13 Valleys Ultra
This weekend I headed up to the Lake District for the 13 Valleys Ultra. As the name suggests, the route takes in all 13 valleys of the Lake District, starting and finishing in Keswick.
The race started on Friday at 6pm and we headed off in beautiful evening sunshine heading along the shores of Derwent Water before tackling the first climb up and over towards Buttermere.
It soon turned dark and I managed to have a pretty demoralising start to the race, falling over twice on the way into Buttermere and snapping my poles on the climb out of Wasdale. Feeling pretty battered and bruised, I wasn’t sure how up for another 80 or so miles I felt. But the kindness of strangers prevailed, and a very nice man at the next aid station kindly lent me some poles and sent me on my way. What a legend!! I still haven’t quite worked out how you return some walking poles to the ‘nice tall man at Dalesgarth aid station’.
This gave me all the motivation I needed and I plodded on, ticking off multiple climbs, several cheese and crisps sandwiches and a few classic lake district showers.
The final climbs, and in particular descents up High Street and Sticks Pass were particularly brutal. But I managed to get back to where I started in Keswick 28 hours and 30 minutes later, having completed over 115 miles, 27000 feet of ascent and having consumed an insane amount of doughnuts, freddos and rice pudding along the way and finishing 8th overall
