2022, a personal review

God where to start. I feel it’s useful to put this down on paper because if somebody asks me ‘how are you’ I get floored for several minutes thinking about an answer even on a good day, before I realise they were just greeting me. But when people are actually interested, where do I even start? It’s all so massive and interconnected. I never know how to indicate this to people without saying it all, so it’s likely nobody will know I feel. You certainly can’t tell by looking at me for a minute, and it’s currently very rare I have social interactions with people that last longer than that. If you looked at me for an hour you would – but nobody does that. This article is somewhat long, but no longer than if I'd actually replied to the 'hi how are yous' I got asked throughout the year, and hopefully it should flow well to get through.

I started the year having had a tough, lonely 2021 but optimistic that I had come out of it and formed the connections I needed for 2022 to not pan the same.

It certainly started okay. I even dated a couple of people, which satisfied one of my aims for the year; There was the Plymouth swimming community that I was excited to share more adventures with; I had a wonderful running holiday to Greece in May (see 4 photos), running in the mountains in the warmth with like-minded fellow runners, dipping straight in the sea in after with a pre-dinner beer; I had planned a string of 3 ultra marathons, each (ideally) with a full 16-week training plan and a 2 week taper, and 2 weeks recovery after. I did the first in April, and then the second was a 100-miler in July. I got injured so couldn’t complete it, but I did manage my second longest run ever (56 miles) and longest run in just under 3 years.

But it’s always transient. Every time I meet somebody that I think will be a close friend to fill a gap in my life I get excited and expectant about it but it turns out they haven’t got that same need or space in their life. I find it really hard to turn encounters into functioning friendships. I’m not the most natural communicator in the ways that people usually expect, so I ensure to put in my side of the relationship as much as I can – I’ve messaged people, bought presents, organised activities, invited people for dinner, tried to do thoughtful acts, made sure I watch out for where people are struggling. I’m not doing these things because I'm expecting return, but to ensure I am keeping my end good by putting in what I want to get out. But for a friendship it's got to be two way, and I haven’t found that person with whom I can share that equality.

It’s also important for me to have validation that it’s a two-way friendship: my character tends to disappoint people once they get to know me, and I hate to outstay my welcome, so I rely on somebody to use words or actions to indicate that they still like me. If those don’t come I lose faith as invariably what follows is one or the other getting upset, so I walk away to protect us, and await the next friendship prospect.

So connections in my social life dropped away again, as they often do, back to zero. I’ve got plenty of friends, but non close or frequent, it’s the day-to-day type of rapport that has vanished. Please don’t feel like I’m blaming anyone – people all have their own things going on, and/or they’re busy, or they simply don’t see me as a friend, which is fine. But I really desperately needed these social connections this year after a build-up of loneliness to a really detrimental level, and try as I might I couldn’t find them. I reached out, asked people if they were free, told them I was lonely, told them I needed their help, planned things they could come to, but the months passed empty. There wasn’t a complete absence of connections - there was the occational, extremely valued invitation to the local pub, or a lunch invitation at work - just not enough, or none sustained enough to feel valid. It’s interesting coming back to the ‘how I you’ phrase I commented on at the top. I sometimes tell friends that question doesn’t work for me, and they’re okay with that but they assure me that they are asking because they’re genuinely interested. I have experimented with that this year – when people have asked me how I am I’ve often said ‘not good actually’, and people just don’t know how to answer. They often say ‘oh’ with a half smile and sidle away quietly. So I maintain my claim that the start of a conversation isn’t the time to go into that topic.

Loneliness has bothered me for the past several years, but I’d found ways to cope: I’d distracted myself by my activities – running, swimming, mostly alone, ticking off targets and collecting achievements. Suddenly none of these were hitting the spot, I have been distracting myself too long that it was no longer working. The biological urge was also a big factor – I am desperate for a family, 3 years ago I set myself a 2 year target to make it happen, the whole of which was obliterated by the pandemic. This last year I just have no idea how to get there, my communication with people is so broken that I can’t even get to know anyone. But running, swimming, all those things I was doing alone as they’re what I *can* do when I don’t have anyone spend time with, were suddenly seeming hollow and pointless. When the thing you do as an escape loses its validity everything starts to fall apart.

Work was also still a very disconnected, intangible place. I love the company I work for, the projects they do, their ethos, the support they provide. The ‘new normal’ working environment doesn’t work for me though, so many people are choosing to work from home as it fits in better with their family life, that the office is quiet and lacking in soul. The people that are there are hot desking, there’s no familiarity on entering the office - you can’t give a nod to a collection of familiar people as you walk down the aisle. Meetings are predominantly done on Microsoft Teams which has quite a different feel to it than an in-person one – people look different with the barrel distortion of the camera, they may or may not be looking at you on the screen regardless of whether their eyes are facing you, the conversation is more structured and turn-based meaning I have to turn on a sort of ‘forced’ mode which takes the personal element away.

Without real people around me, at work and socially, I can’t get an idea of how to do things that most people find second-nature but I have to copy: for example when to stop for lunch; how to react to a comment from another person; how to know what other people find normal. I am neurodivergent, and to fit in with the world I copy/mimic everything, which is known as masking. Masking can be considered detrimental as it’s so tiring, you’re encourage to let the real you out, but if you’ve been masking without knowing it for so many years you don’t know who the real you is, and if you do let it out often the world isn’t ready for it, so for now masking is the way I cope. So without real-life people to feed off I revert to my own autopilot which is unknown and doesn’t enable me to fit in with the rest of the world, and I forget how to communicate and behave, it’s like the world is spinning and I’m looking down on it trying to work out whether I can run fast enough to get up to speed to jump back on, and while that happening I can’t see what’s going on down there. I become completely dysfunctional. From April I identified that if I can’t copy then I’ll have to find some other strategy to get things done, so I started a monthly todo list (a continuous one was only likely to work for a limited time as it would seem like there was no end point to reach, so a month at a time was a better plan). The problem was that I wasn’t remembering anything (out of sight out of mind) except perhaps at 2am when I was lying in bed about to go to sleep, so if I wrote it down on a list at least I only had to remember look in one place. This sort of worked, but it’s a bit like eating junkfood instead of your 5-a-day, you’ll survive but you won’t be healthy. Every time I target an item on the list I sort of shake in fear of the commitment of it, and take 3 days to build up to it, even if it’s just to email somebody.

In addtion to a lack of connections leading to a change in my wellbeing and a resultant change in my communications skills for the worse, something weird was happening with time too. In June, I had this strange sensation that it was about 3 years since I got back from Greece (only the month before) and those 3 years had all been empty. Normally by June I had done lots of adventure swims but for whatever reasons those hadn’t happened. I vowed to be more deliberately proactive in July but although I did some active stuff, including one adventure swim from Wadham to Bugle Hole (see photo) and one to see Juliet cave, the time still felt like it was largely empty. I also then suffered a string of health problems: when I got injured in my 100-miler run I then couldn’t run for a few weeks. I then got covid again, and when I went on swim camp to Scilly in August I realised I was still unwell from it as I didn’t feel like socialising or swimming while I was there. After covid my asthma and reflux were triggered which made running very difficult, and the breathing problems persisted so I consulted a doctor to try and work out whether the cause was physical or psychological. It wasn’t until November that I realised it was anxiety – there would be an initial trigger, a ‘demon’ in my head. There were two main demons, the first being the fact that I had put on enough weight to seriously impact the way I felt when I was running, making running difficult, and the demon was saying I couldn’t cope with that difficulty, and the other demon was if I was with a group and falling behind, the demon said that I was inadequate compared to them. Stupid statements from my ego that I can easily rationalise against on paper, but when you’re in the middle of battling to be in a better place and you already feel physically and mentally uncomfortable, one demon triggers up an attack of anxiety, my throat closes up, I can’t breathe, my body shuts down without oxygen and it’s game over. I ran through it one day and I felt like I’d been thoroughly beaten up when I finished, not the good kind of body fatigue you get from exercise and exertion. I just started to get on top of the anxiety once I realised what it was, and then I got hit by another bad cold in December which triggered my asthma and reflux again. Currently (2023 now) I don’t feel good when I run, I don’t get a lift from the endorphins. I’m much heavier than my comfort weight and due to that and the physical manifestation of prolonged stress my legs are swollen, my body is stiff, I feel genuinly uncomfortable when I sit down and my belly crushes the other bits of my body, I have had a phase of dizziness (related to some medication), and I’m still coughing and retching.

