Dexshell crew-length waterproof socks, which to be honest I’d never really trusted in deep bogs given the risk of water getting inside over the top of the socks. But I didn’t have a lot of choices – they fitted perfectly well, and were all dry, so I made a makeshift seal around the top of the socks by wrapping them in K-tape around the bottom of my calf and hoped that this would do the trick.
I managed to get another hour or so of sleep, this time on the sofa, and by the time I was ready to go again it was almost 7pm. Another 4 hour-ish stop. My checkpoint admin was not particularly improving, but at least I was looking after my body, and while I had lost a few more places, my energy levels were pretty much fully restored as I headed out again and I was hopeful of being able to claw back some time and avoid the usual Zombie-like death march that normally ensues in the last hundred km or so of races like the Spine.
Alston may be everyone’s favourite CP, but the section that follows is almost certainly everyone’s least favourite. Brian, David and Laura had all left before me and were already on their way to Greenhead, with the bogs of Hartleyburn and Blenkinsopp Commons to come. Another diversion was in place on this section due to an unstable riverbank, with the route now following the South Tynedale Railway line towards Slaggyford. It was a beautiful evening, the sky clear, the moon full, and Venus, Jupiter and Mars (and probably others that I couldn’t see) all lined up alongside each other. As I trudged through the various sections of muddy and boggy farmland, the socks appeared to be holding up and not letting in any water, and the right heel wasn’t given me any problems either – all good so far. The only concern was that my left knee had started to hurt again, and I was aware that the number of hours of relief I was getting from painkillers was gradually diminishing. Still, at least for the moment, it was all under control and I was able to make some good progress, particularly on the flat runnable section by the railway. Slaggyford came and went, with no “Angel of Slaggyford” in sight this year, just a Spine Safety Team who were kind enough to change over my rear taillight that had started to dim and flicker.
It wasn’t long before I could see a red taillight in front of me, and after crossing the south side of Hartleyburn Common (helping myself to some snacks that someone had kindly left in a box for us Spiners by the side of the route) I eventually caught up with Laura and we informally teamed up again to tackle the rest of that section. Although the weather was clear, the temperature was dropping and the wind had picked up so we tried to keep up a solid pace and get this nasty little section out of the way to reach the important psychological milestone of Hadrian’s Wall. I’m not sure Blenkinsopp Common is ever pleasant, but at least in the winter you don’t have to put up with the incessant midges that frequently plague it on the Summer Spine, and with Laura for company we reached the A69 and Greenhead in what felt like a lot less time than it might otherwise have taken. It was still a cold, crisp night, and frost was already forming as we crossed Greenhead golf course and hit the first patch of Hadrian’s Wall just before the visitor centre.
Brian and David were tucked away in the Gents toilets having stopped for a quick nap and some food, and Laura and I decided to join them for a short break as we all geared ourselves up for the 14km or so traverse along (and up and down) Hadrian’s Wall. It’s not particularly challenging, but there are a lot of ups and downs, and while the climbs are short they can be quite steep and rocky. Brian and I pushed on ahead, and my legs started to suddenly feel a good deal stronger than they had felt so far. Maybe all that lasagne was feeding through. I pushed the pace a bit harder, as I was just eager now to get to the next CP at Bellingham and finish this thing off, and started to move ahead of Brian. More climbs, more descents, some flatter farm-y sections, some forest-y bits, another lake, bits of wall here and there, rocks to clamber over, and then the Sycamore Gap itself. Or rather the Stump-Formerly-Known-As-Sycamore-Gap. What on earth was going through the minds of those vandals that chopped it down. It’s a lovely spot, and so many people will now never get to see it as it was.
