From the Pennau to the Pennine - Spine South Challenger Race Report - 15.06.24

If you spend any of your time running in the hills of the UK, or have the misfortune of living with someone who does (sorry Nicola), you have probably at least heard of the Montane Spine Race.

The original Winter Spine Race has gained a reputation as being one of the toughest endurance events in the UK. The race is held in the depths of winter, the weather is almost always shit, and it covers the entire 268 miles of the Pennine Way through National Parks, in wild and remote parts of Northern England and finishing in Scotland. Sounds idyllic right?

Over the last 10 years, the frankly insane performances from some of the sport’s elite athletes (Jasmin Paris, Damian Hall, Nicky Spinks, John Kelly and Jack Scott to name but a few!) has led to a huge increase in popularity for the event.

In turn this has led to the development of other versions of the race in both winter and summer so that us mere mortals can have a taste of the experience if we don’t fancy the full 268 mile endeavour.

My original intention for 2024 was to have another bash at the Paddy Buckley and/or the Bob Graham Round. These classic fell running rounds are what inspire me to get out training in the fells in all weathers. I love the adventure, and the sheer ridiculousness of covering so much ground, over so many summits, on technical terrain in such a short space of time. 

HOWEVER, my esteemed colleagues at Longtown Mountain Rescue Team planted the seed that they would be going to represent the team in the Spine MRT Challenger South back in late 2023. 

The Spine Challenger South is a 176km (108 mile) ultra-marathon following the first half of the Pennine Way National Trail from Edale in the Peak District to Hardraw in the Yorkshire Dales clocking up around 5,000m of elevation.

The MRT Challenger South is exactly the same race, but starts 30 minutes later than the main field and is only available to Mountain Rescue members. It is Montane’s way of supporting mountain rescue teams in the UK, offering MRT volunteers heavily discounted entries. Awesome. MRT members remain part of the overall race, but also have their own category to compete in to prove who is the nippiest Mountain Rescue volunteer in the land while repping their team.  

Upon hearing of my teammate’s intentions, I instantly suffered serious FOMO (fear of missing out – for the old school) and decided to scrap original plans in favour of going for my own adventure on part of the Pennine Way while representing Longtown MRT.

The race differs from your traditional trail ultra-marathon in that there is a very specific and comprehensive mandatory kit list (carrying a non-collapsible mug, a fully taped seam bivvy bag and a set of safety goggles are just a few examples) AND there is only one drop bag location to restock your nutrition at around the 75km mark. You have to carry a lot of nutrition, and don’t have the regular contact with civilisation that you tend to get in other events. 

I put in a great training block from January through to June, and the absolutely abysmal weather that we’ve had in Wales during that time meant that I went into the race with plenty of adversity training under the belt.

Nearly all of my training leading up to the event was in the Black Mountains in the wettest, windiest, most miserable winter conditions I can remember. There was the odd day of beautiful snow covered hills and then in May, maybe 2 warm sunny days, but generally… IT WAS SHIT.

I was worried leading into the event that the weather would shift drastically, and I would be presented with a heatwave with no considerable heat acclimatisation to my name.

Turns out that settled weather isn’t really a thing in the North of England either. Who knew!?!

After a turbulent weather week leading into the race, it was anybody's guess how it was going to play out on the day. On top of the massive mandatory kit list, I was trying to pack the pieces of kit that I knew worked for me in varying conditions while sticking to a smaller pack size than most other competitors.

The morning of the race was gloriously sunny with every weather being forecast over the following couple of days. As the main race left, my eagerness to get going kept growing. I’d told myself not to get caught up in hunting people down early on, but the temptation to ‘catch up’ was already massive. I hate tapering, I enjoy running in the hills most days, so I was eager to get out and start my adventure after feeling fat and lazy all week. 

After the longest 30 minutes of my life, the mountain rescue race began. I lost the entire field within 750 metres of starting and before even making it out of the village of Edale. A slightly bold strategy maybe?!? The sun was shining, and the paths were really well maintained leading onto the famous Kinder plateau, meaning that I was floating along effortlessly.

The history of the mass trespass on Kinder Scout played a significant role in us all having the little access we do have to the countryside, so it felt fitting that my Spine adventure started here. 

At only 5km into the race, I had ascended Jacob’s Ladder, touched the trig on Kinder Low and overtaken around half of the athletes in the main race who started half hour ahead of me…whoops!

The plateau itself is a fell runner's dream. The paths are strewn with gritstone boulders that grip like no other rock type, with plenty of bog hopping thrown in for good measure! 