My physical state is easier to describe, to cover how I was/am feeling mentally it’s hard enough to be clear about it in my head let alone put it into words. I wake up each day like the world doesn’t exist. I can’t remember what I value in life, I can’t remember the feeling of joy I get when I run, I can’t feel passion for ideas, work or activities. Waking up is the hardest thing I do each day, to get my brain to switch on when its claws are still in sleep and could perhaps stay there indefinitely – I believe this is a sleep disorder as I’ve had it my whole life, but it’s exacerbated by my state of mind. Then if I turn on the radio it seems weird to hear people talking about things where other people are involved, and to hear people laughing and being comfortable, being warm, and joyful and happy. If I see somebody walking towards me in the street I think they’ll be annoyed at me, or be ready to find any excuse to be. Everything feels really alien, I can’t see or imagine the type of life where people go to the cinema and bars, people meet up in groups, exchange banter and laughs, whether it’s me living it or others. It’s not in my head at all, even as a memory. Instead of having a baseline state of positive expectation and happiness I feel wariness and dread, I’m and low and entirely alone.

The weirder it gets, the less I feel relief when I have a social event, and so the less able I am to take advantage of solutions that present themselves. I went to visit a friend in Barcelona for New Year, we watched the magic fountain display, hiked up a mountain to watch the fireworks, and swam in the sea on New Year’s day as part of a very well attended charity event. It was varied and exciting, and the perfect New Year for me, and yet it’s like I was autopiloting my body though it and waiting until I could get away from it and hide.

People reading this will be spotting the tell-tale signs of depression. You’re not wrong of course, but I want to point out that (this kind of) depression is a symptom of an existing problem, not the problem itself nor the cause of it. Depression is just an added complication, most of what I've mentioned above came before it led to that, for example all the feelings of disconnect from the world. And one thing that really frustrates me is if you come to a friend for help and they say ‘have you sought professional help’? If they’re just asking that’s fine, but really they’re saying they won’t or can’t help, when you know they can, after all it's not like you need to point out that professional help is available as it's not something I'm not likely to know. Firstly, I feel you can break mental health help down into 3 steps: ‘understanding the problem, understanding the solution, and implementing the solution’. Professionals will help you with the first two, but they can’t do the last one for you. I’d already resolved the first two – loneliness is a disease and I was suffering from it, and I needed more connections, I just needed help creating them so I reached out to friends. If they then say ‘you need to see a professional’ it’s exasperating because it’s trying to send you into a loop that you can never break free from. There was already a bit of a catch-22 in me reaching out to friends, because it's not that I want them fix my mental health (steps 1 and 2), I just want to spend time with them as a friend doing normal friend things (step 3), but if I ask them to spend time with me they don’t realise how much I need it, and if I tell them I’m struggling they then think they’re not the person to help. Secondly, I've had friends suggest I'm depressed before when what they're actually seeing is just the fact that I'm autistic and function differently to what they're used to, and the best path there would be if they took time to understand that a bit more. Thirdly, getting professional help isn’t easy. At that point I slipped from being a natural problem solver to not wanting to solve anything I knew I was depressed and did seek help, but it’s not a quick process. I’d already been on one waiting list for counselling since January 2021, but as a result of my new enquiry I got added to a separate one, while being informed there was a 3 month wait for an initial assessment (which I have now had, but I have yet to discover whether the process will bear fruit). This wait will be too late for many, so if you’re somebody’s friend and they’re struggling, they need you more than you know, and they may not know how to ask clearly.

Depression is a bit of a trickster and stops you taking advantage of the opportunities that do arise. If you plan something it’s hard to face actually doing it. Even small things in the evening: I get a huge sense of relief when I finish the work day and don’t have to do anything for the rest of the day - but that won’t fix my isolation and it won’t fix my health. But I want to leave the talk of depression aside now, as that’s only a progression of symptoms caused by the real problem which already existed, i.e. the loneliness and lack of day-to-day connection, and feeling closed off to opportunity.

Occasionally there was a snippet of the solution I needed, for example, a conference or sports day at work, or somebody engaging me genuinely in the supermarket or street, or going to volunteer at an event run by my local trail running group and suddenly feeling like I'm among friend. These things surprise me as they’re at odds to my new world, it surprises me that normality still does exist, somewhere behind the veil. And I know it wouldn’t take much to recover, if the opportunities were there.

There was one activity through work that really did work for me for the summer. Previously I had spoken to my boss about a way to resolve the new work environment for me, and he suggesting things like meeting other colleagues for a coffee but these didn’t appeal, although it made me cringe that he would think I was either ungrateful or resistant to finding a solution. Then on Tuesday lunchtime in the spring I saw an invitation to play volleyball so went to watch and got dragged in, and this was exactly what I needed! It was both sociable and active. I instantly realised that the reason the conversational solutions hadn’t appealed is because conversation is the main focus and I don’t enjoy small talk, to me talk has to have a purpose. Volleyball includes banter which gives a wonderful sense of having a shared connection, but it’s not mandatory, you can just play and feel part of something, and you then see those same people round the office too. The volleyball season lasted from June until October and was truly the highlight of my week, it gave me a reason to get out of bed and make it into the office which brings benefits of its own. In addition to the direct benefits of exercise and social connection, it made me realise there was actually nothing wrong with me: For the last year I thought my mental health problems has been because of the way my brain works and the resultant impacts when I can’t feed off other people, and although that’s all true I had an awakening that it was just an overly complicated way of explaining the reality – that I was simply lonely. Also I was relieved to see that the right kind of connections would very quickly help me.

Other times I was unable to take advantage of opportunities that would have helped. Once a month or so there was an orienteering event with my club followed by a social gathering, and there are lot of people in my club who I like who seem to like me, so this would have been a valuable event. Only with my sleep inertia / waking difficulty, and the fact that each day I can’t remember the world that’s out there, I frequently arrived late, so that I would see people briefly in the car park and miss the whole post-run social. The frustration from being thwarted by something that would seem automatic to most – getting up and dressed and out the house - is immense, as you get the double hit of missing the opportunity as well as being mad at yourself, which overpowers being kind to yourself. The need to be productive triggers panic - while one part of my brain is guiding me through it, the louder part is sticking its fingers in its ears and saying 'la la la, not listening'.

