It all started for me in May. I was on holiday in the North Island when I got a message from one of my good mate’s dad and friend, Hemi Vincent. I’m based in Wanaka and Hemi wanted me to go into the Night & Day to find out what happened the previous night, resulting in my buddy Kahu Vincent ending up in a coma and being rushed to Dunedin hospital,. I felt sick after hearing this. “I can’t help” I said,  as I got more details from him and wondered what kind of twisted person would do this to another human being. My holiday was coming to an end and I was camped on 90 Mile Beach- it was stunning and that evening I decided to go for a run on the beach, having barely run anywhere before! I ran about 3kms and it totally cleared my head, from then on I decided I would keep at it when I got back to Wanaka.

Some winter training on Mount Iron. Photo Brook van Reenen

The next day scrolling through Facebook a sponsored message from Queenstown Marathon came along, “flat out beautiful” it read, I jumped at the chance and signed up then and there! It was still 6 months away so I thought that was enough time to train and I thought it would be a good goal to achieve before I turn 30 next year! Back in Wanaka I asked a mate Andrew Town how to train for a marathon, he sent me back a basic 24 week training programme. I checked the dates and discovered that the next 24 weeks through the middle of the coldest winter we’ve had in a long time and Spring that I was going to be running a lot but I was keen. It was pretty full on and I enjoyed every minute. There were days that I couldn’t be bothered but I was determined to complete every run and sometimes they turned out to be the best runs!! September 5th came around and my buddy Kahu Vincent was doing well, I was using his step by step progress as motivation for my own step by step progress towards my goal of running a marathon. It was also the day of my first ever half marathon at Jacks Point in Queenstown put on by Andrew Town. It was steep, muddy and greasy but I was stoked to finish it in 2 hours 19min. A prize was up for grabs just for entering and I somehow got lucky and won an entry to the Kepler Challenge. I’d often wanted to walk it but didn’t know the crazies ran the big 60km lap in a day! I spoke to Andrew and he thought I’d be too tired as it was 2 weeks after the Queenstown Marathon, but me being me I like to take every opportunity that I get and I decided to go for it! I wanted to run it for Kahu! He was home now getting better and it was good to see him again. It was a whole lot better than seeing tubes in him when I visited him in Dunedin hospital.

Cromwell Half.

Next up at the end of October it was Cromwell half marathon. I’d learned a lot from Jacks point, as well as from picking mates Andrew’s and Grant Guise’s brains and I went into it feeling fresh. It was fast, hot and a lot of road running which I wasn’t used to but I paced myself and got home in a time of 1 hour 42. A new personal best and I felt I was on track for the big one less than a month away! From now on it was getting intense. I was training during the week for Queenstown and on Sunday’s hitting the hills and training for the Kepler. Breast Hill, Mount Roy and Corner Peak were some good work outs – I had improved a lot and was getting fitter. I thought about how awesome my mate Kahu was doing, he had bet me at a game of chess and I admired his strength and determination.

Kahu, and friend Matty Town, after beating me at Chess!

November 21st Rolled around, Queenstown Marathon day. I had 4 hours in the back of my mind and it was cloudy and quite chilly, near perfect running conditions. We started at Millbrook and headed through Arrowtown, where everyone was in good spirits and towards the end it was a thrill to run through the closed streets of Queenstown with random supporters cheering everyone on. I finished in 4 hours 6 minutes and was stoked to see my Mum and Dad at the finish. Then it was back to Wanaka and time to rest up with 2 weeks to go for the ultimate goal- The Kepler Challenge!

Queenstown Marathon.

Kahu was doing awesome he had now made it to the top of Mount Iron. I was impressed as it is a tough wee climb and a perfect hill to run and train on. Friday the 4th of December came around and I packed my gear and running shoes into the car and headed to Te-Anau excited and pretty nervous at the same time! I caught up with Grant Guise and got some nice last minute tips and was stoked to meet running legend Malcolm Law! Malcolm’s book one step beyond had inspired me after he ran 7 of the great New Zealand walks in 7 days. The Kepler was his last stop!

The view on the way to Luxmore Hut.

The briefing was that night and the next morning bright and early at 6am we were underway, this one was for my buddy Kahu. Grant was out in the bush supporting everyone at the start and I gave him a high five as I ran past, finding out later that he would get 3rd in the 27Km Luxmore Grunt! The run to the first hut, Luxmore was a grind- I checked the time and it was 10 to 8. I was feeling good and got my gear checked by the people dressed up as animals at the first aid station it was going to be a long day but fun! I understood early on why we needed all the gear, I put on my polypro and jacket as a cold southerly was coming through and some sideways rain blowing on my face! Pretty soon the gloves came on as well! I got onto the switch backs and running was a breeze it felt good and I met up with another mate who I’d met at every event I’d done previously Glen Christiansen, from Cromwell. We had a good yarn until we got to the Christmas themed aid station Iris Burn where I fueled up and he went on ahead. He told me to pace myself because now it starts to hurt, with 25kms to go!! He was right, from only eating energy bars, fruit, jet planes, drinking GU and water all day, my body started playing tricks on me and I started feeling sick. I got to Rocky Point had an orange and a rest, and carried on to Moturau Hut, which was 16kms to go. I sat down at one of the tables and had a decent rest, drank some more water and got up again, I was determined to finish this.

It was a good feeling heading into Rainbow Reach, at the 9km to go spectator area. Mum and Dad had come to support me and I told Mum I was exhausted but I plodded on. It was the longest 9km of my life! Every hill big or small was torture! 5km to go there was another aid station, another cup of water and I carried on. By now I could hear the sound of the commentator’s voice travelling down the Waiau River- more torture! I continued on, shattered and exhausted and made it to the finish line in 9hours and 47 Minutes! A finisher’s medal went round my neck and I had my photo taken! Mum and Dad greeted me I was tired but pretty stoked with what I’d just achieved. Kahu hadn’t given up and even though I felt like it, I hadn’t give up either!

Kepler Finish line.

That night after dinner Grant invited me around to where he was staying for some long overdue beers! and a catch up on the day’s events. Among others Malcolm and his wife Sally Law were there, Ruby Muir the first girl home in 5 and a half hours! Matt Bixley and 2nd place getter in the Luxmore Grunt, Kristian Day. There was lots of camaraderie in the room and it was cool to be there and meet those talented people. I was hooked on running and we were already thinking ahead to the New Year and planning our next events! Motatapu, The Routeburn Classic? Who knows! So thanks to everyone who has supported me in my new hobby and my friend Kahu for being such an inspiration. This Quote helped me throughout the year when I felt like quitting “It always seems impossible until it’s done” Nelson Mandela.

I’m going to get this out of the way early in the piece:  The La Sportiva Helios could be the last pair of running shoes you’ll ever need.

My relationship with the Helios began 9 months ago. In my preparation for the Coast to Coast, I searched for every conceivable advantage- I needed a light shoe, with the right grip to tame the slick Granite boulders which the race is famous for. I tried several other shoes, which from the outside looked to have a lot of grip, but discovered they were almost useless when it came to real world conditions, where a runner might encounter any number of surfaces during a run. Over Goat Pass, some “trail running” shoes are almost useless. By my definition, a trail running shoe relies on its aggressive tread pattern to have traction on soft surfaces like grass, mud and trail. However the rubber which makes them great for that purpose makes them almost useless when it comes to traction on slick wet surfaces.  Goat Pass demands a Mountain Running Shoe, and in the Helios you have it.

La Sportiva is an Italian company that was founded in 1928, with its roots in mountain sports. In the mountains, having the right grip can be a matter of life and death and these guys have a reputation for making the stickiest climbing shoes out. Their mastery of rubber has trickled into their running shoes, and when you wear them, you’ll feel like Spiderman.

Sam during the 2015 C2C.

On to why these may be the last pair of running shoes you’ll ever need:  I am a multisporter, which by definition means I take part in a multitude of sports and often under the toughest of conditions. So here is a rundown of what I have put my Helios through:

Several Multisport races, including podium finishes in the New Zealand, European and World Championships. Several Adventure races, ranging from 6 hours to 5 days. Two Ironman triathlons and two 70.3 races,  an ultramarathon, the world’s largest swim-run race, dozens of trail runs, Northern Europe’s largest kayak marathon and hundreds of hours of training in between.

