Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon- an unlikely candidates experience by Rebecca Cullinane

Rebecca Cullinane writes:

Prologue "You're mad" my sister said, "you know there are no loo's? They dig trenches in the ground and you have to squat, right there, in front of everyone" She continued. "no, no" I replied defiantly "Chris says they are having portaloo's this year" "But its so hard Bec" She continued, "They are big mountains that you have to climb" "No, no" I repeated "Chris says in the novice course you just skirt around the bottom of them". …….If doing the Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon has taught me anything, it is not to believe a word my husband says.Pre Race

MORE...

We set off to Scotland, via Starbucks, and, armed with a pannini and a cappuccino I felt quietly confident that my hectic lifestyle of extreme house work and child care would stand me in good stead for the long weekend ahead. My training had not gone well in the month or so running up to the event, mostly due to feeling totally wiped out by the flu. But I reassured myself that anyone who spends the day cleaning a large house, running up and down the stairs of our three story home, walking to school with a small, but solid child on my back must surely be able to handle a couple of days strolling around the hills in Scotland.
"So tell me more about the weekend" I said enthusiastically to Chris as we whizzed up the A1 in our Freelander, which I felt looked very much the part for our trip up north, perhaps we would even get to drive through a field in it rather than just Sainsbury's car park.

Chris's brief gave me a picture of a two day orienteering event during which we would cover 30Km. The first day would usually be the longest, and the hardest, but our course would be relatively easy without much climbing. We would be carrying with us a relatively large, and frankly entirely more suitable to Glastonbury than a Mountain Marathon, tent but he would be carrying all the heavy things and I would have very little in my pack and it would be all light things. You can choose from six courses ranging from Elite to Novice depending on your ability and fitness. The aim is to visit each of the checkpoints on your course and the times for both days are aggregated to find a winner. What with me being firmly entrenched in the 'Novice' camp we'd opted to do the 'Novice' course.

Browsing through the limited information that Chris had printed off the internet I noticed some details of hotel accommodation available for the night before the race began. Outraged that he had with held such an attractive option from me, I managed to persuade him to phone the number for the Dalmunzie house hotel, which was apparently rather luxurious. He booked a room, and I began to look forward to an evening of luxury. I only wished I had known before we left home and I would have brought my shampoo, makeup and hair straighteners with me.

The moment I stepped out of the car at Spittal of Glenshee I knew I was in trouble. I felt rather like a Yorkshire terrier would feel where it to find itself in a starting box amid a pack of eager whippets. The difference was that the owner of a Yorkshire terrier would never be so beastly at to put their little rat through such a humiliating and frightening ordeal - I turned to look at Chris - would he enter me for something that was harder then he had implied? Probably, I decided as I watched him load my rucksack full of all sorts of small but heavy looking bits of kit, along with a lot of worryingly un-designer-esque items made of hardy, waterproof fabrics.

We made our way to the 'event centre' to register for the race. All the time I was acutely aware of the predominance of men, the small, wiry variety. To make things worse many of the women who were there looked like they had been raised from infancy by a herd of mountain goats. They were the type of women who looked like they ran a small holding, and hard physical labour was part of their every day lives. Their strong legs were indistinguishable from those of the men - all muscle and sinew. I had thought my legs looked toned from my regular body conditioning classes, but now as I looked down at them critically, they looked like they should have a pair of sling backs on the end of them, rather then my very new, very clean Salomon walking shoes. As we strode towards the large white marquee, my Laura Ashley sunglasses slid, repeatedly down my nose. I wondered if perhaps they were more suited to reclining on a sun lounger than striding around the country side. They also did little for my 'off-street' cred, I removed them.

We registered without a hitch and I had a little band attached to my wrist which I would need to scan at each check point to prove that we had covered the whole course. Checking my watch I was pleased to see that we had time to check in to the hotel before the last episode of 'Friends' began. As we scuttled off, with an 'Ideal Home' magazine tucked under one arm like a comfort blanket, I felt like a bigger fraud then ever, leaving the real racers to spend a night under canvas.

