Coast To Coast
Ultrarunner Damian Hall tells the inside story of fells, falls and forgetting during his attempt to break the record for the 185-mile Coast to Coast route from Cumbria to Yorkshire
Damian Hall suffers on a 185-mile epic
‘I’ve run further and gone longer without sleep before, but this feels different. There
is much leaning’
WHERE are these people taking me?’ It’s a very odd question for me to ask, seeing as several weeks ago I had asked these fabulous people, my support runners, to help me get to a very specific place, Robin Hood’s Bay, North Yorkshire, the end of Wainwright’s Coast to Coast route.
I’m chasing the 30-year-old record, set by legendary fell runner Mike Hartley, of 39 hours and 36 minutes for the 185-mile trans-England route. But with only about four miles left and some 38 hours on my feet without sleep, this once simple-sounding mission has become confusing. In fact, I seem to have entirely forgotten about it.
I’ve also just attempted the challenging manoeuvre of removing a mid-layer without first taking off my outer layer. And I’ve started falling over a bit. I feel drunk – or like a drunken child, as one support runner will later describe my behaviour. My crew, who’ve all been with me on similar runs, are now really worried about me. I’ve run further and gone longer without sleep before, but this feels different. I’m being weird. There is much leaning. And it turns out that I’m blissfully ignorant of the fact that I’ve foolishly got myself into a life-threatening situation.
After setting a Fastest Known Time on the Pennine Way last year (RW, Oct 2020), I was looking for a similar project and my mischievous friend, Matt Neale, whispered ‘Coast to Coast’ in my ear. While not technically a National Trail, the route conceived by the spectacularly whiskered guidebook author Alfred Wainwright is a popular hiking trail. The approximately 185-mile route, with upwards of 20,000ft of ascent, starts at St Bees, Cumbria, bounces through the Lake District, tumbles into the Yorkshire Dales, rolls out across the flat Vale of York, then crumples up again for the North York Moors and down the coast to Robin Hood’s Bay.
Like the Pennine Way, the Coast to
Coast (C2C) had a long-standing record set by Hartley etched next to it. Also like the Pennine Way, I had some personal history with the route, having hiked it over a decade ago, back before I had any idea people could run such things. Coast to
Coast takes most people 12 or more days to hike, so on completing it in 10, I had felt quite the endurance hero. As well as passing through three national parks of pleasingly different character, there is something very appealing about the idea of starting on one side of the country and finishing at the other. And then, of course, there was the matter of the record.
The excellent Northern Traverse race follows the same route with only minor tweaks, but no one in the event has got close to Hartley’s time (though, to fair, they do have to carry some mandatory kit). Indeed, Hartley was at the peak of his powers when he set his mark. ‘Of all my records, I paced this one the most consistently,’ he told me.’ He maintained 5mph through the Lake District lumps and barely slowed till he reached the other side of the country. That made the time some 0.6mph faster than his record-breaking Pennine Way run. ‘Mike set the bar so high that I don’t think anyone had a serious attempt at it since then,’ Fell Runners Association longdistance-records custodian Martin
Stone told me. Gulp.
The C2C route has changed slightly down the years, but with the help of NT race director and Open Tracking owner James Thurlow, and Mike himself, I was able to trace the record route accurately. I didn’t mind the distance, but I was wary of that speed. I’d need to average 5mph for a day, a night and another day to beat the record. If I was looking for omens, I found them in a village named Hartley and a Hartley Fell en route. There’s also a Crackpot Hall.
A road crew of Nicki Lygo, Tim Laney, Mark Townsend and support runners came together quickly, many of whom had somehow not been put off by helping me on the Pennine Way. I wanted to use the run to draw attention to our climate and ecological emergency – by picking up litter, fuelling without animal products (largely without creating plastic waste), using local pacers and offsetting regrettable emissions from travel. It would have been even better if I could have done the run without all this help and far fewer car journeys, but you don’t break Mike Hartley records that way.