I have a philosophy that teaches you how to deal with stuff: The Warrior’s Way, to do with personal power, and awareness. It teaches you how to not squander thought power on negative processes such as wishing and hoping behaviour. It teaches you to properly analyse risk rather than shying away from it. To listen to your full range of emotions and to be able to be in chaos rather than being tricked by the many faces of the ego. However, there is sort of a flaw with this philoshopy. It is a journey that you embark on that you never complete. And it doesn’t tell you how to get help along the way for things that happen that you haven’t yet perfected how to deal with, because you maybe never will. You can only really handle things in an ideal world, and it’s not an ideal world, especially when you’re dealing with unusual stuff like working out your place in the world after learning you are autistic after all. In November I did a well-being course at work which said that good wellbeing comes from connections and hope, which gave me something to latch hold of. Hope is contradictory to the Warrior philosophy so there’s more thinking to do there, but connections – well there's the crux really. Mine had all vanished, and here I was feeling low. But if you’ve already tried to build those in many different ways and failed, what can you do? In September the impact of my difficult summer culminated in my mental health collapsing and me dropped off the radar a bit. I realised that if I was posting about my activities on strava and facebook people would think I was loving life, so I stopped. If I had written this review at that point, a thought which crossed my mind then, this review would have been a line long. A short one. And it wouldn’t have been happy. A couple of people noticed my absence – that saved me. I was only able to articulate how I’d been feeling once I was feeling a tiny smidgen better, and then more people asked how I was, but I am indebted to those four that noticed me vanish. After that I gained an invitation to a regular Friday swim - small lifts like that remind me of how it’s meant to be but it takes time to get back there.

There’s definitely a suggestion that if you’re active that means you’re okay, but it’s not true. If I’m active it just means I’m still alive, I could have a mood of 1/10 and still go out for a hike. 0/10 and I wouldn’t be here any more. People often seem to think the fact that I do lots of stuff is something impressive or admirable. That’s nice of them, and it’s really special to think that I might inspire people, but to me it’s normal to get out there and do stuff, in fact it’s actually a comfort blanket. If I’m really, really struggling I usually ‘follow my nose’ as I call it, but actually I follow my feet, I’ll usually find myself walking somewhere, and I usually didn’t have much conscious say in the decision to do that. So what other people might admire in me, is my baseline. That doesn’t help me find my place in the world, as people assume I’m happy when I may be the polar opposite, and also the fact that I’m constantly active being unusual to them when to me it’s so innate, means they’ll never understand the rest of me. I’ve always said that the reason I do lots of stuff is because I’m inherently lazy and if I stop I won’t start again, and that pretty much what happened this year.

In August I read something in a book that triggered a realisation in me that I have forgotten how to live in the moment, instead I was focussing on achievements and bounding from one milestone to the next. This lightbulb moment made it much easier to stay at home than before and my anxiety in this vanished. I re-gained a love of watching TV and I reactivated my Netflix subscription, and I started learning to play the concertina. But it’s a mixed blessing, it gives depression a safe path, means you don't have to face anything, and my running faltered, and that’s something I need for my physical health if not my mental. Which do I need to be, calm or active? Is it possible to be both? So even things that seem positive bring complications. I spent some time this year trying to bring my bedtime forward, it's something I've struggled with since I left home but with an average bedtime of 2:46 over 3 months it had got more out of hand. However, combining that with a more homely attitude meant lots of evenings getting into bed early to watch TV. Is that helping improve a routine, or exacerbating the isolation and lethargy? Again, it's complicated.

Largely this write-up is talking about problems rather than solutions, but that’s because it’s a write-up of what happened. It’s easy to read it and think that I operating problem-based thinking, but I’m not someone who dwells on problems, I’m a problem solver and constantly think in solutions, any time my mood is above about 2/10. That’s why it was so frustrating that I couldn’t find what I needed, because I was trying and still failing (it’s immensely difficult when the solution is dependent on others and can’t do it yourself) and why I eventually fell apart. But I did at least recover enough to keep trying, especially over the last 3 months: They say if you help others you’ll help yourself, and I’ve raised money for charity, helped friends out financially and with support messages, donated to foodbanks; I spent a while pondering what to do with the work situation, and although it’s definitely not the right solution for me to leave the company, I did realise that an internal move could bring benefits. I was thwarted by certain processes with my first attempt and ended up feeling worse, but after a bit of recovery time I tried a different route and ended up being successful in my application for a new role that was also a career progression so I’m exited about that as it's part of my solution. I started the new role in the New Year; I started to get my enthusiasm back for activities - it’s not the solution as they’re still largely solo, but it helps me to be ‘me’, and being ‘me’ (at least this little I understand of it) is achieving stuff; I also identified that I didn't have any routine any more, I used to do things every night of the week and now I wasn't doing anything. Given how beneficial the volleyball had been I needed something similar, so I capitalised on a chance to spend friday evenings at the climbing wall with some runners I know; Regaining some of my former drive also makes me able to be reception to any opportunities that present themselves; I try to actively focus on seeing the positivies and trying not to add more weighting to equivalently-sized negatives - I recently heard unexpectedly from some friends I haven’t heard from for ages which means more than a new hill summit, so I consciously enjoy each of those moments.

Aside from mental health, which most of this write-up is about, there were some other notable events throughout the year too. In October, after 3 ¼ years on the waiting list and 4 months working through the assessment process, I finally got my Autism diagnosis. That was the end of a chapter of investigation and uncertainty in my life, I can just get on with things now. I’m working on remembering who I am and acting on that without worrying how it comes across, then maybe others will know who I am too - even after knowing some of my friends many years they don’t know when I’m joking, and people aren’t able to communicate with me in the way that I would enjoy; I visited my family more than usual, because my dad had been quite unwell leading up to Christmas last year and was worried about not being around and I wanted to make sure I spent time with him, and he picked up and made another Christmas; the new room I moved into last November has panned out brilliant, as my landlady is wonderful and I can be me without judgement, we don't have many shared activities but our characters are a match.

I had another realisation in the autumn, after something gave me a small lift, that confirms what I learnt in the wellbeing course. People think I’m independent, but I’m fuelled by connections: I love to be independent, but don’t have the power to do that if I’m alone, so it's not independence after all. My (fake) independence and well-being are linked - the independence comes from connections, so do ideas and inspiration, and the type of excitement that makes me implement them does too (if you know me you’ve seen this side of me). That’s me being me, and I can’t do it without you.

Where am I at now? I still feel no purpose, no identity, no place in the world. Day to day still feels alien. There’s something odd about Devon – I feel completely at home here, it’s a haven for all my activites and the opportunities feel endless, but I haven’t felt happy since I got here. Every time I go away it’s like I wake up and can see clearly again. It could be that I used to travel more and now I don’t need to as it’s all on my doorstep, but travel gave me that something extra, that outside perspective… perhaps. Or it did just cross my mind that maybe Devon and me are so alike, that because I’ve lost sight of who I am I’m also lost when I’m in Devon too.

Achievements:

I did still achieve some stuff. I’m reticent to post these as I fear that despite what I have explained above, people will read them and think ‘well things can’t have been that bad if she did all that’. Remember, I just don’t function in the same way as you might think, and these are my survival strategy, that it’s pretty essential that I carry on with them unless I find another way to build up the dynamo. Also for me this is less than a standard year. But I shall post them here for posterity. And I am still proud of them.

* I ran 3 ultras-marathons – the Snowdonia Spring Crossing in April (33 miles, successful completion), the Dragon 100 in June (DNF at checkpoint 6, but still completed 56 miles), and the 8-Trigs in November (34 miles, successful completion, last place!). I have planned 3-4 ultras through the year, so just about managed to claw this one back with a last minute entry into the 8-Trigs having just started to realise the anxiety issue.

* I continued working my way through the (Dartmoor) D365 book, ticking 113 new squares (plus one of the 2 bonuses), bringing my total to 254/365, so I’m 69% of the way through.