Day one
We enjoyed our hotel, had a bath and shower in the short time we were there, and the Scottish breakfast gave us some enthusiasm for the day ahead. I was instantly bursting for the loo the minute we arrived at the event centre, and was forced to head for the portaloos. It was not a pleasant experience and I felt very anxious about how I was going to cope with having to use them again that night at the midpoint campsite. We had our first little fight of the day over whether or not I should bother taking the trekking poles. Chris insisted that I would find them invaluable and that if I wasn't going to take them then he'd have them, I was aware that no one else seemed to be using them, and worried that it would feel like carrying an umbrella on a sunny day, "after all, you said that we wouldn't have to do much of the hilly stuff!".

The Start
It was a 30 minute walk just to get to the starting point, which seemed rather mean of the race organisers, and it actually took us (and everyone else for that matter) 45 minutes. So we began day one at 10am. I sprinted off enthusiastically feeling quite buoyant, Chris chuckling at this little display of competitiveness. I read out the map reference points while Chris plotted them out on the map, and I felt like we were a real team. I had got an E in my Geography G.C.S.E, so the contours on the map didn't mean anything to me at that point.

In spite of the initial ascent and feeling quite breathless quite quickly, I felt confident and happy, it was only when we reached what I thought was the summit for the third time, and discovered, for the third time that we had further to go, that my enthusiasm began to wane. I was very relieved that I had swallowed my pride over the trekking poles and found the generosity inside me to thank Chris for making me take them, they were hugely helpful.

Several hundred meters of climbing later we reached the summit of what felt like Ben Nevis, rather then some little mountain (1051 meters!) which probably didn't even warrant a name. Now we had the descent to tackle - easy I thought. Actually this was harder then the climb. The ground was made up of thousands of tussocks, each time I put a foot forward, and just as it was bearing all my weight (which was quite considerable given the pack I was carrying) I would twist my ankle over. I felt like rolling down the hill, and even at times just sitting down and refusing to move. As well as my first encounter with tussocks, this was also my first experience of walking through the thick heather that was to become so familiar over the two days. Had it not been for the fact that they made my legs looks so squat and stocky, the gaiters I was wearing would have given me a sort of 'kids from fame' look, but I was glad of them and the protection they offered, both from scratches and possible snake bites! My imagination was beginning to get the better of me.

For the next few hours we undulated up and down smaller hills and followed mountain paths, the climbs were bigger then I had expected, but, I knew that the worst one was over and coped well with the challenges of the day. I drank plenty of water, we had two large water bottles each and had filled them with lovely Evian before we left the car that morning. We had taken some oat cakes and a banana from the hotel, and at about 2pm we sat down and enjoyed them. The afternoon required us to descend an almost vertical ravine which was very muddy, and had we slipped I felt sure the outcome would have resembled something from an Indiana Jones movie, probably only being saved by sensitive parts of our anatomies crashing into a tree trunk. Climbing back up the other side of the ravine would have been like rock climbing, but instead of rocks there was mud and bits of grass and spindly trees, and worst of all, a lot of big black slugs!

Another larger hill than I had anticipated, and this time no path at all to follow, just lots of heather, and the last hour of the day was a nice down hill trot on a rough track. I took the opportunity to empty my bladder just before we arrived at the camp, while Chris kept watch for other walkers, and we swiped the finish check point at 6pm. What I understood to be the harder day of the 2 day course, had taken us exactly 8 hours. I felt reasonably good, and was confident that I had survived the worst. We had walked just over 17km as the crow flies.

Camping.
The first thing I noticed as we picked our way through the already busy camping area was that it was deep in a valley, and idly I wondered how we were going to get out of it. My thoughts of the route for day two were cut short by the second thing I noticed about he campsite - the suspicious looking wind breakers pitched to form two squares, side by side, one with MEN and the other with WOMEN pinned on the side. "You said there would be portaloos" I said accusingly, "Oh, yes, I thought there would be" Chris replied, avoiding eye contact and raising his eye brows in a non committed manner. I sat down heavily on the grass next to the pitch we had chosen for our tent. Chris busied himself and I watched him, with a vacant glazed look on my face, trying to work out how I was going to go to the loo, because one thing was for sure, there was no way in hell I was going anywhere near those trenches. Once our tent was erected I climbed inside. I was instantly aware of how much I loathed camping, the smell of tents, the horrid orange glow of the light inside them, and worst of all the damp sticky, clamminess of it all. I was gradually feeling more and more gloomy.

