Around this time yesterday, I was finishing the longest, hardest race I’ve ever run . The Dales High Way is a 90-mile ultra-marathon along the long-distance footpath of the same name, from Saltaire (outside Bradford) up to Appleby-in-Westmorland. It’s a whistle-stop tour of the natural highlights of the Yorkshire Dales and could easily claim to be Britain’s Most Beautiful race. The route takes in Ilkley Moor, Skipton Moor, Gordale Scar and Malham Cove, Settle, Ingleborough, Ribblehead Viaduct, Dentdale (one of my favourite places on earth), Sedbergh, The Calf and the Howgill fells - and, just before the finish, “Rachel’s Wood”. It is VERY hilly for a race in England: my watch clocked 4500m of ascent over the course, which is about the height of Mont Blanc. But there are generous cut-offs applied to the 90-mile race. We began at 6am on Saturday, and had until 6pm on Sunday (so, 36 hours) to finish.
The Dales High Way had been on my radar since 2020, when I ran the Dales Way ultramarathon (organised by the same race company, Punk Panther). The Dales Way footpath measures around 83 miles in distance, and travels from Ilkley up to Bowness-on-Windermere (although the race was held in the opposite direction, travelling south). It is just gorgeous and, for a long ultra in the Yorkshire Dales and Cumbria, it really doesn’t include much ascent. This is because, in 1968, the route had been designed to cling to rivers, in order to celebrate the widening of Right to Roam legislation to include footpath access to riversides. So the Dales Way is lush and gentle, tracing the rivers Kent, Lune, Rawthey and Dee up to the Pennine watershed at Cam Fell, and then, on the other side of the Pennines, following the river Wharfe from its source at Beckermonds down to Ilkley. (If you’re interested, I write about my adventures on the Dales Way in my book In Her Nature - and I’d hugely recommend it as a route, either for running or hiking; in one go or split into sections.)
Compared to the Dales High Way, the Dales Way is, almost literally, a walk in the park. And once I’d finished the latter race in August 2020, and loved it so much, it seemed like a natural progression to have a go at its much tougher sister, the Dales High Way, which was being organised by Punk Panther too. So I signed up online, and paid my fees, and drew up a training schedule to run from August 2020 to the race in May 2021.
But then life at home became very complicated, and the demands of my full-time job were very high, plus the deadline for the manuscript of In Her Nature was due in September 2021. After three years of intense running I did not have the physical, emotional or logistical resources to commit myself to the necessary training. So I decided to take a fallow year, in which I planned to let my body recover and try to stay on top of what was required of me at home and at work, and I deferred my race entry until summer 2022.
Then, in January 2022, my husband died and I had a breakdown and barely got out of bed for 6 months. For a long time, the idea of running at all seemed impossible. Very occasionally, I put on my trainers and tried to do an easy 5-mile loop from my house, but it felt like my entire body had turned into liquid. It seemed that I no longer had any muscles - and perhaps not even a skeleton.
I knew that I had to get it back, though. I hated feeling so weak. For years, running had brought me so much joy: the opportunities for adventures, for feeling flushed through with fresh air, for exploring this ridiculously stunning and enormous county in which I live; for discovering facets and strengths that I didn’t know I had; for meeting people and learning their motivations to run; for the silent and rhythmic meditation of plod-plod-plod-plod; for feeling so strong and well. I couldn’t bear the idea that all of this had been taken away from me, and I couldn’t bear the prospect of what my life might be without it.
So in the summer of 2022, the part of me that Takes Charge signed me up for a 56km race in mid-November of that year; an event I’d done before, which, again, was organised by Punk Panther. It went well, and I knocked around an hour off my previous time. Something felt wrong, though. In the past, I had run with an eye on competition, and had run as fast as possible for as long as possible, in the aim of placing fairly high up the results list. In this race, I’d run quite swiftly, and, usually, I’d have been elated by having knocked so many minutes off my previous finishing time, but instead I felt totally exhausted; sick and flat. The buzz of competition no longer felt good. It was just stressful and it hurt to push myself all-out. And actually, I no longer wanted to finish as quickly as possible. I wanted to make the most of a day out. Trauma had changed me and I realised I needed to find a new way to run; a new ‘why’.
By the summer of 2023, I was still nowhere near my previous levels of fitness and endurance, but I decided to sign up for the next Dales High Way, in summer 2024, as a motivation to get back out there properly. I had worried that the effort and costs involved in organising childcare - not just for the race itself, but for the long training runs that would be necessary - might be too great. But then I was lucky enough to find a brilliant nanny to help look after my 3 daughters, and some work came in to pay for her. I bought a treadmill to allow me to run at home, and the race preparation seemed more do-able.