* I completed the remaining 132 miles of the coast path, and received my certificate of completion.

* I ticked 146 hill summits (including a couple of repeats). 79 were only TUMPs though (a TUMP is a Thirty and Upward Metre Prominence, a hill so insignificant there are over 17,000 of them in the UK). My lifetime TUMP total now stands at 885.

* I bagged 106 new Dartmoor Tors. My total now stands at 246/896, so I’m 27% of the way through the definitive list.

* I did 48 swims, all outdoors, totalling a shade under 43km, in a mixture of wetsuit and skins.

* My total running mileage for the year was 1,550 miles. This isn’t the 2022 miles I intended (an average of 170 miles a month) - it was achievable and I was on track for the first 6 month, but them lost it as explained above, as it’s had been very physically difficult to actually run. However, on a bit of analysis after the year was over I was surprised to find this was my biggest year yet, beating 2019 at 1,418 miles.

* Since March 2020 I have had a target to run 100 miles a month every month for a year. I set this as I was a very stop-start runner for ages, and even after my first big ultra in September 2019 that I’d trained for for a year I still stopped, so this was a target to turn me into a full-time runner. It has worked well! But I still haven’t completed it. In January 2021 I very badly sprained my ankle, I started the challenge again as soon as I could, which was March 2021. In September I fell 4.2 miles short as I’d accidentally double-entered a run into strava and I was already so tight at the end of the month after time out for hiking and swimming that I couldn’t make it up. In December 2021 I had covid when isolation was still mandated so I lost that month too so started again in January this year. But I lost July to the shin injury and as the summer unravelled I lost 3 more months without any of the prior passion for this and I didn’t start the challenge again until November. I maintained it in December by the skin of my teeth.

Non achievements:

* I started the year a little overweight at 11 stone 9.5lb. I lost 1 stone 3lb up to mid March, then gained 2 stone 3lb, with a net gain of 1 stone. My weight always goes up and down as I can eat consistently, but it does have big impacts on my exercise. I start to notice the difference to my running when I go above 11 stone, finding I can’t hold a conversation with other runners who are going at a sociable pace. Above 12 stone I feel hugely uncomfortable, in running, and in everything else. At 12 1/2 I feel uncomfortable just sitting as I expand outwards immediately underneath my chest. And if one more person says to me "but surely you burn it off with all the exercise you do"...!!! Seriously, do you know how many calories there are in ice cream and chocolate?!

* One of the several that didn’t happen - I only used my paddleboard twice, despite being very keen to do a lot more this year. Another one of those ideas that just dissolved in the ether when faced with a life where it no longer makes sense to even get out of bed.

Climb South West, East Devon 8 Trigs

I’ve had my eye on this event for months but the summer hasn’t worked out - I got injured in my last ultra in July, then had covid again in august, then I got breathing difficulties which interfered with my running and meant I couldn’t train and I’ve got increasingly out of shape. It’s only in the last fortnight that I realised those breathing difficulties are anxiety (I had thought it was more likely to be because I’m overweight!) brought on by the above combined with a summer of loneliness and low mental health resulting in feelings of inadequacy, but now I know what it is it’s easier to start to address it and push away the triggers. Due to not having trained (I’ve only run 200 miles in 17 weeks) I left my race entry to the last minute (Tuesday 8th was entry cutoff), only to find it had sold out, so I satisfied myself with 20 miles on Wednesday (which went reasonably well). Then on Thursday I got a last minute race entry!

I’ve not done a Climb South West event before but they seem like a great bunch. The event was back to basics: completely unmarked - 8 trigs and 2 checkpoints as mandatory locations and everything else up to you, but they had shared a gpx of a suggested route you could take if you wanted to. I largely followed this, with two detours, one recommended by other runners and the other on an overheard tip.

It was a staggered start so I set off early, 8:10, as I didn’t expect to move fast. The first 12 miles were pretty smooth and consistent, averaging 16 minute miles over the ups and downs. It was nice to have the trig points to tick off - I’m a trig fanatic anyway, but they came regularly so the miles flew by.

For the middle third the hills got steeper, particularly Beacon Hill and Buckton Hill, but the views were good. Buckton trig was meant to be out of bounds but the landowner was present and was kind enough to let me visit the trig. My pace dropped a bit but I still focussed on that to keep my legs moving. I was really pleased to experience absolutely no anxiety today! The vibe of the event at the start held it off initially, then the other runners started to come pass me so there was that shared mentality. I did feel a bit lonely on the inland section as didn’t see anyone for ages, but my body was feeling good which gave me confidence and kept the triggers at bay.

The second and final checkpoint was at Weston, and I came through just after 2pm, well inside the cutoff of 4pm. The flapjack there was amazing, best flapjack I’ve ever had! The penultimate trig, on West Cliff, brought me back to the coast path and from there it was 10 miles back to the finish on familiar ground, and I was still feeling good. As I came through Sidmouth I was really craving like an ice cream despite having a bag full of food, I think I needed to cool off, and I managed to grab the most delicious Malteser ice cream from the little kiosk, best ice cream I’ve ever had!!

The sweepers caught up with me climbing the final big hill out of Sidmouth. We had a quick chat then they kindly hung back as I explained I was in the zone - I’m not used to running with company on ultras and I’d been on my own all day too, so my head was just in that solitary state. I could still hear them behind me which introduced a little pressure to my brain so I explained the anxiety situation and they said they’d run on ahead as they were happy I knew the route - which was lovely of them and kept the triggers away again. I finished in 9:35, the total distance about 33 miles. The winner did it in 5 hours (unimaginably fast to me!) but I’m happy with my time. I might have been last but apparently in previous years it’s taken people until 8pm to finish and I was back before 6. I absolutely loved it all, I felt like a runner again for the first time in 4 months. What’s more, my body was obviously plenty fit for it as I ran 9 miles the next day to lay a trail I’d already committed to!!

RunWalkCrawl Dragon 100

Pyramids are much used as a training strategy in sports, and it’s a good way to make sure you don’t overtrain or push yourself too far too fast. One application for this is for pushing the distance, and building a base to the pyramid of several shorter ultras before a longer one, and not entering a 100-miler straight after a 100-k. Over 3 1/3 years I have done 6 ultra distances of 31-37 miles, one 44, one 51 and one 62, so I was ready for the cap of the pyramid with the 100-miler. So it’s less that I really *wanted* to do one, and more the fact that a friend had planted the seed in my head many years ago and I was now ready to enter, but once the idea takes hold it becomes all encompassing.

Getting to the start line for these things is perhaps the biggest challenge. Whenever I’ve trained for an ultra something invariably happens to interrupt progress, usually an injury… best laid plans and all that. This time round I actually got through my full training plan, right until the final week when I was genuinely exhausted so I started my taper a little early. During the taper though, possibly because it was too long, I was full of aches and pains - I cricked my neck and my Achilles tightened up, and we also had a company sports day 5 days before the event and despite trying my best to take it easy I got a groin strain from the long jump. I was foam rollering and taking Epsom salt baths and sea soaks like a fiend while also trying to relax as much as I could, to ensure the many months of training hadn’t been in vain. My housemate also caught covid the week of the race so I had to try not to catch that too. I’d also put on weight and instead of the 10 stone I wanted to be, 11 at the outside, I was 11 stone 8 lbs. But make it to the start I did, and on Saturday lunchtime I got the race coach from Cardiff to the start at Rhossili with my two friends Sarah and Kelvin and the other runners, ready for the 4pm start against the backdrop of Worms Head. The coach itself took 2 hours, that's some distance!