I kept pressing on and eventually reached the left turning that marks the end of the Hadrian’s Wall section, and the long slog over bogs and through the South-Eastern fringes of the Kielder Forest towards Bellingham. The darkness had just started to fade as I hit the first of several really minging bogs. They were not quite as wet and sloppy as those between Slaggyford and Greenhead, but they seemed to slope relentlessly upward, making them just as much hard work to trudge through. The forest track provided some relief, but only for 20 minutes or so as another bog appeared. Followed by more forest. Followed by more bogs. It was just endless. At least it wasn’t cold and windy any more, and the sky was slowly getting lighter, gradually turning into one of the most beautiful sunrises that I have seen, the clouds lit up in fluorescent orange. The worst of the mud though was saved up for the final descent and climb back up to Horneystead Farm, home of the most renowned of the Pennine Way pit stops and all put on by the legendary Helen, who when I arrived was just getting her kids ready for school.
Justine, Richard and Ruden from the Challenger North – the first runners from that race that I’d encountered so far – were already there and having a well-earned rest (Richard asleep on the bed) before their final push to Bellingham, and I joined them for a quick cup of tea and a chance to take some of the weight off my feet. One thing I like about the Spine is that you do get to meet people from the other races on the course – it gives you a much broader appreciation of the whole scale of the event and certainly helps me get my head out of the bubble of my own race for a few minutes, which is definitely a good thing. As I got up, my left knee was starting to throb again – the 15 minutes of sitting down had probably not done it much good – and while I was still able to climb really quickly, going up Shitlington Crags took no time at all, the descents were much more of a painful hobble-cum-hop and it was with a mixture of relief and trepidation that I reached Bellingham and the final checkpoint.
CP5 Bellingham to Finish Kirk Yetholm (69km, 2,405m vertical)
Bellingham, oh Bellingham. So near and yet so far. Less than 70km until the finish line. Probably less than 10 hours when you’re fresh. But closer to 20 when you’re not. And over some of the bleakest, most isolated, most desperate terrain on the whole Pennine Way. As soon as you arrive in Bellingham, you’re just desperate to be on your way again. You just want to get thing over with (sounds familiar?) You’re past the point of really worrying too much about self-care any more, as you “only” have 70km left, and what could possible go wrong?
I had to fight all these urges after I sat down – Laura, Brian and David soon arrived after me, and boy were they all efficient at doing all of their admin. While I faffed with food, drink, and slowly re-inspecting my feet to see whether my heel was getting any worse, and whether my socks had managed to keep out the water, they had pretty much done everything they had to do and were getting ready to leave. My heel was in remarkably good shape, but the blister had refilled with pus so I needed to drain it again, along with some other blisters that had started to form on my toes, but the other good news was that the thin crew-length waterproof socks had held firm, the K-tape forming a solid seal around the top, and I was now confident that they would be fine to get me through the endless bogs of the Cheviots. I took a couple more painkillers for my left knee and curled up in my sleeping bag on the sofa, trying to get another hour or so of sleep, which I easily managed. After some more hot chocolate, more biscuits and a final change of underwear, I packed up and got ready to leave, Laura, Brian and David as well as the Challenger North trio having already long-departed.
I high-fived everyone in the CP. Let’s do this thing! I felt like giving them all a hug. Frankly, I felt like giving the whole world a hug at this point. Except Putin. And Kim Jong-Eun. And Trump. OK then, not the whole world. But definitely everyone in the Spine family. It’s funny how your mental state can affect your physical state and vice-versa. The latter of course is pretty obvious. But it’s just as surprising how the random – or not-so-random – kindness of people in a checkpoint can just fill you with physical energy, make stiff legs supple, make a 6kg pack feel like a 2kg vest and transform feet that were blocks of stone into springs. I pretty much bounded out of the checkpoint and through the streets of Bellingham. I smiled at complete strangers. I smiled at the cows. I smiled at the birds. I looked like a complete lunatic. But I felt gooood. There was maybe an hour and a half of daylight left, so I tried to make the most of it, pushing hard across the farmland that leads up to Troughend Common and the first patch of rough ground. I soon caught up with the Challenger North group, and put my headtorch on as I crossed the B6320 and entered the tangled heathery moor, traversed by a rutted path that was painfully narrow and filled with large stones that would stub your toes, turn your ankles and twist your knees. Not to mention the occasional patches of bog-disguised-as-mud that threatened to swallow your leg. I tried to put my slow progress to one side as I saw a bright light in front of me, and another SST member who was patrolling the access road before the next section of moorland across Padon Hill.
