Convergence 2018: Are you Experienced?
The incomparable Jimi Hendrix asked, “Are you experienced?” Due to ultrarunning’s relative rarity, and the need for such significant time investment, its tempting to consider someone to be an experienced ultrarunner after only a handful of events. Whenever I tell someone I’ve completed eight ultramarathons, they imagine I’m some kind of expert. Sometimes I believe it myself. Then along comes a new ultrarunning experience to remind me I’m a novice.
This is not technically an article about running, as I’ve haven’t run a step in more than six months. But it is an article about an ultramarathon I recently completed. Having been forced by a torn meniscus to miss both London and Edinburgh marathons, and being likely to miss what had been my goal for the year, the Centurion Autumn 100, I was determined not to miss my other main event of the year, the first edition of Convergence. Its unique format meant I could still take part if I significantly adapted my original race strategy.
Convergence is the brainchild of Beyond Marathon’s Richard Weremuik, whose patented RaceDrone technology enables him to conceive some truly imaginative race formats. Convergence is a 24 hour foot race, with a finish line in the Peak District village of Hope (regular readers will remember this misleadingly named place from my Dusk ‘til Dawn Marathon adventure 18 months ago), and no set route. Runners pick their own start point. Whoever makes it to the finish within 24 hours, and has come the farthest as the crow flies, is the winner. One has to travel more than 30 crow miles to receive a silver medal. 60 miles gets a gold medal, and 90 miles a black medal. Each runner carries a GPS tracker, and their progress is illustrated on the race website from start to finish. Over 24 hours, the ‘dots’ on the map converge on the finish. Those seriously trying to win the event need not only to plan their route (as straight as possible, as flat as possible, as safe as possible), and their nutrition, hydration and support (for obvious reasons, there are no aid stations), but also gamble on their own ability, as nobody knows anyone else’s starting point until the race starts and everyone’s trackers are activated.
When I entered, way back in 2017, I had a plan to try to run 90 crow miles from Ribblehead, down the Pennine Way, which ends a few miles from Hope in Edale. That would be over a hundred miles on the ground, and a lovely scenic route, I thought. I now know that getting injured saved me from the disaster that attempt would have been.
One of the advantages of ultramarathons, is that no-one cares if you’re running or walking. And a 24 hour race with no set route meant I could walk the whole thing if I wanted to. It might not be what the doctor would order, but it would be physically possible. So I adjusted my route to start near Hebden Bridge, just 30 crow miles from the finish, to try to get my silver medal, and have a nice day out on the Pennine Way in the process.
Things started well. My daughter Ellie was my ‘crew’ for the weekend, driving to meet me at various points during the day, so I could eat and replenish water. We’d camped on Friday night in the village of Colden, and after a breakfast of open air sausage and eggs, I set off on the first leg of my journey, over Stoodley Pike, which is topped by an imposing monument to victory in the Napoleonic Wars. There are glorious views down over Rochdale, which is not a phrase one expects to hear too often. The whole town was spread out below, and the sun reflected off countless skylights, like a constellation of stars. It was a warm day, and it had already become apparent that the hiking poles I had would be absolutely necessary to nurse my knee up and down the many steep, rocky ascents and descents. But I made our first meeting at the White House Inn close to our 3.5 hour plan, and after some food and a tactical change of footwear, I set off on the next leg, to the Brunclough Reservoir some seven miles away. This section of the Pennine Way crosses the M62 on a high arched pedestrian bridge I remembered driving under on childhood trips from Yorkshire to Lancashire. I’d always liked that bridge, but walking across it was disconcerting to say the least. Imagine the Millennium Bridge, but half the width and twice the height, with six lanes of fast traffic down below, and you’ll have some idea why I was relieved to reach the southern side and get my feet back on the terra firma of Saddleworth Moor. By the time I reached our meeting point it was early evening, but still warm. The next section was the most beautiful of the whole route. Past the eerie stillness of Black Moss Reservoir and along through a steep green valley, with a flowing stream at its base and a pair of curlews wheeling away overhead. The path takes one over stepping stones between two waterfalls before heading down to another reservoir, its shore lined with vast swathes of rhododendrons, before two steady miles of climb out of the deepening sunset to the viewpoint on Wassenden Head. This was my last crew stop, as Ellie needed to head off to the Edale Youth Hostel where she would spend the night. It would be the early hours before I crossed another road, or could rely on any mobile signal. A quick check of the Convergence website before I headed back onto the moors showed there were two other people apparently taking the same route. It was actually a nice thought that I might have some company during the night. By this time of course, all the day walkers were safely in their B&Bs and campsites; I’d seen just two humans on the 7 mile section to Wassenden Head.
Darkness comes late on clear June days in the Peak District, and it was nearly 10.30 before I felt the need to get out my headtorch, having been overtaken by another Convergence runner, and having just passed a solitary wild camper. I had a moment of panic when my head torch didn’t work. I’d checked it back in Harrow, but not that morning, and it seemed it had accidently switched on in my rucksack and drained the batteries. No problem, as a well-prepared ultrarunner I had spare batteries. Except when I looked for them, there was only one spare set, and I suddenly wasn’t sure I had enough light to get me through the night. I reassured myself that the night would not be much more than five hours, and I knew my headtorch could go that long on one set of batteries. Plus, I did have a spare headtorch, and as a last resort a phone. But it was sharp reminder that one should pay attention to details, a lesson I was about to learn with even greater force.