As I continued along the plateau and up the short climb to Mill Hill, I passed the super inspiring Allie Bailey. This was the first time that it crossed my mind that maybe I had started out a little quick! Allie has got an impressive list of world firsts in endurance sport, as well as having completed (and often winning) many 100+ mile races. By the time I made it to Snake Pass at 16km, I was half hour up on my schedule and feeling invincible. Just another 160km to go! 

As I made the climb up Bleaklow Head, the weather started to turn. Nothing major to begin with, just a bit of a ramp up in the wind speed and the odd light shower as I passed the leaders of the women’s race. I descended to Torside Reservoir where I briefly joined in with a half marathon that happened to be going on at the same time (fun!) and at this point received a text from a fellow Longtown MRT colleague back at home.

He informed me that I had passed through the control point at Torside 15 minutes faster than the overall race leader. 

Now… I certainly feel that I know what I’m doing when it comes to ultra running in the mountains, but there are a few people I am lucky enough to know that have achieved incredible things whose advice I take. Andrew is an experienced endurance athlete himself, having completed both the north and south spine races in the past. The fact that he had taken the time to figure this out and text it to me I think, was his way of politely telling me to wind my neck in! 

By this point, I think I had managed to worm my way into about 7th or 8th place in the overall standings so decided to take Andrew’s advice and stopped running on feel, and consciously took my foot off the gas.

Next up was the steep ascent towards Black Hill. The terrain around here was beautiful, covered with heather and sustained climbs that reminded me a lot of the northern end of the Black Mountains back at home. The weather came in, in a big way.

Torrential rain, hail storms, high winds and poor visibility meant that I spent the next 4 hours or so hiding in my waterproof jacket, chugging along. I had the pleasure of spending about 20 minutes of this section with Danielle, a Spine volunteer who has completed the full winter race. She was running out to Hebden Bridge to volunteer for the day - what a LEGEND! 

At around 50km, I left the Peak District National Park and crossed the M62 before covering some ground along big open uplands continuing to be soaked through. 

As I got closer to Checkpoint 1 in Hebden Bridge at 75km, the weather broke and the sunshine returned just as I was passing the Stoodley Pike monument and descending down into the valley. All I started to think about was that Hebden Bridge is the home of one of my favourite breweries - Northern Monk. I wondered if a cheeky pint would be on the cards before heading back out! I still had another 100km of the race to push through, so thought it probably wasn’t a good strategy.

After a 20 minute pit-stop in checkpoint 1 to refill on nutrition and smash some pringles (technical nutrition strategy), I was ready to head back out onto the course. I knew I’d be asked to present some mandatory kit before leaving, but ended up having to produce kit from the absolute depths of my bag, meaning I ended up spending a further 10 minutes or so at the checkpoint. 

Leaving checkpoint 1, I told myself that this is where the race actually begins. Everything I need to get to the end should be with me and I have 100km to the finish line in Hardraw.

The early evening weather was incredible. Beautiful clear skies made the view across the Walshaw Dean Reservoirs feel like a perfect summer evening stroll. Apart from the slight problem that my legs had decided they weren’t interested in moving fast anymore. I had a brief chat with Francois, who was also running his first 100 miler and looking strong. I tried to keep up with him but couldn’t keep pace across the section. 

I decided it was time to recollect myself. Stop. Sort my kit, sort my nutrition for the next section and start a fresh. I noticed that my phone battery was on 20%, so I got my powerbank out to charge. I placed the phone and powerbank on a wall while I got my head torch and warmer layers closer to hand for the night section. At this point my phone thought it a good idea to go on a little adventure of its own and jumped off the wall, smashing the screen protector to pieces. 

In the process of trying to remove the broken screen protector, I managed to cut my hand which proceeded to start pissing blood. Great.

I quickly established that my phone and powerbank were also broken and that now I had no way of easily contacting anyone. I rummaged to the bottom of my bag to find my first aid kit, badly patched up the cut and got moving again. 

2km down the track I realised I had in fact cut my hand in multiple places and it was continuing to ooze blood from the other cuts that I hadn’t addressed. This marked the start of my first low in the race.

As the sun set, the temperature dropped as I approached the bog fest that is Ickornshaw Moor.

At first, it was quite a novelty to feel like I was back on home turf amongst the tussocks and dubious puddles that might swallow a person whole. Within 5 minutes, the nostalgia had worn off and I was bog hopping through the mist and dark with somewhere near 100km in my legs and a further 75ish to go.  

Questioning my life choices, I continued down off the moor while mumbling and grumbling to myself. Then , out of the mist, my headtorch caught the reflection of a familiar sight.