They also combine well with a pair of blue jeans.

As always, there is no “right shoe “ for everyone, but if you’re searching for a great all round shoe that performs  on the road and on the highest peak, then the La Sportiva Helios might be the shoe you’re looking for.

Sam finished 2^nd at the 2015 Coast to Coast Longest Day, using his La Sportiva Helios over the Goat Pass mountain run. To find out more on Sam, check out his athlete page.

Below is, our guesstimate, of the top 15 males and females in the Skyrunning Australia New Zealand Oceania Series after 5 of the 7 races. Hounslow Classic and Sky Rock ‘n’ Run both have 400 points available for the winners. Scores with an * are unlikely to add to their points this year.

Women
Beth Cardelli keeps her spot at the top of the Table but Jo Johansen has moved close enough that she could take the title. Two wins for Whitney Dagg would also see her put pressure on the top of the table and she is likely to start the last two races in the series. With a bit of luck we’ll see Emma Rilen and Hanny Allston having another run somewhere as well.

Series leader Beth Cardelli at last weekends Mt Difficulty Ascent. Photo: Crank Photos.

Men

It’s all on for young and old in this table. John Winsbury is back to some of his best form and has confirmed he’s lining up at the Sky Rock ‘n’ Run in November (and we expect to see him at Hounslow also). Dave Byrnes work commitments saw him miss the Mt Difficulty Ascent in the weekend but again he’s stated an intention to turn up in NZ as well. Add Grant Guise, Andrius Ramonas and Martin Lukes to that list and Scotty Hawker will have his work cut out holding on to #1.

Interestingly, of the 30 names on the 2 lists above, only 15 of those have run in more than 1 race in the series.

Past the halfway way mark in the New Zealand/Australia Skyrunning series I got interested to see how the table was lining up for the last 3 races, who could improve who might win overall. The table hasn’t been updated since Buffalo but with those results easily available I added a few numbers together (hopefully correctly, maybe not) to have a look at the top 10 men and women. A MAXIMUM of 4 races each are to count.

The Women

Ignoring Landie Grayling who won’t be at another race in the series, Beth Cardelli has this sown up. Technically there are enough points at the Sky Rock ‘n’ Run at Mt Oxford and the Houslow Classic for Jo or Justine to sneak the series, but they would have to win both races and for Beth to be a no show. Beth is currently on the start list for Mt Difficulty as is Jo. Expect to see Fiona Hayvice shoot up the table with a few more points next weekend also. Gill and Julie will be involved with the Australasian Rogaine Championship on Hounslow weekend, so don’t expect to see them move up the table. Depending on where Justine Medin shows up again, she could substitute her Buffalo score with something a bit more substantial and seal a podium finish.

Mt Difficulty will be a bit of a lottery for the women with at least 3 lining up who would normally feature in the top 3 wherever than ran. Hopefully Beth is coming, she is currently a class above the rest and will deserve the series win.

The Men

This a bit more wide open, in fact it’s anyone’s guess. Again, Tom Owens is out and I think Blake is heading back overseas, as is the current front runner, Scott Hawker. But I have no doubt Scott will find time to add an extra set of points to his tally. Work as got in the way of Dave Byrne adding to his tally next weekend and I’d have tipped him for the 200 points- I’d go so far as to call him the early favorite for the 400 at Mt Oxford in November though. So he could jump to an 800+ tally. Andrius, Grant and John Winsbury are all lining up at Mt Difficulty. They will all pick up points although how many is open for debate and there are couple of other names on the start list that will disrupt any plans for a points grab.

I’d be confident in saying the mens table won’t be sorted until the 1^st half dozen finishers have crossed the line in the Canterbury Foothills later in the year.

* Dave has an asterix because he scored points twice at Buffalo, but only one is to count.

“The” downhill at Mt Difficulty, freefall straight down between the red tape.

Have I Been Training – No!

Amongst other questions where have is swapped with: what, why or how, the have has been a common theme. The answer is generally the same and I am honest when I say No. I haven’t been doing anything really specific for the Barkley Marathons. The BCR boss sent me a link from another Barkley entrant, http://runsteep.com/2015/03/04/redefining-what-steep-is/ , apparently they have been training. I’ve been in contact with a couple of other entrants as well. They too have been training, if Godzone counts as training that is. To me Godzone makes Barkley look like a 5k fun run. One team took 64 hours for the 24km Albert Burn Trek.

I have known and read about the Barkley for nearly as long as I have been running. Whilst many people have placed it on their bucket lists, I doubt that many of them have actually studied it. Have they gone and searched for the Topomaps, deciphered the race reports, plotted the course, stalked strava, learned to navigate, failed at navigating, got lost, suffered, suffered again and still wondered what is next. Have you got the e-mail address, the e-mail list, the university degree(s), the right degrees and most importantly the right date and time to submit your entry. Do you have that point of difference that will get you selected?

Over a long period of time I collected nearly all the things that would make an entry worthwhile and thanks to the connections with Ultimate Direction I got the final piece of the puzzle confirmed last year at a time when I thought I had one and only one shot at entering. Any older and I think I might be on the downslide or just wanting to put more time into family life. So I had one shot and that was all it took. My luck run out and I was given a high enough weighting that I would need to book Tickets to Wartburg, Tennessee. Since then, I haven’t trained for it.

What I have done is just carry-on doing the things I’d normally do, after all, how do you train for a race that takes 60 hours and has some 20,000 meters of climb? One thing I did know was that turning up injury free was going to be the goal and trust that general condition would be enough.

So nothing specific to training for Barkley, just out and about doing events, having fun and organising my own events. Work gets in the way, there’s fun things to do with the family. I have enough issues with OCD and running so keeping the Barkley under control hasn’t always been easy. I’ve dropped runs, I’ve quit races all with the long term goal of turning up fresh and injury free.

“How many loops are you going to do?” - ALL OF THEM.

Coverage – there is no coverage of the race, there is no website, there may be sporadic and random posts on Facebook or somewhere else. I don’t know, I’m sorry, I don’t even know when it starts.Sometime on Sunday march 29 (NZ Time). Actually I do know, there will be sporadic coverage on twitter which I don’t think you need to be signed up for. #bm100

So one final thought, everything you read about the Barkley is probably a lie, I might write more lies once I’m at the Yellow Gate, but in the meantime enjoy the above long trailer for the Documentary.

All packed and ready togo.

Dennis de Monchy offers his take on the new Ultimate Direction Fastpack 30.

I was recently given the chance to test out the new UD Fastpack 30 when I headed south to run in the hills for a couple of days with Mal Law and his High-50 Challenge of 50 peaks in 50 days.  Unfortunately Mal was injured for our overnight trip, but our merry group of 6 support runners headed up the Matukituki Valley for the overnight trip anyways.  I had sorted my gear for this summer alpine trip, then tried it out in a friends Fastpack 20.  It all fitted in, but there was no space for Mals gear that I was expecting to carry.  Luckily Grant Guise came to the rescue and offered me his Fastpack 30.

First impression was that it was a pack without much structure, and lightweight fabrics, so I was concerned that it would sit uncomfortably with a cooker, pot, whisky and other items on board.  Luckily I was wrong, it has a firm enough back rest/sit mat that I didn’t have any issues with pointy stuff protruding into my back.  With the main compartment loaded with overnight stuff, my waterproofs and microspikes went into the big webbing pocket on the outside, leaving plenty of room for more.  This pouch on the outside is second best feature on the fastpack’s, easy to load, easy to access, and roomy!

Dennis descending the Rees Valley.

But the best feature of the Fastpack 30 is the front pockets on the shoulder straps.  4 pockets to choose from, 2 zip pockets and 2 elasticated ones. The big elasticated pocket is there for your UD bottle, while under this is a small zip pocket that I used for my compass and chapstick.  On the other side is the big zip pocket which I used as my pantry for each day, loading it with Pocket Fuels, muesli bars and a backup gel or 2.  Under this is another elastic pocket that I loaded with my Iphone in a WP case, and map.  All the pockets still had space for other stuff after I’d loaded them.  There are also 2 pockets on the side of the pack that are easily accessed without removing the pack for you hat, gloves, thermal etc.