As dusk turned to pitch darkness, I began the climb up Black Hill. Up to this point, the Pennine Way had been mostly benign. Steep in places, sometimes rocky underfoot, but at least non-threatening. But as the path wound up to Blackchew Head, it became no more than a narrow sheep track, just inches away from an increasingly sheer drop on my left hand side. Before I knew it, I was clinging to the heather on my right, instinctively leaning away from the lethal drop to the left. I wasn’t sure whether it was better to be in the dark, and therefore not be able to see how far the drop truly went. But I did become increasingly sure I had made a terrible error to find myself in such a predicament.
Just a couple of miles from where I had started my journey around twelve hours previously, Sylvia Plath is buried in the beautiful, dark village of Heptonstall. Her famous poem Ariel starts with the line, “Stasis in darkness.”. That was me at this moment, stuck on a mountainside at night.
I literally sat down and gave myself a talking to. “It’s not cold, it’s dry under foot, it’s not windy. You’re well equipped and physically fine. There’s no reason you can’t put one foot in front of the other. Just concentrate and keep your eyes on the path.” All good rational stuff, and enough to get me moving again. But it wasn’t long before the negative thoughts came back – I guess it is actually rational to be afraid of slipping over a cliff edge – and I wondered at what point I’d thought a silver medal might be worth dying for. I contemplated just layering up and bedding down in the heather until daylight, but decided I couldn’t risk a fall in body temperature even though the night seemed warm, and if Ellie or the race organiser saw my tracker stationary up here for so long it might cause alarm which I wouldn’t be able to allay as there was certainly no phone signal up there. Wiping sweat from my eyes every few steps – either from the heat or from anxiety – I soldiered on. I hoped that the runner ahead of me had safely negotiated this section, and that the owner of the headtorch I’d seen intermittently some way behind me knew what was in store.
Needless to say, eventually the path widened out, and moved somewhat away from the death drop, and I then began a painful, steep, rocky descent to Torside reservoir. At this point, the Way crosses a main road before heading up the biggest climb of my route, Bleaklow Head. I took stock, and gave serious thought to changing my route and stick to roads, even though it would put miles on my distance and mean I might not make the finish in time. I had no intention of putting myself in jeopardy on another cliff-side sheep track in the dark. I consulted my map and guide book, and saw what I should have seen when planning my route – the path I had just traversed described as particularly ‘precarious’. I checked the climbs ahead, to make sure none of those was described in similar terms. As they weren’t, I decided to press on as planned, knowing that it would start to get light in a couple of hours.
The climb up Bleaklow Head is miles of uphill, some of it very steep. There was one section that took me back to the terror or Blackchew Head, but the path wasn’t quite as narrow nor quite so near to the precipice. I did swear at myself a few times, but knew I had to fall back on my own resources, and ensure I learned from the experience. By the time I got down off that mountain, the dawn was making itself felt. As I headed along Devil’s Dyke, behind me I could see that the runner trailing me had made it down safely too, and to the east the sunrise sky was a perfect wash of blue, orange and red, with a huge, bright crescent moon reflecting the sun where it lay below the horizon. I actually felt joy to see it.
By the time the sky was light enough for me to turn off my torch (the one set of batteries had indeed lasted through the night) I was crossing the featureless Featherbed Moss, which at least offered good underfoot conditions, as it’s a part of the Way which has paving slabs laid across the miles of peat bogs. Up ahead, I could see my last big climb, the spectacular Kinder Scout. By the time I had climbed it, and began skirting its rocky face along the ridge at the top, the sun was up and the air was already heating up. I was low on water, and my knee was objecting strongly to all downhill movement. I avoided the shortest route down, Jacob’s Ladder, but took advantage of the stream at the bottom of it to refill my water bottles. There are few joys to compare with cold mountain stream water on a hot day.
Here I was overtaken by the runner (actually, two runners competing as a pair) who had trailed me all through the night. We shared reminiscences of our nightmare on Blackchew Head, secure in the knowledge that from here it was a couple of easy miles into Edale, then four miles to Hope, with just one short sharp climb over Hollins Cross, and we had plenty of time to spare to make the 24 hour cut-off.
Just before 10 am, after 22 hours on the move, and more than 50 miles showing on my Garmin, I trudged into Hope village, and crossed beneath the obligatory inflatable gantry at the finish line. A couple of dozen runners who had already finished were sat around recuperating, while plenty of others were still out there somewhere, converging from all points of the compass. Some of them would not make it in time, including one arriving forty minutes late after covering more than 90 miles as the crow flies. No medal for him. But I have my silver bling. And I have another bit of ultramarathon experience. Hopefully this time, it’s enough to make me realise it’s not much at all. When I hear Jimi sing the words, I’ll answer “No, I’m not experienced.”