I could swear I had seen a Mountain Rescue jacket and as I got a bit closer, the headtorch coming towards me confirmed that I wasn’t hallucinating.

It was a member of Holme Valley Mountain Rescue Team who had walked up onto the moor to see me into the unofficial Craven Energy Triathlon Club aid station. 

It’s not an exaggeration to say that these guys turned my race around. 

After a 5 minute pit stop where I got some hot food, a coffee, a refill on water and a bit of warmth by the fire, I was a new man ready to go and complete the latter part of the race. 

The next section of the course is a long stint through the countryside to Gargrave. The amount of gates and stiles I navigated in this section is certainly a new record for me.

Needless to say, I’d have preferred to have been on an exposed mountain ridge in the dark, wind and mist than trying to safely cross fields full of cows.

After a few successful cow dodging episodes, I convinced myself that me and the cows had an understanding. I don’t eat you, therefore you don’t trample me to death in a boggy field in Yorkshire. Deal. Lack of sleep starting to kick in? Yep, you’re talking to cows mate.

Throughout the night I would occasionally catch a glimpse of a light ahead that I assumed was Francois still making good ground and when I looked behind, I occasionally saw the flash of a headtorch. 

On the approach to Gargave, the headtorch behind became a person passing me as I was trying to ram another sachet of Tailwind into my water bottle.

Throughout the early hours and into sunrise, I played a game of yo-yo with David. It seemed that our pace was equally matched but we were having our low points at alternating times. 

We were treated to a spectacular sunrise as we climbed Malham Cove and motored on towards Malham Tarn that I had told myself was the ‘beginning of the end’. 

In reality there is still around 45km to go with Fountains Fell, Pen y Ghent and the Cam Road still between me and the end.

This strategy worked for a while and I felt pretty good on the climb over Fountains Fell, chatting with David as our pace matched. 

The weather deteriorated yet again as we were topping out which spurred me on to put a good effort in on the descent. 

The following climb up Pen Y Ghent was misty, windy, cold and not without a few weird moments. I was convinced that David and I had caught Francois as I could hear voices ahead. It turns out it was a family going for a hike in the mist at 6am.

As you do. I can’t really comment, as that’s exactly the sort of thing I do with my kids! 

As I approached the little rock step near the summit, I had a moment where I ‘woke up’ as if I had been sleep running. I genuinely had no idea what I was doing or how I got there! After a few seconds my brain kicked in and remembered the little adventure we were currently undertaking.

Topping out on Pen y Ghent, it was as if my body had decided that the race was ‘in the bag’ and therefore it could start seizing up and refusing to take on food.

At this point I had clocked around 150km, but still had another 26 or so kilometres to make it to the finish in Hardraw.

The long descent off Pen Y Ghent was manageable, but as I started the climb up from Horton onto the cam road, everything hurt. 

The only way I was able to maintain moving forward was by running (I say running, it was probably more of a shuffle to any observer) for a couple of minutes until I felt like I might pass out, then walking for a couple of minutes and repeating.

David and I continued to spend snippets of time running together which certainly kept the morale up and kept me honest whenever I thought about stopping to cry a little.

After what seemed like an eternity on the cam road, we were descending into Hawes.

Even though I hadn’t managed to take on much in the way of calories for the last 20km, the sight of the end and another runner appearing behind us, spurred me on to run (probably shuffle) the final 3km to the finish. 

As I approached the finish line, there was a brief moment of reflection… “Did that really all happen in basically one day?” Starting in Edale seemed like a year ago. That is I think, one of the things that draws me to the ultra distance most.

The feeling of being completely consumed in what you’re doing and being fully present on an adventure is quite a hard state to come by for me during the busy day to day. The sheer distance you have to travel means that you have to be consumed in what you’re doing.

95% of the race was an incredible experience, a truly wholesome adventure. The other 5% was character building, hard, painful, you name it. That 5% though, is the stuff that makes me a better athlete on the next adventure.

Crossing the line and being greeted by my Longtown team mates was the icing on the cake to a great day out in the Peak District & Yorkshire Dales. Within half an hour, I was showered, in my crocs and sipping a celebratory beer in Hawes.

Top support crew!

Final stats:

MRT Race: 1st place & course record (2nd place MRT athlete was over 13 hours behind me)

Overall race: 6th 

Distance: 177.26km

Elevation: 5,085m 

Time: 28 hours 38 minutes 40 seconds

Now… where’s that Northern Monk beer!?!

Strava link: https://www.strava.com/activities/11666062436