Fully loaded for the overnight trip and with a 2L bladder on board, it was weighing in at around 7kg so the real test was going to be on the first 9km of flat running.  It has the same 2 chest straps as the UD PB vest that I have and really like so I was interested to see if this would be enough for a decent load.  My PB is a small, and the Fastpack 30 was a M/L so even with all the straps cinched tight there was a bit of slack in the shoulder straps, and a bit of bounce when I was running.  I’m pretty sure that if I had the correct size this would be minimal, as I tried the pack two days later to run over the Routeburn with only my day gear in it and it hardly bounced and was incredibly comfortable.  You can also squeeze it down with the side straps so that it doesn’t need to be fully loaded all the time.

Scott Hindrup, also using a Fastpack30, nearing the summit of Mt Tyndal

We had a bit of cold drizzle while ascending Mt Tyndal, and nothing inside the pack got wet, so the light weight nylon must be fairly water resistant.

I loved this pack, and could easily have taken a few more nights food and a couple of extra bits of clothing without space being an issue.  A great pack if you are doing 1-3 night trips where you want to move fast, or if you need a lot of gear for a day trip in the mountains.  It also has 2 ice axe loops which I didn’t get to try out, but could also be used for trekking poles.

Shop for the FASTPACK 30

Background: Many years ago when I ran my first marathon; Auckland 1994, I chased a time to beat. Post that race there were really two options on endurance running. To go faster or to go longer. There was a 100km race in the South Island at the time that I was interested in doing but never pursued it. But out of this came the bucket list to do a 100km running race. At that point I had never heard the term “Ultra Marathon”. Then I got distracted from running by windsurfing, multisport then triathlon. Along with all the usual life things like job, travel, family. But with time becoming more constrained for training and in reality endurance events really coming down to a race against the clock. The challenge had gone from these events. A marathon or Ironman wasn’t the mental challenge of can I do it; it was a physical challenge of how fast can I do it. So it was time to find a mental & physical challenge that met the criteria of time effective and cost. Hence back to arguably the most time and cost effect sport and the simplicity of running. The aging body actually limits the training hours, cost is shoes and food. Also there was that bucket list item. A 100km ultra had been on the radar for a few years, but I had been mentally unprepared for the challenge and kept putting it off. So after a couple of slack years of racing it was time to step up to the challenge. Additionally I got handed my ego at Auckland marathon; that destroyed any thought that perhaps I could go fast, so now was the time to go long.  I entered and got onto the wait list which was a bit of a reality check that perhaps I needed to be a bit more committed to the event. I had been training through the winter with the intention of doing the ultra, but had not committed. So once my spot was confirmed in early December it was time to focus.

Richard, number 575, starting off on his 100km journey.