“Hi Anthony! It’s Jenny!”
“Who?”
“Jenny!”
“Jenny who?”
“Jenny!”
“Oh that Jenny!”
It was Jenny Yeo, who I’d first met while doing Northern Traverse a few years ago, and who had since had some fantastic results, in particular winning the Summer Spine in 2023. It was dark, I was sleep-deprived, dazzled by the headtorch, added to which I’m getting increasingly deaf, so I hope she’ll forgive me my complete denseness. At any rate, it was lovely to see her, and she gave me a lot of encouragement when she told me that Brian and David were only 20 minutes or so ahead of me. We said our farewells, and I pushed on again with some renewed energy. My knee was still sore, but the painkillers were doing their job and keeping it in check for the moment. Padon Hill always seems to take forever, but once I’d reached the top and could see the North Eastern edge of Kielder Forest in the distance below me, I continued to stumble along the narrow channel as fast as I could. Once you get onto the forest tracks, progress is so much more straightforward. There’s a short, gnarly climb up the side of the forest, but after that the track flattens out and I could make out some red lights in the distance, presumably Brian and David. They both seemed to be slowing down quite a bit – that final stage death march had already started – and we briefly chatted before I carried on in an effort to reach Byrness as quickly as possible. Just like the moors before it, the Kielder Forest section can seem to take forever, but with no rain, minimal wind, no snow and broad gravelly track it’s highly runnable and a good opportunity to knock off some kms in short order if your legs, body and mind are still in good enough shape.
I finally reached the toilet block at Blakehopeburnhaugh that usually functions as an emergency monitoring station during the Summer Spine, and there was indeed a car and Spine Safety Team member there who told me that Laura was about 40 minutes in front of me – so I was slowly gaining ground and there was a decent chance that I’d manage to catch up with her somewhere over the Cheviots, a cheering thought, not so much from a competitive point of view, as I’d pretty much stopped worrying about placings a long time ago, but more because the Cheviots are unremittingly bleak, and doing them at night is infinitely better when you have company other than on your own, especially when you’re sleep-deprived. I kept pushing all the way to the Byrness YHA, where I took advantage of the 30 minute stay time that we were allowed there, managing to squeeze into it a plate of Shepherd’s Pie, coffee, squash and 15 minutes sleep – definitely by the far the most efficient pitstop that I have ever managed.
The forecast was for cold weather again, and high winds up on the tops, so I put on all my layers – base, mid, down jacket, hard shell, thermal leggings, overtrousers. I knew that I’d get hot on the climb out of Byrness up onto the top of the Cheviots, but equally I knew that if I started to get cold when up there, it might be very difficult to get myself warm again. Prevention is always better than cure.
As expected, on the climb out of Byrness I soon became uncomfortably hot. The air was damp and clammy, and there was no wind. Luckily, what can often be a very slippery, muddy climb was not too bad underfoot. But that all changed when I emerged above the treeline onto the top of the Cheviots themselves. The temperature dropped, the wind picked up, although not quite as strong as it had been earlier in the race) and the conditions underfoot became boggy and sticky. The first stage, to the Mountain Rescue Hut just before Lamb Hill (Hut 1), is rather trackless with very few natural features that are visible at night. It can be quite disorienting, especially when you’re sleep deprived, and I found myself thinking back to the Summer Spine in 2022 when I also found myself doing this section in the dark having only slept maybe 2 hours during the entire race. I could barely stay upright then, and while I was in better condition sleep-wise right now, it still required a lot of effort to keep moving forward and resisting the urge to lie down, notwithstanding my recent power nap at Byrness. I did catch up with a few more Challenger North runners, their red taillights giving me something to focus on as I tried to keep going as fast as I could.