I don’t like to get drawn into the rush at the start of the race, so I stayed at the back and tried to keep my heart rate down to protect against injury and excessive carb burning. It was about 24 degrees so I couldn’t keep it as low as I wanted, but I managed to settle it at about 158 and stop it going above 160. Slightly awkwardly this put me practically shoulder to shoulder with another runner, both on the downhills and the up, and I really wanted to zone out and run my own race at least to start. I couldn’t speed up without spiking my heart rate and I couldn’t afford to slow down as the first checkpoint was the tightest cutoff (needing 16 minute miles over 7.5 miles with 250m ascent), but I was stressed out by visions of still running side by side with a stranger 100 miles later. It sounds really unsociable but these are such big undertakings you’ve got to run your own race in your own way. Thankfully after a couple of miles we caught up with two other runners then re-dispersed. I was trying not to follow my usual strategy of ‘find a runner and catch them’, as I’d calculated my timings for the whole race in advance. The information on the Run Walk Crawl website (the company that put on the race) says “the race is open to runners and walkers that can maintain the pace to reach the cut off times. The Dragon 100 mile course starts at 1600 on the Saturday evening and you have 32 hours to complete the course- that’s 3.2 mph. Please remember that you would also need to factor in any checkpoint stops so realistically you should aim to maintain 3.5mph to complete in exactly 32 hours” which sounded spot on for me, but they didn’t release the mid-route cut off times for the aid stations until 14 days before the event. There was a cutoff at every one of the 11 aid stations, starting at 16 min miles between the start and the first aid station and reducing down to 21 min miles between the last aid station and the finish. I was disappointed by this (especially not knowing until so close to the event), as I like to run at a consistent pace on my ultras, often running with negative splits so I can start with reserve energy and finish strong. That wasn’t going to happen here. Initially I’d carefully and accurately worked out my ideal timings along the route and using those I would miss the first 7 cutoffs and yet finish with 2 hours to spare, so I had to run to their tighter timings for the first 60 miles.

As we traversed the Gower it struck me how beautiful the route was. When I’d checked out the route on Strava where you can see the breakdown of terrain types, it said it would be 29% paved, 40% dirt and 31% other, and with it passing several big urban areas I had kind of expected a lot of hard terrain. I was pleasantly surprised that the Gower section was much more akin to my beloved South West coast path and I was fully enjoying the views.

I had a few technical and kit issues from early on. I’d had to make some kit changes a bit too close to the event - a new running pack as my old one ripped, and a new watch as the battery saver mode on my old one had a bug. With the pack I tried a few and by the time I settled on one I only had one chance to try it out and it felt okay, but you can’t know for sure until you run a fair distance and it turns out it was too tight on the shoulder webbing and was cutting in. Thankfully I had Vaseline to tide me over and my old pack in my drop bag at Mumbles, I just had to get there (we had access to our drop bag at every 3rd aid station along the route). The soft flasks the pack comes with didn’t have a straw tube so I had to contort my head to drink from them and kept choking on my squash. The watch I had also had only 9 days, after a 6 week conversation with the manufacturer about whether it was a software bug with my old one. I loved the new watch and had played around with all the settings, but I hadn’t configured the screens the same as my old one. I thought the default settings would be suitable but I was unable to see heart rate and pace on the same screen, and both were proving crucial so I had to keep flipping between them. In the end the pace screen became less useful anyway - I’d made a crib sheet of the average pace I needed for each checkpoint, but this was for the time you have to leave the checkpoint not arrive, and for the earlier ones 10 minutes makes quite a big difference to pace, so I couldn’t use my crib sheet as a guide and I changed my strategy accordingly. The new watch did have a funky nutrition reminder though which I'd set to remind me to take a salt tablet every 30 minutes, and I was trying to make sure I drank one full 500ml bottle every hour, although as I tired later it was hard to remember if I was keeping up to date with those and sometimes I didn't notice the buzzer.

I made the first check point with 15 mins to spare, feeling really rushed. It was also disappointingly poorly stocked - one type of jelly sweet, two types of cheap crisp (salty spirals and chipsticks), water and electrolytes. Little variation and no food you could take with you. I went to the loo and lost the places as I’d gained which was a little disheartening. I wasn’t racing the other runners but it was nice to be near them.

The route cut off the next headland then we were running across the long stretch of sand that is Oxwich Bay. There were camper vans lining the back of the beach and quite a party atmosphere, although we soon left that behind as we covered the full length of the bay, and I caught up with a group of runners near to the race photographer. To exit the beach there was a very narrow, steep path lined with tall ferns. It was quite overgrown and I kept checking the gps to ensure I was going the correct way.

Having found my pace I caught up with my two friends near the first stepping stones at Three Cliffs Bay, then lost them as they stopped to empty shoes. The next section of sand dunes were even crazier, with quite a convoluted route through them. I called the directions over my shoulder to the runners behind me. It certainly kept the interest and there were some lovely views down to Three Cliffs bay which I had last visited as a rock climber back in about 2005. On the cliff top I sat to pour a gallon of sand out of my shoes, and shortly after that we reached the second aid station (with 5 minutes to spare) where there was a much better variety of snacks.

Just after Brandy Cove at 17 miles I found a runner (Emma, no. 22) paused and unsure of whether to take the high tide route or low tide route up ahead. I remembered from the race briefing that the route took the high tide route at Caswell Bay anyway so I confidently encouraged her to run on with me, but the GPX took us along a private path right close to but high above the road we actually needed to be on. A friendly local helped us out and guided us down the steps to the beach where we had to climb round a railing then up over two fences to get to the road, so we lost a little time there. Emma and I ran together for a bit on the good tarmac path round Langland and past Snaple point, which was nice. My shoes were driving me mad though, I was only 1.5 miles from being able to change them but they were causing me heel pain so I had to slow a bit while Emma ran on, and they were still full of sand. I wanted to press on to the checkpoint but I followed Emma’s suggestion and emptied them again which gave some temporary respite.

I reached the aid station with 15 minutes to spare having made good time on the last section, but I had so much to do. I needed to fill up my 3 water bottles. I needed to change my bag, and although everything in the main section was in a dry bag I could just move across there were about 6 extra pockets each with something in, which needed moving to a new home in the new pack, and I needed my tracker cutting off and taping on the new pack too. I’d also had to fully empty my 20l drop bag to get to the running pack so I was surrounded by the contents of that too. I also had to wash and dry my feet to remove the sand as the next section was tarmac, and change my socks and shoes. Plus go to the loo. I also needed to eat and drink, the race information said there was soup available but I was inside the hall and the marshals were outside so I had to ask a friend to fetch someone, who make me up soup and brought me tinned fruit salad too. That all took half an hour and was a really crazy multi-tasking rush which also put me at the back of the field again.

By comparison the next section was reasonably comfortable, at least to start with. I had my familiar pack and comfy shoes and was pretty well fed. From Mumbles to the next cutoff at Baglan it was 10 miles. I wanted time to actually rest at Baglan which left me 2.5 hours which meant roughly 15 min miles. In theory I could walk parts of that but given it was flat tarmac seafront in the main, round Swansea bay and along the city sea front, I took it on at a slow run, if I could gain some extra time then so much the better. Darkness had fallen and I used to think it was crazy that people ran through the night and said I’d never do it, but it’s funny how the more an idea sinks into your head the more normal it seems, and having tried it in a training run I loved it. The night only lasts 5 hours at that time of year too. I maintained a shambling run pace, and happened across two other female runners that I yo-yo-ed with a lot from here on, Debbie and Sian. These two had a chap crewing them too who was very kind at sharing his time and supplies with other runners and I benefitted from that several times. Even though I don’t speak to other runners much on an ultra I still love that connection and solidarity you have with them. They’re the ones that understand the indescribable mental state that you’re in. Writing about it gives a kind of false impression - I describe a lot, but all of those things mean very little when you're actually experiencing them: all the issues you have you mentally dismiss as insignificant and peripheral, hardships that are just par for the course, so they don't have the impact that you might imagine from reading about it.