WEST INTENTIONS
Ia blustery day at
T WAS St Bees as we gathered for the off, early on Tuesday, May 25. The forecast was mixed, but not bad enough to call it off, and at least it’d be cool. After a two-minute beach clean, I followed one of two pre-C2C traditions by selecting a pebble to carry across the country, but decided that the tide was too far out to dip my toe in the Irish Sea (the other tradition). A quick swig of tea and we were off at 6am on the dot.
Those early miles with Sam Tyrer and Rory Harris were smooth and fast. I didn’t stop at transition points. I felt brilliant (as I should, so early in the endeavour) and went with it. I felt I needed to build a buffer on Mike’s record time in case of any mishaps or slumps later on (but then, the paradox is that the faster you go, the more likely they are to happen). Also in my mind was the need to get through the Lakes without too much collateral damage.
Old pals Kim Collison and Paul Tierney joined me at Honister and we yabbered away as we skipped across the fells in some hail and brief showers, but mostly we were blessed with sunshine. Chris Tyrer and Steve Birkinshaw swapped in at Patterdale, starting with the long slog up to Kirsty Pike, the highest point on the route. Former Wainwrights record-holder Birkinshaw did everything he could to run on the fells rather than trails. Yet I was somehow two hours ahead of Hartley’s time.•
A few soggy fields and we were in Shap, 60 miles and 11 hours in, and the end of the start. On paper, it was going very well indeed; off paper, it was starting to get difficult. I’d been going pretty fast by my standards, but even factoring that in, I felt wearier than I’d hoped, a little dizzy perhaps. My hips felt stiff, shortening my cadence. Had I overcooked it?
Until that point, I’d deliberately stayed off the sugars, feasting instead on Supernatural Fuel pouches, Outdoor Provisions bars, and nut butter and banana sandwiches. I grabbed some Delushious cake from the VW Transporter and almost missed the very flattering fact that Martin Stone and Mike Hartley had turned out to see me. I walked up the road with my new support runners, Mark Kerry, Paul Nelson and Jack Eyre, an easier pace allowing three slices of vegan pizza to slide down my gullet, generously cooked and donated by my amazing pacers.
‘There’s some good running from here,’ says Hartley in Summit Fever Media’s daily video (runnersworld.com/uk/damianhall),
‘if you’ve got legs left after the Lakes.’
More rain drummed down as we gambolled through the buxom Dales. I paused at the van for the first time at Acres, feeling
I had an embryonic blister; we could see no sign of it, but Nicki applied some K-tape, nonetheless, while Tim kindly exchanged my wet socks and shoes for a dry pair of Inov-8 Terraultra G 270s.
Shap to Kirkby Stephen had been the wettest section so far, but, on the plus side, I was still two hours ahead. My saintly crew provided fresh chips, soup (kindly warmed in a local cafe, The White Hare) and that dependable super-fuel – tea. I then indulged myself by sitting for a few minutes to get the crucial calories down.
In the foreboding gloaming, Matt
Neale, Andrew Higgins and Mark Clarkson joined me for the much-longer-than-Iremembered grind up to the Nine Standards, several-metre-high cairns that may be 500 years old and – legend has it – were built to resemble an army to deter invading Scots. For the first time, I was struggling to keep up with my pacers. My tummy felt bloated. The terrain was horrible – slippery, sloppy moorland.
Keld, at around midnight, signalled both the crossing point with the Pennine Way and the halfway point on the C2C. I knocked back more soup and some delicious rice pudding at the van and asked for no more electrolytes in my drinks, which I thought might help my tummy settle. In my head, it was a temporary measure, but I would forget to request their reinstatement.
We reached the village of Reeth just after 1am, without incident, other than two amazing strangers out ringing cowbells, which gave me a huge lift.
I was slowing a little, as the body doesn’t really relish going without sleep, but we were still around two hours up on schedule. We maintained the gap to the cobbled streets of
Richmond at 3:25am. I still felt decent enough – if predictably weary – now my tummy had settled. Jason
Millward and Paul Booth joined me for a tediously flat spell, through fields at first, then roads, and often in drizzle. But the early sun emerged at times and they were great company, perking me up with dad jokes. Nonetheless, I was becoming increasingly morose.