Training: I’m a relatively low hour trainer. I run where I am rather than drive to a better location, I train alone a majority of the time. Therefore when I leave the house I’m training. My training largely consisted of road running along the waterfront and few hills of Auckland, a bit of soft surface on the Tamaki Essetry, and hills of Birkenhead. I did a few double run days; which were new to me, by running to and from work. I avoided back to back run days a lot unless there was a key purpose. I had to overriding goals for the start line. To arrive uninjured and mental desire to run. Being self-coached the ability to change things has positive and negative benefits. There were training runs that I didn’t do/changed as life got the way. I stopped part way through runs if it just wasn’t happening on that run, and increased runs if it was. I trained in a fasted state a lot on shorter duration runs. Another key skill to learn in the training was to run slower, I could naturally go and run for a couple of hours at 5min30sec/km pace comfortable and get this down to very low 5’s high 4’s for extended periods. To run an ultra I need the ability to pace myself at 6-7min/km for as long as I ran. This was hard at time especially when you are either time constrained and can only do 8km/hr at this pace rather than the 12km/hr I had been used to, also running on the waterfront everyone passes you. Good training on ego management; which was going to be critical for the first 30km of the ultra. In the last 12 weeks most of my weeks were between 50 and 70km, with some cycling in addition to this. This was made up of 3-4 runs. My longest run was 35-40km, but flat, I did one week that I was determined to do 100km. This was done with 3 double run days and max run length was 16km. After 4 runs in two days I had to have a day off. That was certainly a tough week to survive. There certainly was a gap between my training distances/times and the race. However I achieved my two training goals. I arrived at the start line achieving the two key goals of being uninjured and mentally enthused about the 100km challenge.
The Race: Registration, briefing etc. all was easy and done with. Tanya and the kids came to the start; leaving the hotel before 5am. Race morning was clear and crisp with the promise of getting warmer during the day. I prefer to race in the warmth, so looking at being the perfect weather for racing. So after the established pre-race process of portaloo’s and portaloo queues, Tanya and the kids walked up to be ahead of the start. The start was 6am in the dark for the first 30 min, so headlamp on, 1000 runners up a bush road is quite a spectacle.   I started about mid pack probably, as didn’t want to start fast and get carried away in the event. But was conscious of the fact that fairly quickly it went from road to single track, and uphill single track, which arguably would be my strengths. The start was great, lights, camera’s everywhere, saw Tanya and kids and was on my way. Trying to remember to run slowly, if given the choice of pass or fall back, fall back. Walk the uphills all that good advice that you read about but have no experience in. The first 20km I had done in a training run so knew what to expect.   I fairly quickly got into the race routine of drinking, and running, walking the hills/inclines. While I never looked at the total time on my watch or distance all day, it would give me the 5km split. This I was mentally logging, probably more about ensuring I wasn’t going to fast in the first 30km and then that I was moving forward in the last 70km. The day became very much a routine of thank the volunteers and supporters, drink, drink, look at the scenery, remind yourself why you were there, watch your footing if necessary, then later in the day remind yourself of what you have achieved. My nutrition plan was to use Perpetum (a carb/protein blend from Hammer Nutrition) for the first 60km, then swap to the provided electrolyte after that. This was based on giving the stomach something different more than nutritional value. I stuck to this, with the inclusion of some gels at each aid station. Chocolate gels can actually taste good. I used drop bags for the Perpetum powder and had some gels etc. but didn’t use. The aid stations broke up the routine of running, but I didn’t graze on lolly’s or real food as I knew that I could survive and was better off on my nutrition plan. At Lake Okareka; the first drop bag aid station, I couldn’t get the bladder open and had to get two volunteers to help open it, then dumped the bag of Perpetum all over the bladder, made sure I didn’t tighten it up as much. Felt like I was taking an age in the aid station, but wanted to ensure that I got the nutrition that I needed. Additionally at this point I put on Sunscreen; careful not above the eyes, collected sunglasses and cap from drop bag. Then it was back to the routine of running. The trails were easy running, and from then started the climb to the course highest point. This trail while climbing was well formed and easy running/walking. This was where the strategy really comes into play, is it step enough to walk, should I run this bit, should I pass this person or stay at their pace. As my strength is uphill and in particular I walk faster than most (in MTB racing this is my only strength walking up hill fast). The uphill over this section was not step but long, the down to Okataina Lodge Aid Station was stepper. By now you were getting used to running within a group of passing on the ups, getting passed on the downs, but for the first time you were actually getting some time to yourself. The field was starting to spread, but would bottleneck quickly. This section like the first was in bush, with shade and very pleasant running. Additionally it was within the bounds of what was known. After Okataina Lodge aid station where I again filled up with Perpetum and a gel from my drop bag. The race changed. The time to get here was about 4 ½ hr, but only 37km. The trail then was along the side of the lake, while still in the forest, and was now narrow, lots of tree roots, twisting arross the trail. This was to be the most technical and mentally challenging section of the trail. The fatigue was starting to set in; actually probably already had. I was generally running in a group as there was no easy passing, so it was like running on the streets, crammed in running someone else’s race, but having to concentrate hard on the surface. I remember someone saying that was the first marathon done, and most of us were in new experience territory. This was certainly the case after 45km for me. My 5km splits along this section would be my slowest all race. Somewhere around this point I tripped and fell. It was a relatively heavy fall, lots of others around me stop to see if I was okay; in the way runners look after each other. As I lay there checking out the body to see where the most pain was and that parts still moved. With other runners stepping around me, checking I okay I slowly move to sitting, then standing. My legs are okay, bit sore but nothing that feels like I can’t run it out; and in fact do over the next 5km or so. Certainly nothing that could later be blamed for slowing me down.  What I did however do in the fall was fold my fingers back on my left hand. The pain was immediate, and considerable. It meant that I couldn’t use my left hand to help move myself of the track or stand upright. The hand started to swell, with no movement in my fingers. Normally I race in my wedding ring but wasn’t; which was lucky and the finger & hand swelling was considerable. As I started to move forward again after what seemed an age and the trail was simple to run on, I would try and move my fingers. First by wanting to move them, this didn’t work. Second by moving them with my right hand, this worked and didn’t cause excritating pain. From this I established that nothing was broken, only sprained. The upside of the fail is I got a nice war wound with blood on my leg, I was covered in dirt, and I didn’t feel any pain from the rest of my body for the next 55+ km. From this I kept running through what were hard trails that didn’t flow on what was the longest section between aid stations. This was also mentally hard as it was longer than I had ever run before, it was a long way and the trail just seemed to repeat itself. After the outlet, the mental side became easier as I knew I wasn’t that far from the 60km finish and that the Falls were in here somewhere. The track also became easier to run on. The pain in my hand distracted me from the numbness of running.  As I came to signs that said 1.5km to the Falls carpark and the 60km finish. The mental game started again. I could finish at 60km and it still would be a major achievement; people would still think me crazy. The other side was it was only a marathon to go, that I can comfortably run, even the mind was saying that its only 3 ½ hrs to go. Little did the mind realise it was going to be a 6 hour marathon. Additionally the pain in my had meant that I couldn’t really hold a thought for long, or really focus on the thought. The joys of simpleness. By the time I came into the crowds of the aid station/60km finish I had convinced myself to keep going. Wasn’t really hard in hindsight. At this aid station my drop bag included two extra luxuries; fresh socks and shoes (1/2 size bigger). So I got my drop bag, sat down and proceed to try and change shoes and socks with only one fully functional hand. Not wanting to get sent to medical, I didn’t want to highlight to the helpful volunteer’s the state of my hand. Once shoes and socks were off I had created an additional amateur mistake in that I hadn’t turned my new socks the right way in. New challenge of turning sock the right way, putting on and then shoes and laces without much use of left hand. This was really a painfully task, possibly the most painful part of the race. Eventually done.  Additionally I was going to myself congratulations you have run 60km, further than ever before, really trying to celebrate the milestone. Then it was onto filling up new clean bladder for nutrition change.  My nutritional plan had a change from Perpetum to Heed electrolyte. Still sticking to the key nutritional plan of no food from the beautiful banquet presented to me, especially simple sugars like lollies and coke. As I left the aid station I grabbed ice and then ran/walked with a large piece of ice on my left hand. This numbed the pain down to discomfort, a very welcome relief for 15 minutes. The other key change from the 60km point was now we were running on forest roads and not trails. This certainly made the running smoother. From this point on it really was about trying to keep moving forward as economically and fast as possible. Is this incline to be walked or run? Do I drink again? Should I stop and empty my bladder. Additionally a number of people had pacers; and those with pacers seemed to be passing me. From the 60km aid station the mental game really began. The body was tired, getting brutally tired, I was running in the sun and glare for the first time. I would always prefer to race in the heat than cold, it just meant looking through smearing sun glasses. The roads went up then down then up then down. I walked then ran then walked then ran etc., probably ran some where I could/should have walked.  This was just boring endless forest consuming the km’s. This continued until the 77km aid station where the 85km participants went left, and the 100km went right. My mind set coming into this point was simply. If I do the 100km then I do not NEED to do another to tick of the bucket list, I may want to but will not NEED to. That is what simply made me turn right. From this point I just repeated the last 17 km mindset of just keep moving forward. At the loop of despair, I just didn’t have the energy to put much emotion into the despair. This was a loop where you ran against the others coming out of the loop for a bit before an isolated piece of single track that climbed steeply. This was almost a welcome change. It was certainly a change from the straight graded forest roads. This was single track, steep climbing. Then it was onto the downhill that would go on for the next 20km to the finish. My thighs were to shot to run fast down the hills and I am a crap downhill runner anyway. Because of this I was not making the progress that I should have. Also from the start of the loop of despair I was on my own, no-one near unless they were running past me.   Fisherman’s Bridge Aid station At 90km could be heard from quite a way out, but the trail which had been long and straight since the loop, now leaved out and twisted along the river’s edge. So the coming into the aid station seemed to take forever. This was the first aid station my wife and kids came to; they had been enjoying the day doing their own thing. This certainly provided the lift. The positive that comes from seeing your family in a race shouldn’t be underestimated. There they are enthusiastic about the whole thing, concerned for this broken, dirty, pained looking, middle aged man, who can hardly string a sentence together. And in reality just wants this to end and the only way to end it is keep moving saying goodbye. Abigail ran with me for about 1/2km before she turned back will I continued along the trail, which was quite level but just kept going. Whilst I have a GPS watch the only feedback I had from it was the 5km splits, which couldn’t come quick enough. I also only approximately knew how far was left to go. This and the fact that if I looked and my watch would only give me information that would despair me, I never looked at the watch all day. I was definitely going slowly but still forward. There was no physical exhaustion of having to walk. It was just feeling that you were not going fast. I know what I can run 10km in, telling yourself that there as under an hour to go, but knowing full well that you were not running 10km/hr but probably closer to 5km/hr.  The two feelings of fatigue and frustration were dominant. The pain in my hand meant there was no real leg pain being noticed. Joseph joined me at the aid station with 5km to go as my official pacer, wearing his official pacer number. His enthusiasm buoyed me up as much as I could. My pace probably lifted from slow to not quite so slow. It was great to have some company and I now know how he feels when I run with him and talk and run just in front etc. The final bridge over the Kawerau River need a special mention, stairs up onto the bridge and off again 97km into a race is just torture. But the upside in hindsight was the photo below. Yes that is the sun starting to go down. Once coming into Kawerau the finish line seemed to take a long time to get to. Once the line was in finally in sight it was making sure that I didn’t ruin the finisher’s photo with another competitor in the photo, also getting Joseph to run next to me so the photo worked. Crossing the finish line was relief that I had done it, achieved what I set out to achieved, ticked of something from 25 years ago. The photo sums it up, too drained to really process the reality.     Going into the event you get asked often and how long will it take you? I would say hopefully between 12 & 14 hours. This was based on no knowledge of the course or running that distance. I finished in 13hr 43min.   Post-Race: After finishing and getting some photos. We were weighed again I dropped 4kg from being weighed at registration. This is over the 5% they recommend. I did not feel faint or dehydrated; I had peed 4 times evenly over the race. With the swelling in my left hand it had been hard to fully monitor hydration, but I felt that I had been drinking heaps throughout the day, and if anything too much. I quickly took of my shoes to the relief of my feet, no blister, toe nail trauma, etc. Great plug to Compress Sports socks and Hoka One One shoes. After 10 min or so rest it was time to collect up my drop bags etc. then be bundled into the car for the drive back to Rotorua. While I had been racing my legs were fine, one stopped the real pain, muscle soreness, cramping started. This would be a key learning if doing more events is that you can’t stop for long at aid stations. I was too drained physically and mentally to really process the achievement. I didn’t have the energy to celebrate and share the celebration with the family. No energy to do anything but process bucket list ticked off. They say that crossing the finish line of an event like this can be life changing/defining but I had no energy to do any of that deep thinking, emotional stuff.   The race was really well run by the organisers and as professional as any of the other events; often run by professional organisations, that I have done. It had a real community feel about it, whilst being professional. All the aid stations were well stocked and run. On Sunday I was still and sore, but no the intense muscle soreness that you can experience with shorter races. By Monday afternoon I was walking okay, and climbing stairs okay. The body was tired for about a week which is why this is taking so long to write. The overall experience was the challenge that I wanted. It made training interesting, I had to research new things, learn about race strategies. Then I had to execute this to get to the finish as that was not a foregone conclusion. How to train for the distance. My training was light and would try and do more days and back to back long runs; I was very conscious of increase in load and injury risk. This possibly meant I did less running than planned at times. The double run days worked well and would certainly thing them worthwhile in any endurance run training. Gear selection of good shoes and sock was critical as my feet were never an issue during the day, or in training. The key question of would I do it again? Yes I would, but I think I would rather do other runs of similar nature rather than repeat, as that gets back to chasing an improved time.