Leaving Swansea we went slightly inland along the Tennant Canal. This seemed to be the one cool part of the entire course, but I felt like if I put my pack down to get a layer out I didn’t think I’d be able to bend down to pick it back up again - I was very stiff, partly due to the earlier heat and partly because when I’m heavier I feel inflamed and don’t move as well. I kept my eyes peeled for benches but there were none, but at the end of the canal I found crew-man again and he kindly held my pack while I put on my layer. Of course from then on it was warm again but I wasn’t stopping to take it back off! The next section was a cycle way alongside the A483, and I was desperately for a rest having not walked at all except for on the earlier uphills, and I’d been running since the last aid stop except a couple of toilet pauses, and I could feel a strain forming where the shin tendon inserts into the knee. Constantly chasing cut-offs gives the whole event a completely different emphasis, and not a good one. The two girls were doing run/walk so we were were never side by side long enough to chat, I didn’t feel I could do the same as I was looking forward to a sit down and a loo at the Baglan aid stop over the river. I reached it with 5 mins to spare, but there was no loo, and as I sank into a chair the marshal said ‘don’t you dare’, maybe he was joking but it wasn't clear and it was absolutely not what I wanted to hear. On an ultra you know what you need, and my body needed a pause. There was little food again, no support, no encouragement, no help to fill bottles, just an instruction to get up and carry on. They didn’t have any freeze spray for my knee either. I cut my much-needed rest short feeling wholly unwelcome, and left the aid station 2 minutes before it closed, and 50 yards up the road something separated in the shin muscles on my right leg, and I instinctively sat down on the curb. Crew-man was suddenly there and got me some freeze gel from his car. I had planned to walk a bit from here as the next section allowed for a slightly slower pace, and with this pain that idea was cemented, so I walked off into the woods and up the hill. My shin was very painful with every uphill step, I had definitely done something bad to it. I massaged it a bit and found the problem was down at the bottom, right at the front. In addition to my own issues I was concerned the two girls had gone the wrong way as I saw lights down below, and I was shouting and blowing my whistle to alert them. I walked as fast as a could, but the uphill gradient was causing me to call out in pain and I was losing more time. I called one of the race emergency numbers and asked for some first aid, and Ben said that he had some k-tape and could come and meet me at a village past the forest. The village was 3+ miles away, but he actually found me on a small section of road half way there just before I disappeared up another track, just after some angels in a van had passed and given me an apple just as I was craving fruit. I sat on the tailgate of Ben the superstar's van, rinsed my shin and applied k-tape, whilst drinking coke and red bull that he also supplied. The sit down alone was a godsend, but the sudden provision of medical and nutritional aid helped a great deal too and I left with my spirits much lifted. The girls caught up too, and I was pleased to hear that they had heard my shouts after all, although they were also tiring and had missed another turning after that.

When I’d left Baglan checkpoint I’d only needed 19:21 minute miles to reach the next stop at Bryn, but now I’d walked and paused that had reduced drastically to 17:00 and there were a lot of hills to come, but I was prepared to do what I could. Ahead of me was a stony downhill which was even worse for my leg than the uphills as it jarred the damaged muscle. Past the village though there was a long flattish section on good forest tracks along the river Afan, where I was able to run again and started to pick up time. I kept constantly recalculating the pace required using my new strategy - the number of minutes to the cutoff, divided by the number of miles to the aid station as shown on my GPX, to give the pace needed. I felt optimistic that I could make it, but then there was a long uphill, and the next descent was also rocky which made me cry out. It started to get light at 4 but not fully until 5. Coming out of the trees just before the village of Bryn it was runnable again with a non-rocky descent and I passed a runner walking with poles (Andy) who asked me how far it was to the checkpoint. “Half a mile, 15-min-mile pace and we’ll do it”. I scraped in with one minute to spare to find myself in a group of 4 runners momentarily. I was in so much pain but I had made it. This aid station was manned by Ben and was better stocked, although I couldn’t persuade my body that the hot dog was good food, and I forgot to pick up my can of coke. I was looking forward to an easier ride from here as the next aid station was meant to be 9 miles away and we had 3 hours to get there, meaning 20 minute miles, a chance to walk at last! I voiced this out loud and Ben said ‘well, more like 10…’ and checking the map it was actually 11.3 miles away! Subtracting the 10 minutes we paused to eat, that’s 15 minute miles, a whole different mission. Well, nothing for it but to press on. There was one 3-mile long uphill to deal with, then the rest was down. I continued constantly recalculating the pace required, my phone gallery is full of screenshots of these numbers, I was running a mathematical race - I’d come this far and didn’t want to miss the deadlines. I had various motivations driving me on - the further I got the more it seemed to make it all worthwhile; I didn’t want my friends to wake up to find I’ve DNFd just after they went to bed; I didn’t want to let everyone down who had sponsored me; and I didn't want to stop now as I've run further than this before. On the downhill, a nice wide track on the outside edge of the forest, I started to pass people I hadn’t seen before but I was also suffering from increasing digestive distress so I was struggling to stay ahead of them all (it's not that I want to beat anyone or care about places, it just makes me feel like I'm making good progress). At the Baglan aid stop earlier I had said out loud ‘I need the loo’. The marshal told me to pee in a bush but they were missing the point. I’d already 💩 in several bushes and it wasn’t working properly at that angle, I needed to sit on a real seat. But through the woods there was nothing and I continued to have to squat down to poo at increasing intervals - it was not diarrhoea and not much, but it was always urgent. I was so uncomfortable with it all - the crouching was difficult and hindered the act, and the act itself was very uncomfortable, despite the small pot of moisturiser I learnt to carry long ago.

People often cite than an ultra is 99% mental. I’ve always found that a strange statement as I find it all physical, and this is a good way to demonstrate that. My brain absolutely wants to carry on, no matter how I feel - that’s what I came for, it's not meant to be easy and I do not want to stop. I was fine with the sand dunes, the navigation, the heat - all things I heard other runners citing as things that broke them or sapped their resolve. The part of me saying stop because I'm physically hurt is so small I don’t know whether to listen to it. In a training run I’d have stopped the instant I did the damage as that way you can be okay again in 3 days, but when it comes to the main event a different mindset is needed: this is the exam, not the studying. It’s difficult because you can only complete an ultra if you do have that mental fortitude to carry on, that’s why people say it’s all mental, but if you’ve got that by default or by developing it how do you know how to turn it off, and how bad does an ache or pain or injury have to be for it to genuinely be worth stopping? It's an arbitrary line and one that's hard to draw. I was actually glad when I saw the state of my leg a day later as it validated my stopping decision.