Desperate is too strong a word, but I was counting down every km to Hut 1, after which the trail becomes a lot easier with much of it covered in flagstones and following the border fence between England and Scotland. At the same time, I was also hoping that the next red light I would see would be Laura’s, as some company would certainly help us stave off the sleep monsters and help the rest of this stage go by more quickly. I picked up another couple of Challenger North back markers, and then after a short muddy descent, saw the lights of Hut 1. Big relief. Laura was inside having just had a quick sleep – we were both in pretty ropy shape I think it’s fair to say. I stayed there for another 30 minutes, time for a drink and to close my eyes for another quick 10 minute nap while sitting down. I took some more painkillers for my knee, and gave some to Laura as she was also having similar issues.
We discussed whether if one of us felt stronger, they should just press on. I wasn’t particularly feeling up to it, and I think at this point we pretty much agreed to stick together, at least until Hut 2 after which we could check again on how we were feeling. We hobbled outside and started on the climb up Lamb Hill, after which the flagstones started and everything became a good deal easier. Normally we’d have been running this section, but after a few half-hearted attempts at running, we gave up and just tried to stride in a purposeful manner, with occasional jogged steps when we felt jaunty enough. We chatted quite a bit, but as the wind got stronger – it wasn’t called Windy Gyle for nothing – we found ourselves again struggling to stay awake, even to stay upright. Eventually we gave in and lay down by the trail for another nap. I literally fell asleep as soon as I hit the ground, my head resting on my horizontal poles as if they were pillows. In no time at all Laura was waking me up. 10 minutes had passed, and I was getting quite cold, but at least felt somewhat refreshed by the rest.
More flagstones followed, and then the final steep climb up to the turning point into Scotland, and the long descent to Hut 2. It was a slow, painful descent, with both our knees getting twisted this way and that by the heavy black soil. Eventually we saw a headtorch ahead of us, and a figure appeared out of the darkness to welcome us into Hut 2. With only 12km left to the finish, we were pretty keen to get going, but there was still the small matter of the climb up and over the Schil to come, and after a quick discussion, we agreed that another 10 minute nap inside the hut would give us just enough energy to propel us to the finish.
The climb up the Schil was slow, but with the sky starting to brighten once more, now for the last time, our spirits rose. The wind was still blasting away, but it hadn’t defeated us. As we neared the top, we gave it our response:
“Fuck you, wind”
“Yeah, and fuck you too, Schil”
“You’re not even a proper hill, just a bog with rocks on it”
“Fuck you cold”
“Fuck you bogs”
…
… you get the picture. We briefly discussed whether, if either of us felt up to it, we should split up so that we could each enjoy our own moment at the finish line. But neither of us were up to it. And after all the time we’d spent on the course, in all kinds of conditions, it kind of felt appropriate for each of us to be able to share that moment at the finish with someone who’d been through exactly the same. When we’d started out from Hut 1, both of us were hoping we might be able to squeeze home in under 120 hours – 5 days – but lack of sleep and dodgy knees had put paid to that hope, so as we switched off our headtorches and made our way down the final slopes of the Schil, we reconciled ourselves to finishing some time after 8am.
It wasn’t until we hit the farm track by Halterburn that we started to jog a little, and once we reached the outskirts of Kirk Yetholm we broke into a proper run. Normally, I would have felt extremely emotional at this point, with a lump in my throat and my eyes getting moist. But I didn’t actually feel that much as we crossed the green and reached the Border Hotel – not even a huge wave of relief. It was more of a matter-of-fact, almost anticlimactic “done it”. That said, one of the pluses of finishing alongside a celebrity like Laura was that there was a big crowd to greet us at the finish line – Hannah and Nicky Spinks were both there, Nicky having won the women’s Challenger North in a fantastic time, as well as Laura’s husband Jean, who’d won his own Spine finisher’s medal last year. There were lots of hugs, and I felt very warm and fuzzy inside. I hung around in the hotel, chatting to Nicky and waiting for Antonio to finish, as he was only a few hours behind me, and I took the opportunity of getting some more sleep on the sofa in the front room. Brian and both Davids arrived in the meantime and there were more hugs, high-fives, fist bumps and general mutual celebration. There was even more warm, fuzziness when I went outside to cheer Antonio over the line – and hear him say "jam roly poly" in his best Geordie accent. We’d spent so long together on trails in the last year that it was lovely to be able to add the Spine to our shared treasure chest of trail memories.
