PINS

The morning eases in, all crisp and golden and fluttering leaves, as though it was marketing for the season. Rays of light and scattered blue patches overhead breed optimism among the throng, as we gather and merge into a murmuring start line. Some local hopefuls grumble that good weather spoils their chances. These are the line-masters; the dreich-lords; the clag-fest lovers. Others smile weakly in relief. Wouldn’t it be nice just to have a nice day?

Weakly, because we were warned at registration: the rain is coming. So we stand, and anticipate, and equivocate over layers. Shorts and vest? Always, for some. Tights? Probably not. Long sleeve? Well, that’s what most people have gone for...

Registration was in the barn next door. An old car caked in dust, scattered sheep’s wool and half empty buckets of things, side by side with a neatly organised tray of dibbers, stack of numbers, and a tub of pins.

Safety Pins. In the hundred and seventy five years since their invention, who knows how many millions of ouches have been saved by that little clasp. In a world with a safe pin, and an unsafe pin, what churlish fool would choose the unsafe ones: running with four straight spikes on their chest, ready to impale themselves at any slip? Nobody. All things being equal we’d rather not risk being stabbed, even in a small way, and where pins are concerned, nothing is lost by being safer.

What about running in the fells?

Could anything be lost by choosing the safer option, where mountains are concerned? The safest thing would be to simply not go to out in the first place, after all, and how much we would miss out on if we were to follow that logic.

Langdale starts with the ringing of a bell. Within a few hundred metres, there is a dislocated shoulder. Proof, if any were needed, that simply getting out of bed carries risk.

Before the first summit, little drops begin falling. Little, yes… but sharp. Fine though, for now. Then the first downhill. The fells are bog-soaked from a washout summer; the ground sodden. Feet are already wet, but that’s ok, too. Par for the course in fell racing. I’m going well enough, just about in touch with the best of the rest (the leader is miles ahead, in a race of his own). Trods, bogs, scrambles… a classic race, one of the best.

Moving along the ‘roughest trod in fell running’, memories of a broken wrist from last year’s race remind us all to watch the wet rock. As though watching it means we won’t slide. We trust to rubber compounds, and scamper forward as sure-footed as possible, and hope we don’t.

Sometime shortly after, my friend does slip here, and opens up a little portal to another realm on the palm of his hand. He runs off the mountain, hospital, stitches. Within a few days he’s back out running. Blood spilled, the possibility of infection, and five hours in a waiting room are an acceptable price to him for the rewards that days in the hills offer.

Now it begins to rain. Not clag, mizzle, spit, or drizzle. This is rain.

I run hot, so I chose a vest and shorts, long-sleeve be damned. But now I’m getting wet. And if I get too wet, then the cold will get me. But maybe it will pass? How many seconds before it is to late? Why wait until then? Because getting the jacket out and on is inefficient, precious racing seconds. I’ll risk it. Just as requiring a map and compass implies but does not ensure that the carrier knows how to use them, the requirement for waterproofs implies but does not ensure that the carrier will wear them when the time comes. You can lead a fell runner to common sense, but you can’t make them sensible.

Rain.

Now I am soaked. Already? So quickly? But is this really soaked? Or is it like when you think your feet are wet-through, and then you stand in a bog and suddenly achieve shocking new depths of wet-through-ness.

Rain.

The group ahead of me had been strung out, like beads of water on a clothes line, but now we seem to be instinctively bunching up, running together, those at the front easing to tolerate the company of slower runners. Safety in numbers, perhaps.

Rain.

Okay, fine, this is beyond reason. Time for coats. The wind is ripping over the brow of the hill, and the mood has shifted. We can’t talk, we can’t read faces, but we just know that priorities have changed. Racing is beside the point, for now.

Slow down, bag open, jacket out. The group is shapeshifting, new skins donned. I can no longer tell who is who, vests I recognise shielded by coats that I don’t. The cold has arrived in my fingers, and suddenly it’s difficult to even pull the jacket on. The wind laughs at me as I fumble, fumble, can’t. do. it. up. My entire awareness of the universe condenses down to this tiny zip pull, the futility of my attempts to pinch it with numb fingertips, the impossibility of my being able to haul it upwards with lumps of iron for hands… oh, no, there it is, done. No problem. Terror resolved to irrelevance in an instant. Glad that I brought the proper jacket today, and not just some cigarette-paper kit-check tick-box waterproofs.

We are still moving, but the weather is too, and the battering intensifies. Hail. Hard pellets, screaming into us, whipping us as though in penitence for the foolishness of venturing out in it. Gloved hands are raised to shield faces. Sharp pins, stabbing us: where is the Safety Hail?