At 6:45am I had been running through the pain so long (5 1/2 hours) that my brain was now no longer able to ignore it and my shin was screaming at me and I simply couldn’t run any more, and I knew I wouldn’t make Kenfig in time. I had reached the flat of Margam country park and came across Emma again who was now running with Laura from the Three Cliffs sand dunes. I walked with them for a bit and we discussed the timings and inaccurate distances and the race organisation. We passed crew-man and and he encouraged a last ditch effort to run at 12-minute miles for the last 3 miles to the aid station at Kenfig and our drop bags. The other two switched back into a run but I knew it was a little more than 3 miles, and also that I was done for with running, so if the timings were tight before they were impossible now. So close and yet so far. Even then though I was still calculating whether I could still finish the rest of the race in case they let me carry at Kenfig despite having missed the cutoff, I only needed 18 minute miles for the next 47 miles which seemed possible since my walking pace was fluctuating between 16 and 24 minute miles, but I was so broken I was hoping that they’ll pull me from the race so that the decision was out of my hands. My friends had started to wake up and offer comments online but it was only days later that I worked out what I needed to say to them - I didn’t need encouragement in continuing, I needed help in deciding to stop.

The A48 was soulless and desolate with no runners in sight now, in my zoned out state I forgot even that there was anyone behind me. My left heel was in agony from favouring that leg combined with running in my less cushioned shoes for the first few miles. I longed for a bench but there wasn’t one for another 1.5 miles behind a church in Pyle where I rested gratefully for a few seconds. At 8am, cutoff time, I rang in to say I wouldn’t make the cutoff, he asked what my plan was given they were too busy to fetch me and I said I could walk it in but wanted to know how I’d get back to Cardiff given the bus for the DNFers was due to leave Kenfig at 8am. He said he might hold the bus, or likely I’d have to get a lift with one of the marshals. I found myself walking slower and slower through the housing estates. A dog lumbered up to me and I lunged sideways into the road to avoid it. The lady following then offered ‘she won’t harm you’. At my wits end and not a fan of this oft-proffered-but-too-late statement anyway, I replied ‘she already has, I am injured and in pain just walking in a straight line, and she just made me stagger sideways into the road'. 1.2 miles from the checkpoint I turned into West street which led straight there and began to hitch. 300m, a lifetime, and many non-stopping cars later I gave up altogether and sunk to the ground outside a closed pub. Two concerned passers-by stopped to question me, and I was just about to contact the organisers to say I couldn’t walk it in after all, when to my surprise another runner appeared, Andy again, although I was a little confused why he was there, and he told me he was also retiring. He gave me his poles and walked me in the last 1 mile at my snail's pace, what a legend. It felt like an eternity but we finally arrived just after 9am. My first ultra DNF and it felt very strange to just finish without the ceremony of receiving a medal, almost like it had never happened. The bus had been waiting for me after all, and I was surprised to see my two friends on it too, they’d decided to retire too even though they’d made the cutoff. I snuck off to the loo, couldn’t pass up the opportunity of a real one after all that time, then joined the dozen or so people on the bus. I was in reasonable spirits despite what you may imagine and offered round the copious quantities of food and drink from my drop bag.

The bus driver took us all to the nominated dropoff and then was kind enough to take my friends and our back to our hotel to save us waiting for a taxi, an act of kindness that meant a great deal to us. The hotel also found me a room where I could check in early (it was 10:15am and check in isn't usually until 3pm), which was also a godsend. I showered (sat down in the bath as standing seemed too much effort), and inspected the damage (my leg which was bright pink, plus some chafage on my chest), iced my leg, then slept for a bit to catch up for the missed night, then had dinner at the hotel and iced my leg again. I had no plans then but realised it was 7pm the runners were still reaching the finish line and I had an urge to go and be part of it. I found I could drive perfectly safely, so took myself down to the Norwegian church. Realising quite how red my leg was then I went into the finishers area to see if I could find some first aid. There weren't any ice packs anywhere, but there was a medic, one of the race directors I think. His first aid assessment was very competent but when I offered some feedback on the race, saying that I prefer to run a steady race and that it was rushing for the cutoffs that had led to my injury, he dragged me into an argument and told me that I got injured because I was under-conditioned for the race, and the other runners who had also found the initial cutoffs harsh simply weren't fast enough to finish. I walked away saying that I didn't feel he was treating his customers well and that he wasn't leave me with a good lasting impression from the event. I'm positive I could complete the 100 miles had I been able to take an average pace. I can't prove this, but I was determined - as evidenced by running on an injured leg for many hours - and I had trained well for it - as evidenced by the fact that after the run I didn't have one single muscle ache or blister except for my injury. None of the niggles I'd had beforehand came to anything, so I'd managed them all perfectly.

I saw a few other places where runners were treated poorly during the race - I'm sure in the race information it says that if you stop to offer first aid that will be accounted for in your finish times. I heard two sets of runners tell marshals that they had helped other runners to a safe location to DNF, but they were refused the time adjustment. Also I had mentioned the error in the route GPX at Caswell Bay and told that I was incorrect. The race organisers seemed a bit military and ‘just get on with it’ in their attitude. There are more ways of dealing with endurance events than that, you can be an amazing runner without being a machine, and these are experienced ultra runners who know what they need and have valid opinions, but we weren’t respected. Ultras are hard, you’re pushing yourself to the limit, it’s not the time for someone to take the hard line with you. Add that to the limited food supplies and the lack of obvious medical availability at aid stations, and the fact they were also staffed by the race directors rather than volunteering runners so there wasn’t the cheering or encouragement that you generally expect, and I won't be entering another event by Run Walk Crawl again. As you can see from my report, my event was dominated by pace calculations, this isn't usual as you'll see from my previous race reports, and it wasn't fun. Looking at the finish line too (pictured) that was half-hearted and would have confused me had I reached it - there wasn't an archway and no timer. The race went very smoothly to the plans that the organisers had for it, but that plan seemed at odds to what I'm used to in many ways. Perhaps I'm deluded, maybe all 100-milers are tougher than I imagine. But the other ultras I've done are set up for you to succeed, this one seemed set up for you to fail.

Nevertheless, I'm very proud of myself and the way that I dealt with everything, and it's still the second furthest distance I've ever run. I'm also proud that I have raised £1350 for my chosen charities:
Project Kajsiab in Laos
ME Research UK

My leg will take a while to recover. After 48 hours it was getting progressively more and more swollen, so I went to the minor injuries clinic. They said I've got tenosynovitis of the tibilialis anterior and I must elevate it get the weight off to get the swelling down, so I am currently working from my bed and hobbling around on crutches. I'm not sure how badly the muscle is damaged, there's a large lump at the injury site and I can't lift my toes, but I am seeing my physio tomorrow so she'll be able to shed more light on that.

TrailEvents Snowdon Spring Crossing

This is the first of 3 or 4 ultras I have planned in for this year, as part of my prep for somewhat optimistically hoping to enter the Cape Wrath ultra in 2023 or 2024. For once I had actually tried to follow a proper training plan, with speedwork and everything, rather than just setting monthly mileage targets. I had created an 18 week plan, with 4x 4-week phases and a 2 week taper. The moment I start it I came down with a cold then covid so lost about 4 weeks, then 5 weeks before the event I picked up a couple of injuries so my mileage dropped gradually down to nothing. But I was optimistic that the 9 weeks I had managed would see me through, it's more than I managed for my last 2 ultras!