And then I hitched a lift with Antonio and his wife to Newcastle Station, still wearing my Bruno-style trouser combo of tights and ¾-length quilted down pants all the way back home to London. Somehow I'm not sure that will catch on as a new fashion.
And that was that!
Reflections
As I write, it’s 6 weeks since I finished the Spine. Winter has almost given way to Spring. How do I feel about it now?
I’m not at all sure to be honest.
On the one hand, I’m really happy to have finally finished it – especially after DNFing two years ago, it’s been an odyssey that’s taken me effectively 3 years to complete. And with the conditions being what they were, 120 hours is a pretty respectable time for a first-time finish. And in terms of placings, 20th male and 24th= overall are pretty fair representations of where I am as an ultra-runner. I’d have had to shave more than 10 hours off my time to have materially improved my placing, so I don’t think any of the mistakes I made, or cautiousness that I decided to adopt after Hawes, would have in reality have made much of a difference.
On the other hand, I learned a huge amount while getting all the way to the end, in particularly that it’s an order of magnitude more challenging from a race management perspective than either the Challenger South or North races – you simply have far more variables that you need to consider throughout, and the cumulative attrition from the elements and from sleep deprivation on your body and mind is far more severe. And far more so than the Summer Spine, partly due to the long hours of darkness, bigger pack and more challenging weather and underfoot conditions. Of course, I’m also eager to try and put into practice everything that I’ve learned from that experience to see how quickly I can “really” do the course - saying that, I’ll probably just make a different set of mistakes next time round. In any case, after promising myself that I wouldn’t, I have signed up to do the race one more time next January, so there you go. It’s addictive. And I have the small matter of the 450km of Tor des Glaciers to face before then, where I’ll be joined by Brian Hutchinson and Spine legend Eoin Keith. But after next January, I think I will be cured of Spine fever, at least as an athlete and at least for a few years.
It's always the case with the Spine that it's the quality and Herculean efforts of the organisers, the volunteers who man the checkpoints and the Spine Safety Teams (SSTs) as well as the Mountain Rescue Teams and organisers of unofficial checkpoints and support points, that make it what it is. The support you get at checkpoints is without question the best of any race that I've ever experienced, and the sense that everyone else is willing you on is just palpable throughout the event. I owe them all a huge debt of thanks, as without their energy and empathy, there is simply no way that I, or indeed most of us, would be able to attempt and achieve our own personal challenges on the course.
Kit
Pack: | OMM Phantom 18L Salomon Pulse Belt
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Shoes: | Inov8 TrailTalon 2 Hoka Speedgoat 6, resoled with Vibram Peak District
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Waterproofs: | Montane Spine (Top), Inov8 UltraShell (Top) Mountain Hardware (Bottom), Montane Minimus (Bottom)
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Socks:
| Liner: DryMax Hyperthin Crew Outer: DexShell Compression Mudder, DexShell Crew
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Leggings: | Montane Slipstream Thermal Tights
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Top: | UnderArmor sleeveless compression top, Shinymod UV sleeves, Montane Protium Lite Fleece, MontBell Plasma 1000 down jacket |
Underwear: | JustWears long boxer shorts
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Gloves: | Fingerless gloves: Leather cycling gloves Thermal gloves: Montane VIA gloves, Montane Prism Dryline Gloves Mitts: Montane Minimus waterproof overmitts |
Hat / Buff: | Montane Thermal Beanie OMM Kamleika waterproof cap Multiple buffs |
GPS: | Garmin Epix Pro Garmin eTrex32 |
Headtorch / Chest torch: | Fenix LEDLenser Neo 10 + spare batteries |
Sleep system | RAB Mythic Sleeping Bag Moonlite Bivvy Bag ThermaRest Neoair mattress |
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