‘I felt wearier than I’d hoped, a little dizzy perhaps. My hips felt stiff. Had I overcooked it?’
SLOW AND UNSTEADY
Rin the village
AIN WAS FALLING of Danby Wiske at 6:05am,
140 miles and 24 hours in, still two hours and change ahead of the record. Really, everything was going top banana; it’s just it didn’t really feel that way. I was frustrated by my progress and feeling a little bit…strange. A photo was taken of me cleaning my teeth, and damn, do I look like I’ve seen things (see left).
For the North York Moors, which aren’t exactly mountains, but are deceptively lumpy and exposed, I had, for some inexplicable reason, spaced out my usual two-hourly crew stops to three hours. This may have been fine in decent weather, but while the forecast had suggested some showers, it was less friendly than that. More like five hours of steady-to-heavy rain and some thuggish winds.
‘At Lord Stones, it was pissing it down,’ remembers Tim. ‘It was cold. It was horrible. I was really worried about you. It was the beginning of the end and the start of your struggles.’ Unusually, I don’t remember much about Lord Stones.•
Jayson Cavill and Andy Berry took over support-runner duties. We seemed to go up steep hills in the rain a lot. I remember clambering over some rocks. Jayson’s partner, Kim, kindly provided an impromptu aid station, where I took a can of cola. There was a crew point at The Lion Inn, apparently, but I remember nothing about it. There were puddles on the ground, and fog, I’m told. I seemed cold. My crew were worried I wasn’t wearing enough and it was a fight to make me put on a mid-layer. I tried some curry, but complained it was too spicy, even though I had been the one who had added chilli flakes to it. I had soup and chocolate pudding all over my face.
Then Jayson was on a bike, which confused me, even though he’d told me about it beforehand. And we seemed to go back on ourselves, which confused me again. I started getting suspicious of
Andy and Jayson, rudely questioning them: ‘Are you sure we’re going the right way?’ Everything looked the same: fog and bog. There was a runnable gradual climb that went on for hours, bending into the rain and wind, Andy and Jayson gallantly forming a protective barrier for their whingeing, ungrateful and increasingly slow burden.
At least the rain stopped at Glaisdale (3:30pm, 36 hours and 170 miles in, around 90 minutes ahead of record time). But again, I have little memory of it. I do sort of remember trying to remove my mid-layer without taking off my outer layer and finding that a bit of a kerfuffle. I was staggering. I fell over on the moor in sight of the van. It looked so pathetic and comical that people thought I’d done it on purpose. There’s footage of me leaning back weirdly. Of Tim with his arm around me, saying something encouraging. ‘He’s gone a bit...slow,’ he also said. Andy was somewhat blunter.
‘You were totally confused from the moment we gathered you up at Glaisdale,’ remembers Nikki Carr Walls, who joined me with Sam Dunwell and (later) Joe Leadley, Danny Walls and Neil Webster – which confused me again, making it feel a bit like I’d gatecrashed a club run. ‘Where am I going? Who am I going with? Who are they?’ I asked my crew.
I was confused, too, when Sam repeatedly offered me a giant cylindrical tub of custardy, fruity lumps (Mark’s excellently unorthodox creation), though they went down a treat. Precision Fuel gels were going down nicely, too. I was eating well, but a comical clumsiness added to my state of confusion. As well as asking weird questions, I was frequently losing my balance. The feeling of a supportive hand in the small of my back saved me numerous times, once on a bridge. I also slowed dramatically. I just felt so weak. There’s comical footage of me ‘running’ while my support entourage all walk. And still they’re quicker.
The amazing Nicki Lygo, a doctor by profession, was starting to twig what was going on, the dangerous state I was in, and asked my pacers not to let me drink any more (if she had known that I was also falling over repeatedly, she says now, she’d have stopped me).
‘As well as asking weird questions, I was losing my balance. And I slowed dramatically’