A little over a week ago I was getting ready for a double first: a night time hill run, and a fell race, neither of which I’d done before. As the time to leave for the Night Sugar came nearer my nerves kicked in in a way I was completely unprepared for, after all, it was far from my first hill run, and at this time of year night running is a weekly event. Why was this so different?
The clue might be in the word ‘race’. After nearly 10 years running my race tally is still in single figures. The ritual of picking up the race number and fiddling with pins, the crowd of people at the start line, the pre race briefing; these still feel like a world I’m floating on the edge of, not quite part of it yet. The nervous excitement builds in those final moments as the crowd comes closer together, watches beeping, legs twitching. And then, at last, comes ‘Go!’, all that tension finds an outlet and I’m back in my comfort zone: running.
My nerves vanished in an instant. With lovely, soft grass under foot, and somewhere in the darkness the Sugarloaf looming over us, I was out doing something I’d had in mind for years: a proper fell race. I’m fairly confident in the hills, these are the places that call to me, the places that feel like home. But in the dark, running by torchlight? That’s a whole other experience.
However bright the headtorch (and I’m very happy with my Petzl Iko Core), the colour is still leeched out of the landscape, even from the spots where the light shines brightest. This doesn’t really matter in the city, when a headtorch is more about safety from other road users, but out in the hills, away from all the city lights, that lack of colour matters. The ground looks smoother, the undulations harder to spot, making running downhill significantly more demanding as it is so much harder to judge what your feet are going to land on. There’s a strange beauty to it though, this calm, gently greyed world.
Navigation is harder too. That feels like a blindingly obvious statement when talking about night running, but it wasn’t the lack of visual markers that surprised me. What I hadn’t anticipated was how hard it was to judge where I was without the rest of the landscape visible as a guide. I’d studied the route, I knew how the course should feel as it curved and changed direction on its journey around the mountain. But other than when we actively turned off a path, I couldn’t feel the curve or straightness of the route as I ran. With only a short distance visible ahead at any moment, the path was nearly always straight. Only I knew it wasn’t. Disorientation could have set in very easily, but luckily for all of us who were running, the course was brilliantly marked out with reflective markers at regular intervals, and marshals in the few places where a wrong turn was possible.
Once I settled in to trusting the course and adjusting my gait and perspective for the lack of light, the race became an absolute joy. I ran over half of it with my running partner, each of us encouraging the other on the seemingly endless ascent where every marker that appeared in the darkness was higher than the last. Eventually we found one that was slightly lower, then another lower still, and we separated as the descent really kicked in. My confidence had kicked in by now, and those last couple of miles running on my own down a mountain in the dark were mesmerizing. The world had shrunk to just that little circle of light, the thickening dew beneath my feet a sign of the shrinking temperature as the night wore on and the cold air filled my lungs. The wind that had buffeted us near the top had died away, leaving me alone on a beautifully still night, only the sound of my feet and my breath disturbing the peace. It was almost a shock to realise that I could hear the sound of people ahead of me, then as I rounded the final corner the lights of the finish line and the car park brought me back to the busy world of a race.
I won’t deny a tinge of regret as I left that brief moment of peaceful, still solitude behind. But it was only a little tinge. That race was a first for ten of us from Run Grangetown, and there is something very special about experiencing these things together for the first time. And I suppose that encapsulates so much of what is good about racing: a group activity, that each individual undertakes in their own way, and at their own pace.
My first fell race certainly won’t be my last. I might even think about actually racing it one of these days, although there’ll be some work to be done to make that a realistic prospect. But either way, combining my favourite type of running with an event that pushes me out of my comfort zone must surely be a positive move forward.
I Run Free 