I am following, now. People say they navigate, but few really do. Even with map in hand, and compass set, most follow. I have worked out who the red jacket is, and my relief to be locked in behind him reveals my trust in his line knowledge, which betrays my own lack of it. I am at his mercy. If he leads us wrong, I will have nobody to blame but myself. We scurry this way and that, putting brief faith in trods, hoping to half-remembered places just round the corner.

Is that rain easing now?

We’re descending, fast, to the tarn. Racing again.

Rain stopping? Not quite…

Yes, it’s stopping now. Clouds are moving.

I am drenched, but warm. Red Jacket has dropped me, and I push up the final climb alone.

Too warm, actually. 

Gloves off, that’s better. Jacket off.

It is the final summit, and I feel comfortable, ready for the long descent. It’s all runnable, run, run, wait…

This is wrong. Oh no.

Blue Vest has caught up from behind, and come with me. He hoped I knew where I was going, and he stands there, waiting for me to say that I can work this out, that I can lead us back. I don’t know.

Corner of the eye, something moving. A runner. Left, left, we need to go left.

Back on track now, and Blue Vest pulls ahead.

But then he yells out. He is holding his thigh, standing still.

Cramp? I call, running up. He says something that the wind whips away. Cramp, I confirm to myself, and run past. Good Luck, he calls.

It was not cramp: he slipped and sliced open his knee in a bad way. The pools of pink water from it will wash through the farmyard later, first aid administered. But, when did he fall? I wrack my brains on the drive home. I never saw him fall. I was right there, and never saw him fall.

The finish feels like safety, and the closer it comes, the lighter the burden of danger seems. That’s wrong, of course. You can slip and break your bones on the final bridge as likely as out on the fell. But I cross the line – no slip, no breaks – and hurry off to change into warm clothes.

Many people dropped out of the race when the rain arrived. Too cold, too wet. A sensible decision. All agree that it was wild. But for most finishers, the extremity of that moment is already fading, and the joy of the day pushing to the fore, as pints and pies and conversation are pub-shared. How quickly things can turn from a light heart, to the edge of terror, and then back to a shrug and a smile when the storm passes.

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Race organisers can project the level of risk that they are willing to tolerate in the fells onto their event, and they can cancel it altogether if the dangers outweigh their own sense of what is reasonable, but they cannot stipulate what feels comfortable to each individual runner. Personal responsibility comes first, and that means making choices. The less kit you take, the colder you get. The faster you run, the harder you fall.

Fell racing rules do not seek to guard against every potential harm we face out there, but merely to try and prevent us imposing our own level of risk-acceptance onto others. Cutoffs are not there for our sake as runners, but for the sake of marshals, who are just as exposed to the weather but without the benefit of keeping moving. Goodness knows the marshals at Langdale had a hell of a day for it. Compulsory kit does not guarantee our safety, but it does mean that we place a lighter burden on our fellow runners if we come to harm, and they need to stop to look after us. Many runners were reminded at Langdale that having only that minimal amount of kit does not always mean having everything that you need to stay warm and dry.

But just as it is easy to glorify ‘toughness’ – and by doing so encourage others to push themselves beyond what they are willing to risk – it is equally easy to shake our heads at what we think of as recklessness, as though our opinion on risk is objective, which it is not. The riskiness of an activity for a person depends to a massive extent on their level of experience (which is why those without the relevant mountain experience are told not to enter long, difficult races), and their tolerance of that risk depends on their own assessment of how significantly the benefits outweigh those risks.

After all, the only way to avoid the danger inherent in life, is to stop living fully. Don’t race: stay home. But we all know that wherever we draw the line, some things are just worth it. And as well as all the usual benefits of being out and about, the a flirtation with danger itself can give us many things.

A renewed appreciation of the otherwise-mundane, for one: nobody takes their sofa and hot chocolate for granted after a day spent fending off hypothermia.

A chance to engage in a raw and potent way with our own free will, for another, in the clarifying moments of priority that come when the need to survive overwhelms all other things, and you are forced to make immediate choices with enormous consequences. These are opportunities for true personal responsibility.

And also, the occasional precious moment of ‘wideawakefulness’ that our otherwise routinised existence cannot provide. The world brought into the sheerest, sharpest focus, all-consuming in the moment, in the most invigorating way. Feeling the fear , and feeling fully alive.

Was it a close call, or great fun? Perhaps we can admit to ourselves that close calls can also be great fun? Just another brief dance with death and delight on the open fells.

Just another race.

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This article was originally written for The Fellrunner - the journal of the FRA - for Issue 140 (Autumn 2024).

Bobby Gard-Storry
Cumbria, 2024