Just to add to the interest the organising crew – the Tecofsky family (and friends) started a quickest lap challenge. So come Xmas day Lee the kids and myself paid a visit to the track for a look and a lap or two. Just the day before Chris Thrupp has posted the new fastest time and I was a happy man to knock out a new record of 12:04 – at least you got the record for one day Chris!!!
It was to turn out to be another short lived record as well as on New years day some newbie by the name of Grant Guise arrived and whacked out an 11:42.

These times may have indicated an easy 3km loop for the 8 hour main race on the 17th of January but it is a deceptively tough wee track with around 90 – 100m vertical gain per lap. It starts in the track car park down a short drop into the forest clad track and then there is about 1km of honest climb gaining about 80m before a flat burst across a water race. From there you turn off the water race and through two short down and up’s where you then join the main track you run up for about an 800m decent and return to the start. The whole track based in the Longwoods forest that is the site of historic gold mining that was the biggest Chinese settlement in NZ in it’s day.

Come race day 30 runners toed the line including running legends Jim Kerse and Lesley Stevens, it was amazing to have runners of their accomplishments there with us. The day building up had been a weird one, how does one prepare to stay up all night? When 10pm hits I normally would be looking for bed not my running shoes!. The hours building up were not good with constant heavy rain, things were looking bad but only a couple of hours before the start the clouds went away and things had a chance to dry out
Temperatures were still good for the start and most runners were happy in shorts and tee shirts with maybe an extra top layer, perfect running conditions apart from parts of the track getting just a bit muddy from the rain

From the start a group of 4 of us went to the front, I was in for the whole 8 hours but behind me Grant Guise and Scott Underhay were only in for a training run of 1.5 and 3 hours respectively. The 4th man in the pack was Adam Keen, I hadn’t meet Adam before but a google the day before had him as a man I had to watch, I wish I did less watching and more talking as it wasn’t until two hours later that we introduced ourselves and he let me know he was pulling out at 3 hours as well, dammit I could have slowed a bit earlier

For starters there was a bit of congestion at times but as we went along we all got into the groove and worked out the best ways to pass each other in the dark

As the night wore on more people pulled the pin after many of them having their first ever go at running by headlight and to be honest all can be proud of stepping out of their comfort zones and having a crack

By the 4 hour mark the bbq which was supplying copious amounts of wild venison, whitebait and Southland lamb to all and the huddle of runners started to get bigger and the breaks between laps longer – I personally was focused on my own goals but many times wished I could just stop and have a yarn with the others, the real highlight of the event was the ultra-comradery. This was the first event where I have seen lazy boys at the start/finish line, a great idea and something that is to be encouraged by other race organisers

By this stage I was now running by myself with Glen MacIntosh and Marty Knowler keeping me honest not that far behind
In the womens race it was Miriam Beilski and Nessa Legg leading the way in style, for HOURS I knew I was coming across the pair as they loudly talked the night away, I think they only got a bit tired and quieter at the 6 hour mark

By 7 hours everyone started to shrug off the tiredness and gain a new lease on life as the dawn started to appear on the horizon and our friendly morepork that had been hooting all night decided to go to bed
Personally the tiredness and pain faded and the last hour turned into my most enjoyable, there is something about the buzz you get when you finish a tough ultra marathon, and tough this had proved, the legs had been well and truly drained with the constant climbing and descending, the short flat section a welcome relief when you were on it

The 7 hour mark also bought out the sponsors from the Colac bay tavern who bought out the finish line beer, the poor people had a big night the night before with a shearing competition at the pub but still made the effort to join us, even if they did loudly proclaim we were all nuts, I think they only arrived to laugh at us and have some of the whitebait and venison that was still flying off the bbq

With the 6am finish looming the madness took over and I decided on one more lap – smashing myself out for a 15:38 lap my fastest for the night by far – and also being lap 23 for the night, one short of my minimum goal, but due to some really bad stomach issues in the middle section of the night that cause some unpleasant visits to the long drop I was still happy enough.

Glen MacIntosh finished off lap 19 before cut off time and Marty Knowler also managed to get the 19th in with 3 odd minutes to spare – I think Glenn gained the extra half a lap after I saw him eat a piece of venison that was more salt than meat after he went nuts with the salt shaker

In the womens race Miriam and Nessa had stuck together the whole 8 hours and jointly took the womens title with 14 laps – 8 hours of smiles and talking

The whole night was then set off by a visit to the Colac Bay tavern for prize giving and a feed of bacon and eggs

All in all a great friendly event with a track that is a challenge but not enough to put off the person wanting to just have a go but at the same time tough enough for those that want to race it. The whole event was VERY well run and team Tecofsky and friends are to be congratulated on what they put together. Big thanks also of course has to go to the sponsors including the Southland Te Araroa trail trust who helped put the track together and maintain it.

I highly recommend anyone driving through Colac bay towards Tuatapere looks for the sign on the main road that points to the Long Hilly track and makes the short detour to walk/run a lap, there is a lot of history on the track to view from the old mining days

For those of you who have completed the race, I think you would agree that the course lives up to its prestigious name. 21km of rugged mountain running bliss where the ability to run is the least of your concerns. Scrambling, climbing, sliding, jumping and rock hopping are all skills required to make it to the finish line. After you have traversed the central plateau via rocks, streams, rocks….and even more rocks the last thing you want to see is a full kilometer of uphill paved road….yet this is what you must endure to finally cross the line. Once here you can collapse/hyper ventilate/cramp up and congratulate yourself that you have conquered The Goat….although I think ‘Tame’ might be a more appropriate word….I wonder if even the mountain king Sjors Corporaal feels like he conquers a course like this.

As always this race attracts some of New Zealand’s top mountain runners and this year is no different. Read on for a snippet on those to watch at the pointy end of the field.

Dougan on his way to winning the 2013 NZ Mtn Running Champs. Photo- Matt Cleaver.

Men’s Field

Dougan Butler: A New Zealand Mountain Running Champion and representative at the World Mountain Running Champs. No doubt he will be able to use his leg speed against the competition.  Dougan’s experience on challenging terrain from his mountain running successes should see him adapt to the technical and undulating terrain found at the Goat.

Nick Hirschfield: Coming home in 3^rd position last year, Nick will be hungry to improve on that performance. With previous Goat experience and hopefully some better weather conditions Nick should be in the mix at the top end of the men’s field.

Richard Ussher: With years of experience in all things sporting Richard knows how to race over tough conditions and tough terrain. He should feel close to home amongst the rocky terrain after numerous trips over the Coast to Coast mountain run. Experience alone might be enough to have Richard run home in 1^st spot.

Shay Williamson: This young goat knows the terrain well and as a previous winner of the U23 category, Shay has already nailed the sub 2hr mark at the very youthful age of 17! He is still in the U23 age group but should be right up there with the open men as he storms across the central plateau.

Elina at this years Coast 2 Coast.

Women’s Field

Elina Ussher: Like her husband, Elina has buckets of strength in her legs from her multisport background and will draw on her rock hopping skills from her Coast to Coast runs. Elina dominates most races she competes in, so we should expect no less in the Goat. Will a Multisporter win the female race two years in a row?

Shannon Leigh:  This Ultra endurance runner has many long distance titles to her name including a few recent podium results. If she can turn her long distance running successes into the shorter format of the goat she will be one to watch.

Ali Corporaal: Will the Goat legacy continue with this family name as Sjors daughter steps up to the full goat course in the U23 division. It will be exciting to watch the race unfold with experience V youth. Will there be a repeat of a Young Goat taking out the overall female title? Ali is likely to have the talent to achieve this.