Slowly and nervously I peeled off my socks. I knew I would have some blisters, because I had felt my shoes rubbing, my big toes felt sore. I was unprepared however for the sight of the two blisters on my big toes that looked like they should be on a sheet of bubble wrap. They looked worse then they felt, but I stopped off at the medical van on the way to fill our bottles with water from a stream near the camp site. The kind Scottish first aider used a finger tubi grip thing on my big toe, and it felt nice and protected, and another man, for reasons he didn't divulge took a photo of my foot as it was being treated. For all I know they now have pride of place on some fetish web site. The midges came out just as I was putting my sock back on, and we hobbled back to our tent, zipped up the door and decided to stay inside for the rest of the evening. My right knee was hurting and had begun to seize up and I wondered how I would feel tomorrow morning.

After a long, hard day, I was looking forward to dinner, and a cup of tea. Chris busied himself with his camping stove, but the little cartoons of milk he has pinched from Marks and Spencers cafй contained fresh milk rather then UHT and it has gone off - he was happy with black coffee, but I only like tea with milk in it, I sat and sulked while he sipped his coffee and began to boil water for our dried dinner. At least I had some nice vegetarian pasta to look forward to.

My pasta was ready and smelled yummy, about 10 seconds after I had my first spoonful my mouth felt like it was on fire! I scanned the ingredients and saw that 'tiger sauce' was high on the list. "What the hell is tiger sauce?" I said accusingly, as if he had put it in there himself "and why didn't they call this 'spicey vegetarian pasta'". I felt tired, sore and hungry for some savoury food. I managed to eat my pasta, but it was not the yummy reward I needed to raise my spirits. Chris ate both our desserts because they were horrid too, and I had to been contented with a very water hot chocolate. The water from the stream with puritabs in had a brown colour and a really awful taste, I drank very little, partly because it was so unsavoury and partly because I didn't want to go to the trench.

Day two.
After a bad nights sleep (we'd had to pitch our tent on a slope so Chris was sliding into me all night and not in a sexual way I might add- no chance Mister), and feeling like my feet were higher then my head we began to get ready for the final day of the event. I still didn't need the loo, it had by this time been 13 hours since I last went. We had musueli for breakfast, with only hot water to moisten it as Chris had hadn’t bothered with any milk powder, he had added sugar to it, but it was too sweet. I sat in the tent feeling sore and grouchy, drinking the second half of the hot chocolate sachet, and feeling irritated with Chris's lack of preparation in terms of food.

Before we packed up the tent I decided that, even though I didn't need the loo, I should have a wee before we set off, I still hadn't had any water because I couldn't bear the taste of it. I told Chris I was going to use a disposable container. Chris left me in the tent and I felt like some kind of cave woman! My urine was a very odd, dark colour and I wondered if I was a little dehydrated, but foolishly, I didn't drink any water before we left the camp.

As we headed off to the starting point for day two, I watched people starting before us climbing up the side of one of the very steep mountains which seemed to be the only way out of the valley, they looked like little ants climbing up a large rock. I tried not to think about what lay ahead, and as we planned out our route I didn't bother to pay too much attention to the map, I preferred not know what I was in store for.

We set off at a fast pace, Everyone was leaving the campsite within a half hour period so there were people on my tail all the way up the mountain. I felt very out of breath and had to give Chris my trekking poles and use my hands to grip on as we climbed. Every now and then there would come a shout from above, "Rock", and a large boulder would come bounding down. My pack was still heavy and it would have be all too easy to fall back with the unfamiliar weight. I felt very tired and worried about falling. It was so steep that you would be dead by the time you had bounced to the bottom if you did slip, and I felt like we should have some kind of harness on. After the race Chris worked out that the gradient of the climb was more than 300 meters within a quarter of a kilometre.

