Running the
Lake District 100
The Lake
District 100 was the hardest thing I have ever done, and I’m still absorbing it
72 hours after finishing. The experience
was so intense, it’s the rest of life that feels a bit unreal at the moment.
The race
started from Coniston at 6pm on Friday 26th July; 274 runners set
off, only 124 would finish. The route of
the Lakeland 100 is tough. It doesn’t
climb a single mountain, but it’s basically 100 miles (actually 105 miles) of almost
continuous ascent and descent in a great big circle round the Lake District,
from Coniston to Wasdale, Buttermere, Braithwaite, Ullswater, Haweswater,
Sleddale, Kentmere, Ambleside, Langdale and back over the fells to
Coniston. The cut off time for
completing the round was 40 hours.
At the
beginning I focused on keeping a steady pace, running easily, ignoring the
early crowds of runners passing and re-passing each other. As darkness fell the crowds thinned out. High up on Kirk Fell I looked back, and saw a
snake of bobbing head torches, miles long, trailing all the way back to Wasdale
Head and beyond. The night was hot, so
hot I didn’t even put an extra layer on. I reached the Buttermere checkpoint at
twenty minutes past midnight, and saw dawn and the checkpoint at the Blencathra
Centre by half past four in the morning.
A hot night turned into a hot day.
The next section, over Threlkeld Common, was hard. It’s hard when you do it as part of the Bob
Graham Round, and it was hard today. The
miles were long over Matterdale Common, around Ullswater, through the
checkpoint at Howtown on the shores of Ullswater, which I reached at 11.25, then
on over the empty eastern fells to Haweswater.
The path along the western shore of Haweswater to the checkpoint at
Mardale Head went on for ever. I was
over half way now, but running through the hottest part of the day, there was
no breeze, and I felt every step of it.
Runners from the 50 mile even, which had started from D at midday began
to come past. They looked so fast and so
fit, but every single one of them had a word of encouragement as they came
by. Our names were on our race
numbers. “Come on, Tom,” they said. “Good on you, mate.” By the time I reached the checkpoint I had
been running for over 20 hours. I had
been wondering what it would be like to run without stopping and without
sleeping for more than 24 hours. Now I
was about to find out.
It was
beyond hard. From Mardale Head to
Kentmere Village Hall took over two and a half hours of relentless climbing and
descending, and by the time I reached Kentmere at twenty to six, I had had
enough. I just wanted to stop. I sat down in the checkpoint exhausted, sick,
in pain. I had nothing left. Nothing.
I hardly knew who I was or where I was.
I have never experienced anything like it before. My body was shutting down. The longer I sat there, wanting to throw up
in the heat, the worse it got. I stood
up. Stopping was worse than carrying
on. I walked to the door, went outside,
set off on the next leg to Ambleside. It
was agony. And then it wasn’t
agony. I powered my way up the fells out
of Kentmere. My legs were strong, light,
flexible. I ran. I passed other runners. I even passed runners in the 50 mile run. It was incredible, and it stayed like that
six hours, all the way through Ambleside, and on into Langdale, where I reached
the checkpoint at 9.46pm. I had been
running for 27 hours and 45 minutes.
Darkness
fell on my second night of running. It
started to rain. Then I hit the wall
again. It took me two hours and 36 minutes
of agony and effort to cover the six and a half miles to the final checkpoint
at Tilberthwaite, and then an hour and 44 minutes from Tilberthwaite to
Coniston. I knew I would finish the
race, but these last two legs were beyond everything. The rain sluiced down. It was freezing cold, so cold that my teeth
were actually chattering. The ground was
sopping wet, slippery and stony. I could
barely make my brain function enough to work out the route. My left knee burned at every step. My feet hurt beyond describing. My back hurt.
I saw weird shapes flickering in the beam of my torch. I thought I saw a sheep lying on its back and
flapping its feet in the air. I knew it
wasn’t really there, but I still thought I saw it. I took the wrong track into Coniston. I lurched through Coniston. And I ran
over the finishing line. It was 2am. I had run 105 miles, and it had taken me 32
hours, 5 minutes, and 5 seconds.
Coniston
School hall was a blaze of light and full of people. Someone hung my finisher’s medal around my
neck, and they all cheered deafeningly.
“Tom Lininsh! Lakeland 100
finisher!” It was surreal. I sat down, and stared at my feet for a long
time. Then I went outside, back into the
pouring rain, and spent half an hour looking for my car and tent on the
combined campsite and car park on the school playing fields. When I found them, the tent had been
flooded. I crawled into the back of the
car, screwed up my waterproof trousers into a pillow, and went to sleep. When I woke up, I drove home, reaching
Skirpenbeck before the final runners had crossed the finishing line in
Coniston.
The whole
even was brilliantly organised. The
checkpoints were superb, with food and water and gels available, so that you
didn’t need to carry much with you. I
ate pasta at one checkpoint, and had a plate of stew at another. Everyone was friendly, especially the other runners,
and everyone supported each other and encouraged each other all the way round. People encouraged me, and helped to keep me
going. In that long, dark rain filled
final stage I gave my last gel and my water to another runner, and made sure he
didn’t give in. As I said at the start,
I’m still absorbing the experience.
Physically and mentally it was the toughest thing I’ve ever done. I have a feeling, though, that it won’t be
too long before I start to think about the Lakeland 100 in July 2014.