 Big thank you to Fiona Dowling for the above race preview! Much appreciated.

Brit Martin Cox’s revisits his 2013 Himalayan 100 experience-

“My way of joking is to tell the truth. That’s the funniest joke in the world.”

                                                                                                            (Mohammed Ali).

From the moment I first saw India up close I knew I had made a mistake. I’d been training and racing under a curse all season. The training had been murderous, the racing plagued by misfortune. The Himalayan 100 was one last crazed and futile effort to salvage something memorable from the season. One hundred miles over fives days in Darjeeling. Something was positively guaranteed to happen.

And it did, though not what I’d expected. On paper it was a dream vacation. In reality it quickly became a vicious, health-ripping ordeal, a holiday in hell. And now, two months later, as I write the story of the race, I still feel hungover, I’m still reeling on the brink of a nervous breakdown. I’m still waiting for India to clear from my lungs. I’m still waiting for my hollowed-out sense of self to dissipate and my hair to grow back. I’ve lost so much weight I could slice bread with my shoulder-blades. After seven days in India you feel like you’ve been there for seven years.

The deal was that the Government paid my expenses and in return I write something complementary about India. Now, not only am I an unambitious writer, I’m not really a writer at all. Hemingway was a writer. So was Mark Twain. I just have a vivid imagination and can type 90 words per minute in an order that somehow makes sense. But being paid to cover a race seemed like a perfectly justifiable reason to go run some exciting, steep, and exotic trails.

I decided right away that I wasn’t going to India as a quote tourist unquote. No way was I carting around 25kg of luggage, plus a heap of photography paraphernalia and a full suitcase of bottled water. Nor was I going to pack the colossal amount of kit and medical supplies that the race organisation suggested. I was travelling light, the bare minimum I’d need to survive. A pair of running shoes, a sleeping bag, a change of clothes, and toilet roll. I also figured that people had seen enough shots of sunsets over temples, of smoking ghats, tea plantations and snow-capped mountains to wall-paper the Taj Mahal. I needed another angle. I had to get right to the nitty gritty of the race, expose it’s soft, sweaty underbelly. The lives of those involved. Who they are, what they eat for breakfast, where they shit and how they shave. To do this I’d need to keep a clear head and a keen eye and at the same time try to focus on winning the race. I intended to keep a notebook handy at all times, to write everything down down as it happened. Inspiration could strike at any moment, even while I was running. Later I convinced myself not to bother with this. Partly to save time, and I also realised that my subconscious would remember everything interesting that happened, while my inbuilt crap-detector would filter out the dregs. And anything I left out would only strengthen the story.

So a brief word on the fifty competitors before I have to rely too much on my imagination. Their backgrounds were overwhelmingly ordinary. As runners, they were like millions of other runners. Fanatics about diet and body hair, experts on all the latest jogging fashions and gizmos, subscribers to Runners World, hooked on Strava. But in their collective identity as participants in the Himalayan 100 Mile Stage Race they had a strange and unusual fascination. They had all paid an unnaturally large amount of money to be in Darjeeling and I came to view them with something very close to awe. Most had never done anything remotely like this race before. They were living proof that the tyranny of the rat-race need not be final. They were acting out the wet dreams of tens of thousands of other runners who were afraid to leave the cities and the roads, get the shits, lose weight, lose themselves, reinvent themselves.

Jethro was a head taller than everyone else and had just quit smoking. He had all the gear and no idea or, as he observed on one occasion, Sticking feathers up your arse does not make you a chicken. Jackie’s old man had run the event the previous year and the twisted bastard had insisted she experience the full horror of it all first-hand this time around. Hers was one of those fine little love stories that makes you smile at night in your sleep. Vaya con dios, Jose told us each morning before the start, En la cima de la montaña todos somos leopardos de nieve. Captain John, a pot-bellied fisherman, worked on trawlers and had somehow been conned into to riding the whole hundred fucking miles on a mountain bike. Jesus, a gloomy, polo-shirted Mexican, suffered from shin splints and won a special medal for picking up the most litter during the race. And Jim, a wild-looking banker, was twitchy and nervy the whole time, like he knew it could all get much worse at any moment. He spent the whole week churning around in a sea of horrors and came to despise The Mahatma almost as much as I did.

PHOTO: A FEW OF THE COMPETITORS.

Thursday 24th to Friday 25th October 2013.

Delhi is by common consent the world’s most polluted city. The air hangs thick, yellow and heavy with diesel, industrial sewage, charcoal smoke, and humidity. The sun resembles a pale white ghost. Delhi’s sprawling, snarling wastes are a foolish and unhealthy place for an English mountain runner. What was I thinking? What kind of sick and twisted impulse, what rancid karma, had caused me to come here? The swirling winds of my instincts had always told me, Avoid the place like the plague! Queen Victoria had never bothered to visit India, so why should I? The poverty, the sweat, the grime, the frustration, the religion, the corruption, the toilets. But it was also a place I didn’t want to end up regretting I’d never seen.

As soon as I arrived at The Grand Hotel Ashok I should have stocked up on cakes from the small patisserie in the lobby. I should have called room-service and had my fridge filled with champagne and beer, located the movie channel, and retired directly to my two-hundred-dollar-a-night bed. And I should have stayed there until it was time to leave for the mountains. Instead, I downed a couple of instant coffees, changed into my vest and shorts, and went outside in search of suitable training grounds.

Spying some greenery amidst a confusion of corrugated iron and blue tarpaulin shacks, I darted across a gridlocked dual-carriageway, swerving on the other side to avoid a tribe of stray goats. Exhaust fumes formed a thick and glossy horizontal fog at knee height. Gaudy posters of smiling, besuited candidates in the upcoming elections covered every tree, wall and telegraph pole in sight. There was a man lying dead by the side of the road. Someone had carefully covered his face with a newspaper. I hopped across an open sewer, a small stream of water the colour of chai flowed past sluggishly, bubbles sparkling in it. Two children were splashing about in the brown water.

I had been in prime condition when I arrived, healthy and eager to discover India, but after a few steady warm-up laps of Nehru Park I was reduced to a spluttering, wheezing, weak-kneed wreck. How could anyone ever live in this place?”I wondered. The only way to live in India is to be from somewhere else. Probably the best way is to be from Mars. I slunk back to the hotel and completed the run on a treadmill in an air-conditioned underground gym.

I awoke the next morning unable to breathe and with a rattly, chesty cough and resembling in all it’s main features the portrait of Dorian Grey. Usually I’d take a few days off running until whatever was making its home in my lungs went away. However, circumstances were far from normal and from this point onward there was no turning back. I was fucked, but I’d have to ride it out.  I ate a large breakfast of oranges and grapefruit, figuring I’d be needing all the vitamin C I could get my hands on in the days to come, and returned to the gym for a session of hill repeats on the treadmill.

PHOTO: ENJOY THE BEAUTY OF HILLS

Sunday 27th October 2013.

Ground zero. The squalid village of Maney Bhanjyang (2150m). We arrived sometime around seven in the morning after a seemingly endless spine-cracking, stomach-churning bus ride. There was no frenzied pre-race press conference, but a madness of another kind. The place was a scene of theatrical chaos. Car and bus horns bellowed and wailed like lost cattle. A local band played a random collection of tuneless instruments including bagpipes, bongos, trumpets, accordions, spoons and sitars. The melancholy notes from a pair of snake-charmers flutes competed for attention. Tibetan dancers in spectacularly hideous devil masks jumped around to the ‘music’ looking fearsome. A long line of grubby, excited children in black and white school-uniforms waved a mystifying array of Indian, Nepali and British flags. Bemused villagers were held back by bored-looking soldiers wearing helmets and carrying long white riot sticks.

It was not a good scene to confront feeling as feverish and weak as I did. The previous two days of travel had been a fiendish ordeal as my condition slowly deteriorated. This awful spate of sickness was enough to put the fear of God in a man. And, I noted, this cheerless place wasn’t in anything like close proximity to the Himalayas. It wasn’t even in the foothills. It was more like the foothills of the foothills, the first step up from the swampy wastelands of West Bengal. I was essentially in a jungle. The air was fetid and damp. The sky was a gray, wrinkled blanket. It was a chilly ten degrees centigrade and humidity was 100%.