In spite of the impossibility of it, we did reach the top, and continued along, mindlessly trekking through a lot of heather and marsh land. Finally we began a descent. It was again, very steep and my right knee began to feel unbearably painful with each step down, I was progressing very slowly and felt very shaky legged and feeble. We got to the bottom and dressed a couple of my blisters with Duct Tape (I must be an adventure racer now surely?), and then had another shorter, but still steep climb ahead of us, followed by another descent which made me wince with each step. At the bottom was a nice track to walk along, but I began to feel nauseous, I had drunk very little water, and by that time, although Chris kept telling me to drink, the thought of putting anything near my mouth made me want to vomit. The only food we had were sweet, energy bars and the thought of eating them was unbearable. I sat down at the side of the road and told Chris I just want to lie down. He was alerted to the fact that I was in a worse state then usual, because my constant banter of chit-chat alternating with bitching at him for bringing me to Scotland, and chanting "I HATE THIS, I HATE YOU" under my breath, had been replaced with an eerie silence.

Chris put on his sternest voice and showed me the map "look, you can either decide you have had enough and we can take this route, to this road which leads us back to the event centre, or we can take this route and go to the rest of the check points and finish it". The past 30 minutes of the race had been the first time that I had actually thought about the prospect of pulling out. I mulled over in my mind what I would say to people if I failed to complete the course, I imagined myself having to try and portray just how difficult the whole experience was. I thought back to how I felt after the birth of my eldest son Edward, having to have an epidural, and finally having to have a caesarean for reasons which were entirely beyond my control. I remembered that feeling of having failed at something that so many other women had achieved. Two men walked past us; "mountain rescue will be along in a minute" one of them said cheerfully. He had a pointy face and a pointy hat and black running tights on, they looked like Spike and Gobbo, the two goblins out of Noddy…"not for us they won't", Chris said. I stood up, it might take us longer then I would like, but I was going to finish. Even if it meant Chris carrying my rucksack for the rest of the day (which he did). I still felt sick, but less so, I kept taking big swigs of water and discovered that by not breathing through my nose afterwards I couldn't taste the puritabs so strongly.

The course continued, with an unrelenting sequence of steep up and down hills, interspersed with contouring around mountains, my knee was very painful on anything even remotely down hill, or on any paths that incline even slightly up to the right. Feeling revived I was able to carry bitching at Chris assuring him that I was better. There were times when I felt like I was going to fall to my death, and times when I felt I could not find the energy to struggle up yet another hill. In the midst of it we were startled by a heard of about 200 deer appearing one after another at the top of a mountain. Each one in turn looked at us and then followed the rest of the heard along the top, and off into the distance. It was a beautiful sight, and I felt very lucky to have seen it, although I was worried that one of the stags would suddenly charge at us, and gripped my trusty trekking poles for security as if that would make any difference!

As we came closer to the end I began to feel that I might really make it, we were heading for the final check point when the goblins appeared again "So you didn't get rescued then" spike said, there was a strong note of surprise in his voice, but there was something else too - a definite hint of admiration. Well I thought so anyway!

The goblins, Chris and I and a female team were the last three to finish. We had been walking for 10 hours and 17 minutes by the time we swiped our bracelet at the finish line, most people had left for home already, but I didn't care - I had finished, and could hold my head high.

Chris was very supportive, he kept telling me how well I had done - given the number of fibs he has told me about this race so far I could have chosen not to believe him. But I decided he was telling the truth, I was proud of myself, I had been pushed beyond my physical capability, but had blindly blundered on. There had been cursing, and swearing and almost tears, and I would later discover we had come 16th out of 17 finishers in our class, but I had completed the course. Now when other mothers recount their natural birth experiences I can say with my head held high "I had two epidurals followed by general anaesthetic….but I've completed the Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon!".

Back to Main News
There are no comments yet!  Be the first to leave one!    

Notify me when someone replies to this post?