Driving to the event I felt really underprepared, perhaps because it was the first race of the year, or perhaps my extra long taper had messed with my drive and motivation. Also, although it's an area I'm fairly familiar with, I was 6 hours from home and felt quite alone. I had a good deal of trepidation over the snow dusting on Snowdon, the forecast (likely dry but possible hail showers, snow, and thunderstorm, with wind chill of up to -10•C on the summit), and the resultant question of how many layers to pack. I decided I had the right amount for my top half (vest, super lightweight soft shell, lightweight waterproof, and a spare lightweight long-sleeved baselayer in the pack), but

I donned my calf sleeves under my leggings, and my shorts over them, to effectively double the layers on my bottom half. At kit check I was all ready to empty out the contents of my bag for inspection, when the lady said ‘we’re only doing random kit checks, and it looks like you’ve got all of it in there!’ clearly having spotted the size of my bulging pack as I approached.

The race started as it meant to go on - having to climb awkwardly over a series of locked gates to reach the Ranger Path. Later it was granite wall stiles. And many fallen trees. We had 885m ascent straight out of the gate, over 3.8 miles, so gained height quickly and were soon at the snow line. Around here it started snowing lightly, and we were on Snowdon, on snow and in snow! Now what I’d expected what I entered the race. I don’t really like snow. I certainly didn’t think I’d enjoy it. But by god it was beautiful, heavenly. I was quite moved by the experienced and I wouldn’t change it for the world, It felt like how it was meant to be.

I summited in 1:15, and along with most of the other competitors I took a small detour to reach the summit toposcope.


Descending the Rhyd Ddu path was a different story, it was rocky and icy, and I didn’t have poles or spikes and I’ve never been super confident on my feet despite plenty of mountain experience. I have never used poles when running but I always used to use them when hiking, which this was more akin to, and my muscle memory was craving the control of them. Instead I squatted on my heels and slid down the initial steepest sections. Then I just took it carefully.

I had tried to gain places on the ascent where I am relatively stronger (an advantage of long legs!!) because I knew I’d lose them on the descent, and I did, dozens of them. My average pace dropped to 22 minutes per mile, a far cry from the 15min/mi I wanted to aim for, but it wasn’t possible to go faster safely, and I was quite accepting of that, it would be fun trying to make it back on the flatter terrain. We descended out of the snow line then there was a long section of rocky slabs which were thankfully not slippery, then it started to level off. Here I was at 21:22 min/mi, 6.7miles in, time to pick the pace up. I was pleased with how my legs had fared, with two injuries leading up to the event. My calf must be better as didn’t hurt on the ascent. My left ankle was not too bad, in fact any pain was on the inside not the outside.

We crossed the road and headed into the forest. The route gpx had been updated 2 days before the event and we had been told to follow that not the map, but it wasn’t quite right in places. I missed a turning as it was sooner than shown, and was then worried about missing the checkpoint which means a DNF, and I’d already failed to find CP1 on the summit of Snowdon although everyone else had too. Thankfully I came into the check from the other side, and after that I was more alert to the signs, although still had occasional sign blindness and was called back on route by others! I’m more used to navigating myself, so paying attention to signs is a skill I seem to be partly deficient in. The next section took us along tracks with nice views down to Beddgelert with the white clouds of a steam train rising above the trees, the toots of which followed us for some time, then there was a whole section of marsh. I didn’t mind this as it was very much like my home territory of Dartmoor, and not as squelchy as it could have been. The route was very unusual though… as well as all the clambering over objects involved, large sections of the route didn’t follow any recognised footpath, just took an arbitrary direction across tussocks and between low gorse, where you had to try and spot the next route marker as there wasn’t an obvious way on. Although they were many markers, there were still times when you wanted more.

My focus was on catching people up one by one and passing them, this is usually my focus in a race, not because I care a lot my finish position but to keep me motivated and keep my pace up. It does, however, mean I am always running alone because as soon as I reach someone I try to leave them behind. I don’t mind that in general, but I had a lot of personal stuff on my mind which was giving me some anxiety which threatened to rise up and give me trouble breathing, so I spent some time pushing it back down inside, but that’s quite hard to do when you’re working hard which is already emotional. I had support coming in from a couple of friends on my phone which helped.

The marsh became more complicated, with vague, narrow, tramped paths with bramble trip-wires, which took us into a difficult section section with fallen trees and peaty moss. I tripped a couple of times. CP3 at 16 miles wasn’t far ahead though. After CP3 my legs were very tight and fatigued, feeling the effects of trying harder than normal. I normally race to a heart rate cap of 158 but usually finish strong feeling like I haven’t tried hard enough, so this time I wanted to see what I was capable of, and while trying to catch people it had been been reaching 178. That had clearly been too high as I was very fatigued now, so I abandoned any thought of places for a bit and just ran what I could, while the food I’d eaten worked to re-energise me. It took a little while, as the food sat heavy on my stomach at first, making me feel bloated. I had to charge my watch anyway, so put it in my bag and plodded along a long section of road, which is one of the course alterations that they’d had to make due to a recent fire. I managed to hop into a field at some point too to relieve some of the bloat 😉

At 20 miles the watch went back on and I did a bit of shoe re-tying as they were starting to chafe under the laces. I don’t remember CP4 but it was somewhere after this. At 23.5 miles my leg finally recovered and I could change from a shuffle run back into a proper running gait. I could feel how strained my tendons were though so had to be careful not to do an injury. Thankfully the next section was really beautiful and engaging. We turned North East up the Cwm Pennant valley past many signs of its industrial past - ruined ruined slate houses and quarry buildings; a old tramway now grass-covered and great for running; a dam with reservoir; and a mine.

I was finding it really hard to keep pushing to stay ahead of people, but I guess that’s the case when each person you pass is faster than the last. Two lads re-passed me just before mile 25 and I slowed to walked a bit, feeling a bit jaded. It occurred to me that I didn’t actually have to pass anyone else, if I settled down down a bit I’d probably still maintain my position, and that gave me some peace. The sun came out too, and I was then running in just a vest and arm warmers, a far cry from the ice from earlier. I re-passed the two guys, and they cheered me on and commented that I was faster on the rough ground whereas they were faster on the roads. I knew I'd see them again, because picking my way down to CP5 I could feel a strain in my left lower leg where the shin tendon comes up into the knee. There wasn’t any water left at the checkpoint so I topped up with coke to get away fast without being caught up. I wasn’t bothered about my overall place, but I had set an arbitrary aim of being in the top-10 women, so the most people I stayed ahead of the closer I was to the next woman! There wasn’t any ibuprofen at the checkpoint either, and I was in increasing amounts of pain gently descending the now-good paths through Beddgelert forest, from my foot and also where the tracker was bruising my shoulder (I grew a big lump on my collarbone the day after). I crouched down hanging into a pole and begged ibuprofen from another passing runner who was kind enough to extract some from the bottom of his bag for me. I took my tracker from my bag and held it in my hand too to relieve that pain also, and kept pushing, not long now, only a couple of miles.

On the good, flat, gravel track past Llyn y Gadair the two chaps from earlier caught me again, so I cheered them past. As we left the lake though they were still in sight and had stopped at a car, they flagged me down and said the water had arrived. I squeezed my bottles… ‘hmmm… I’m still full with coke’. Then brightened and cheekily said ‘ah well, later then guys!!’ and shot off, taking that as a challenge to race them the 1.4 miles to the finish which I could soon see off to my side. There was another good forestry track, followed eventually (past the point the gpx said) by a switchback down a narrow path with many fallen trees I had to climb right over, but the boys were still not in sight. I crossed the road as they came out of trees and waved back, then ran up the stream and round the event field and over the finish line, 9:21:04 on my watch. I waited to cheer Aaron and George across the line, and we met properly with a big hug.


I came in at 7th lady (out of 52 entrants and 13 finishers), and 48 overall (out of 241 entrants and 74 starters). And two days later I still can't walk down the stairs!