I was queuing for the ‘bathroom’ when a sad and hopeless beggar limped up to me and held up strange gimcracks for sale, pleading for money. Then a little girl pounced on me and wrapped a white prayer scarf around my neck. Then somewhere in the midst of this zoo of human weirdness a fat man in a tracksuit waved a green flag and off ran fifty runners on stage one, up and up through the trees into an impalpable, fog-soaked sky and a shadowy world that was cold and brown and wasted. Visibility would be something like 50 feet for the next 48 hours.

Twenty one miles and four hours later I completed the stage. The going had been tough and attention-sapping thanks to the miserable disgrace of a cobbled highway upon which I had to run. The ‘road’ had ‘built’ by the third Aga Khan in 1948 to give him access to his Himalayan hunting lodges – he had simply dumped a bunch of rocks out of a helicopter and then neglected the road for 65 years and it was a curse to all who attempted to traverse it’s crumbling, degraded surface. It would have been cruel to have forced a mountain goat to meander it. I outpaced all other road traffic to a staggering degree and was regularly brought to a stuttering halt by the jeeps and trucks that crawled up and down the narrow, boulder-strewn track. Above 3000m my lack of acclimatisation made things even trickier. The air was sticky and heavy and thin and breathing was like trying to suck air through a bent straw. I resorted to the wizard sticks on the steepest pitches  in a desperate attempt to maintain some kind of headway and conserve energy for the days to come.

The ramshackle hill station of Sandakphu (3600m) was our home for the next two nights. Even now, the sight of these words on paper sends a shudder up my spine, long after I have escaped and moved on to other ordeals. I finished stage one just as it started to rain. It came in heavy and cold and reduced the slower runners to various states of misery, hypothermia and despair. More dead than alive, many of them went straight to bed without eating or even changing out of their soaked clothing.

Our race director, The Mahatma, had secured the only decent accommodation in town – a fine Sherpa inn with a well-stocked bar and swanky, ethnic restaurant. The runners, on the other hand, were treated like lepers and forced to squeeze into a tiny, dirty concrete kitchen and eat their meagre rations standing up. Sleeping arrangements were equally cramped and sparse. That night I braved the thick fog and lashing rain and made my way up the hill to The Mahatma’s lodge in search of warmth, alcoholic spirits, and something good to eat.

West Bengalis are probably the most violent people on the continent. The Mahatma’s people were far from happy to see me enter their inner sanctum. There were five of them and the muscles in the backs of their necks instantly bunched up as I entered. The air was flinty with tension. I gave them my best thinking-of-kitties smile and explained that I was thirsty and on the verge of starvation, that I’d be happy to pay for a booze and a meal, but their mood was ugly. By intruding on their turf I’d somehow filled their hearts with hate. Sir, you are in the wrong place, said one. Show me your passport, another demanded. Get out of here you freak, a third chimed in.

And with that I was pushed out of the door by Monkey Man, a huge rat-bastard psychotic with a beer belly, weasel teeth, and a Himalayan 100 baseball cap. I’d liked Monkey Man at first, he’d told a string of increasingly hilarious dirty jokes on one of the death-trap bus rides that had transported us to the start. But now I wanted to kick him the balls like a mule and gouge out his yellow teeth with a chisel. My temper was hovering dangerously on the far edge of control. This barren mountain-top was suddenly like a prison I felt compelled to escape, run like hell and never look back. Fuck these people, I was losing my sense of humour. Had The Mahatma not confiscated my passport before the race and locked it up in his safe back at Race HQ, it was at this point that I would have fled back to Maney Bhanjyang, hired a taxi to Delhi, and put some serious air-miles between myself and this doomed continent.

The combination of a bad chest and the passage from sea-level to 3600m in two days had left me feeling completely out of kilter. My head was pulsating violently and I ached all over. My fingers and toes were numb, my eyes red and sticky, my hair falling out in clumps. My whole body was vegetating, like a fetus in a jar. I doubted my ability to survive the next day’s stage. I was almost out of options, and those that remained were ugly and hopeless. I had to keep ahead of the game and at any cost. I tracked down the official race doctor.

The Doc sported a bushy moustache, had a dull, fixed stare in his eyes, and went very quiet whenever you questioned him about anything relating to the field of medicine. Since day one he’d been dishing out Diamox like candy without any allusion to the side-effects, so I hoped he’d have something potent to combat my chest infection. Steroids perhaps. Or brandy, antibiotics and ketamine. The Doc gave me some valerian root to chew on, a foot massage, and a lesson in deep-breathing to eliminate toxins and help restore balance to my brain, body and spirit. As a treatment for my chest it fell woefully short, but it made me sleepy. I don’t recall going to bed that night, but in the morning, there I was, still in my gloomy, inhospitable cell in Sandakphu, still feeling like shit.

PHOTO: RESORTING TO THE WIZARD STICKS.

Monday 28th October 2013.

A thick swirling fog covered everything. It was cold and windy and the wind picked up a fine grit that would turn my face pink and swollen as if with sunburn. I fuelled up on thick, sweet black coffee, it was all I could keep down. I was in unholy shape, my stomach felt like a tree was growing inside it. I felt a tremendous distance between myself and everything real. It was a feeling of inexplicable despair. As I stood shivering on the start line I heard an airplane passing overhead and wished I was on it. Stage one hadn’t been great, I’d walked way too much for my liking. But this was the day my race went to hell in a handbasket, the day my hopes for a respectable time for the hundred – something in the region of twelve hours – were well and truly crushed.

My mood was mean and jangled and I came out of the blocks like a hyena on speed. I instantly regretted it. Attempting to run up the first hill of the day resulted in delirium and flashing white lights. My heart felt like it had flatlined. The cloud-veiled hills clubbed me into dank, clumping submission in the first few miles. Yet my brain was apparently still functioning on some basic motor survival level and I had enough animal strength and detached intelligence to get away with it. In a fit of despair I came up with a foolproof plan: carefully walk the hills in the manner of a turtle, then run like a doomed rat down the other side and pray that by some miracle my body didn’t register the temporary change in pace. And repeat for twenty miles.

The stage was a miserly ten miles out and ten miles back along the Nepalese border – we would run the same route again to begin stage three. The border was marked by a rusty barbed wire fence and pairs of unamused soldiers. They appeared from behind rocks when least expected, damp cigarettes clenched tightly between blue lips, ill fed, underclothed, holes in their boots, and armed to the teeth with a  variety of weapons. The 1947 Kalashnikov was a popular choice. Some carried ancient looking bolt-action carbines. There were shotguns, M16 rifles, submachine guns, and all sorts of side-arms. One fellow carried a sword with a very long, curved blade.

On the whole, stage two was an out-of-body experience and only sporadic memory flashes of it remain. At one point the sun poked it’s head through the cloud. My eyes were swollen almost shut and the sudden appearance of the sun left me stunned and helpless and writhing on the ground in agony like a sick mole. I also remember an army captain riding up to me on horseback on that misty battlefield to ask if I didn’t want to take his ride for a spin. I have never been on a horses back and I declined his offer and he galloped off waving his pistol in the air, letting off a couple of rounds. After three hours of torment I staggered across the line like a stroke victim and went straight to bed and chewed on some valerian root.

PHOTO: 10 MILES OUT & 10 MILES BACK.

Tuesday 29th October 2013.

The day dawned fresh and crisp for stage three (28 miles). There were big white clouds in the sky. Everyone appeared to be in a good mood, ready to soak up the Himalaya’s special vibrations. Not long after the start Kangchenjunga appeared from behind the clouds like a vision, leaving me momentarily aghast. I stopped running and fumbled in my backpack for the camera, then remembered that I’d had the thing stolen four days earlier at the airport. The first 20 miles or so – contouring around and traversing the crest of the Nepalese border – were perhaps the only miles of the race that I enjoyed the running and appreciated the scenery. There was very little to obscure the view as most of the trees were dead, their branches bare against the wind and the cold.

My spirits rose a notch. The sunshine was brilliant and with the sun on my back I felt strangely normal and fully cranked, like a recharged battery. I managed to run the first ten miles 30 minutes quicker than I had the day before. The role of a dozen double-caffeine Espresso-flavoured gels may also have played a part in my renewed morale and resurgence in fitness. I had to stop only once, and that was to tip-toe very carefully around a herd of yak. The yak is the meanest son of a bitch in the Himalayas. It owns the trail and is not to be crossed. If spooked it’s likely to take off like something shot out of a missile-launcher and crush anything and anyone in it’s path. It’ll snap your bones like toothpicks. If the yak ever develops a taste for human flesh we will all be in trouble. Probably the only thing more dangerous than a stampeding yak is a pissed-off yak-herder.

After a couple of hours on the ridge, the race route plummeted a vertical mile into thick, steamy jungle. The descent was steep and treacherous, a one-foot wide muddy trench for much of it’s length, with many big steps and small bluffs. It was the sort of track where you’d expect to come across more skeletons by the side of it than people actually on it. I leaped over levelled tree trunks like a big kangaroo. Every so often the drop was so steep and so fast that I got an eerie sense of free-fall. The difference between surviving and wiping-out on a downhill like this is simply a matter of conditioned reflexes. The trick is to go faster and faster until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of falling. All the outside noise fades away and your eyes feel big in your head and your focus gets very, very sharp.

There were several small villages towards the bottom, the track ran right through people’s front yards, but I hardly noticed them. I was feeling very much in tune with the thing at this point, my brain was humming. And then it all evaporated and fell apart. The finish line had been rumoured to be at the bottom of the descent, on the far side of a long bridge over a gorge. The rumours were wrong. There were another six mountainous miles of pot-holed tarmac left to cover. You lied to me you bastards, I screamed at no one in particular as I started to go completely to pieces.

I’m going to digress for a moment. The Mahatma was an untiring, untreatable snob. His mouth ran like jelly and he embroidered everything he said with special emphasis. His race briefings were some of the lamest and silliest swill ever uttered by man or beast – tortuously long lectures regarding his awesome array of virtues and his vast wisdom of the known and unknown universe. Crucial information about the race – such as the start time, route profile, arrangements for drop-bags, a description of the terrain, any potential hazards – became lost in a confused tirade of frenzied gibberish and smug self-congratulation. Safety briefings were unnervingly sketchy, and they mostly boiled down to the following:

To sum up, he couldn’t lead a monkey to a banana raffle and it was possibly for this reason that I was in the totally dark as to where stage three finished. Those final miles were the toughest of the whole race for me. I was all out of gels, ragged from the descent, and cramping badly. The road was busy with jeeps ferrying people around and mules carrying heavy loads. A group of giggling school children walked past me on a hill. I felt very foolish. I felt like punching someone. I felt like crying but nothing would come out. Had there been a stand at the side of the road selling coffee and doughnuts, I’d have abandoned there and then. But there wasn’t, so I got my shit together as best I could and closed the thing out. Those final miles had brought me to the brink of hysteria. Yet by the time the next exhausted runner came in I had binged on several packets of chips and bunches of miniature bananas, paid a boy a small fortune to bring me a pineapple daiquiri (he could only find beer, but that was okay), and was over the worst of it.

PHOTO: EARLY ON STAGE THREE.

Wednesday 30th October 2013.

The final two stages were a disappointment. 13 miles and 17 miles and tarmac every step of the way.  A quick glance at any trekking map of the region would reveal a vast network of cool-looking, interlinked single-track. So why on earth was I running a half-marathon through a dark jungle on the road to a random point halfway up an anonymous hillside and then getting the bus back to where I started?

The Mahatma refused to answer, he didn’t do small talk, he didn’t do banter, he was a surly bastard. All I wanted to do was speak to the man in a decent human manner and find out what he thought about things, but despite repeated requests, he refused to answer my questions, and I had many questions to lay on him, about any problem or any random idea that happened into my mind. What’s your real name? Is The Doc a doctor of medicine or an animal doctor? Where do I go to drink snake venom shots? Is it possible to hunt wild game? Where can I hire an elephant? Where do I go to play poker with a gorilla? Why have I been in Darjeeling for eight days without anybody offering me a cup of tea? Have you fathered any children? Have you ever climbed a mountain? How much do you pay your helpers? What happened to the t-shirts I gave you for the marshals and the $3000 we donated to the helpers?

So to stage four and another fractured day. It was warm and hazy and there was a lot of fast running. I was red-eyed and feverish still, but anybody could be a runner on a day like this. I cruised the stage in 80 minutes with the what-the-hell kind of indifference of a man moving in a hard straight line towards a known horizon. I’d had enough. I wanted out. While waiting for the others to come in I dozed on a deck-chair by the side of the road, fending off the flies and waves of strange memories. The Mahatma eyed me from a safe distance, with an expression like a granite wall.

The good news was we were no longer in Sandakphu. We were now residents of another grimy, backwards little village, Rimbik (2000m), and there was no prohibition in Rimbik. For those last two days I was as contented as a snail. I could go out for a shave and relax and get drunk. The barber’s shop was open and I went in and it smelled of swept dust, shaving cream, pomade, and the wet circles left by beer bottles. I had my beard removed, my nose hairs plucked, and my head expertly massaged while downing a cold one. At the guest house where we were billeted there were two brands of ale available – 4% and 8%. I sat on the balcony of my room overlooking the town and drank and rested and waited for something to happen. Nothing did. What a blessed relief.

PHOTO: ON THE ROAD.

Thursday 31st October 2013.

Despite rumours and a dubious history of sightings, Darjeeling’s unique wildlife had so far failed to make an appearance. The Mahatma had been very specific on the danger of tigers in the region. Forget about seeing a tiger, he reassured us all during one of his interminable speeches. You will never see the tiger that kills you. By day five I had seen nothing apart from the ubiquitous crows and dogs, but on the final stage I heard animals of all shapes and sizes whisper to me from unseen places in the impenetrable riot of vegetation that bordered each side of the road. Just another feature of the mad black hole into which I had descended and feared I would never climb back out of.

My central memory of the last day of the race seems to hang on one stark and menacing moment. It was early on in stage five and I was tapping out six minute kilometres on a smooth uphill stretch of tarmac. Because of the drop in altitude I didn’t really notice the grade of the hills any more except with pleasure. A Land Rover slowed to a crawl right alongside me. The window wound down and The Mahatma’s beady yellow eyes peered out at me, glassy with fear and batshit crazy. He said nothing and let his gaze bore into me for several minutes, like an animal peering out of a forest on fire, or like he was looking upon a demon escaped from hell. Or perhaps like he were the demon, trying to think up something that would bring me to my knees. I couldn’t decide which. Then he grunted something at his driver and sped off up the road in a cloud of diesel fumes.

I still don’t know what to make of that, I surely don’t. And I’ve thought about that moment a lot. I was doing a dull thing with style, making an art of the thing, it wasn’t something that could be faked, and he loathed me for it, because he knew in some nervous corner of his heart that to do such a thing took a strength and a discipline he would never possess or even understand. Maybe that was it. From the very beginning The Mahatma had gone to great lengths to point out that this wasn’t a race and that running up the hills really wasn’t appropriate. His constant mantra was Slow Is Good. I had come to think that my only reason for being there at all was to show him that Fast Is Better.

The maddening image of The Mahatma staring me out stayed with me for the rest of the day. The only way to whip it was to hang on until evening and banish the ghosts with beer, let the alcohol seep through my system and turn the bad thoughts into good ones.

PHOTO: SOULJA BOY.

Sunday 3rd November 2013.

Or was I missing something crucial? It had been 73-year-old Jed’s seventh Himalayan 100 mile stage race. Everything about Jed was old apart from his eyes and they were the same colour as the sky and animated and undefeated. If it gets your blood racing then it’s probably worth doing, he explained to me. And bearing this in mind, I tried to compose a fitting epitaph for the race on the long flight home. Yet there was no escaping the dread that still rattled within my chest; and no escaping the echo of Mr. Kurtz’ final words from The Heart Of Darkness – The Horror! The Horror!