In devising a training schedule for the race, I divided the route up into chunks, each of which seemed like it should be manageable in a single day. The Dales High Way doesn’t deviate more than 10 miles from the Settle-Carlisle railway line, which meant it was feasible to use public transport to travel to and from each run’s start and finish points. So I could recce the route in point-to-point sections, rather than having to do it in loops or out-and-backs, which would have required more training runs to cover the whole distance. The Dales High Way website was a fantastically useful source of information, and, based on its suggestions, I planned runs from Skipton to Settle, Settle to Chapel-Le-Dale (and Ribblehead); Ribblehead to Dent; Dent to Sedbergh; Sedbergh to Newbiggin-on-Lune (and home from Kirkby Stephen); and Newbiggin-on-Lune to the finish in Appleby-in-Westmorland.
The first recces, which I did in the autumn, were TOUGH. I found the hills incredibly hard, especially the constant slow ascents between Skipton and Settle, and the downhills weren't much easier, severely taxing my quads and knees. I realised that I’d need to incorporate a proper hill-training regime into my schedule, so I started running for 1-2 hours on the treadmill, which I set at a 5% incline (while watching Interior Design Masters on my iPad). To help with the downhills and improving my quad and knee strength, I upped my kettlebell training time and moved from a 12kg bell to a 14kg (or even sometimes 16kg) bell, with lots of lunges and squats built into the schedule. I stretched for 30 mins every day. When I took the girls backpacking in Laos over Christmas, I brought some travel kettlebells (you fill them with water) and a skipping rope, and worked out for an hour each day in the heat and humidity. So by the time the race itself came around, I was in much better condition than I had been when I first signed up.
Over those recces, I’d also discovered a new ‘why’ in my running. I found that, if I thought too much about how fit and fast I had been before my husband died, and tried to reach the same standard, then my day out was instantly spoiled. Instead of concentrating on the pleasures - the rare joy of a day to myself, out in the countryside - I was focusing on how crap I was. And when I thought back to the races I’d done in the Before Times, when I’d come second or third, I realised that there had been a lot of pain in those races: occasions when I’d been shattered, but had flogged myself on, whipping my body round with coke and bags and bags of jelly babies, which put me on a rollercoaster from sugar-induced highs to depleted lows. There had been plenty of times when I’d not stopped to look around me and take in the views; or, if I had enjoyed the view, then that joy was instantly wiped out when I thought about how much faster I could have been if I hadn’t paused.
So I thought, from now on, I might try doing events with a different mindset. I set myself a few goals for the Dales High Way, but none of them were based around time or ranking. I wanted to (a) finish, (b) overall, have a v good time with stunning scenery and nice chat, (c) enjoy proper food, which I’d trialled during recces, and which would keep me on a more even keel that the sugar-and-caffeine-based nutrition that I’d favoured in the past, (d) not put my body under so much strain that I’d be immobilised and unable to look after my girls the following week, (e) conserve a little bit of energy for an adventure I’m having later this month, when I plan to run-hike-camp along the 155-mile Peak Way footpath, and (f) not get injured. In the event, all of those Wish List items were realised.
On Saturday, my phone alarm went at 4.10am, in a cheap hotel 15-mins walk from the start in Saltaire (on the canal outside Bradford). I’d been awake at 4am the previous day, too, to watch some of the General Election results come in, and it wasn’t a particularly nice thought that I’d be awake in the early hours for 3 days in a row. I was also shattered after 2 weeks of intense writing until 1am each night, for an imminent deadline, so it wasn’t the best position to be in at the start. I was running the race with my lovely friend and ultra-running kettlebell tutor Alan (click on the link if you fancy doing excellent online kettlebell classes, or if you’re looking for a personal trainer or running coach), and he was feeling similarly groggy. But, there’s nothing to be done about it, and a lot of long-distance running is about rolling with the punches.
I hadn’t recced the first 18 miles of the route, from Saltaire to Skipton, and it was very pleasant, following the River Aire, cutting through Shipley Glen - where I had a brief moment of rejoicing that Philip Davies (the ‘misogynistic’ MP, who had ‘bet £8000 he would lose [his] seat’) had just been ousted by Labour’s Anna Dixon - and striking out over Ilkley Moor and Skipton Moor, before descending sharply into Skipton. Ascent-wise, this part of the route is not challenging - which was lucky because I’d been feeling sick-as-a-dog from the start. I think it was probably the early start messing with my digestive system, but I found myself unable to eat much breakfast - for pretty much the first time EVER - and with every step, I let out a burp. Yeah, not nice. In Skipton, I thought I’d better give my circadian rhythms a Hard Reset, so I made Alan (who is an extremely fast runner, who boasts a sub-3-hour marathon time and legs longer than my entire body) stop running and accompany me into Caffe Nero, where I bought a coffee, croissant and orange juice. This second breakfast seemed to persuade my stomach that the day had now started, and I didn’t feel sick for the rest of the race - although I was left with a constant craving for more croissants (which, I’ve decided, are an ultra-running superfood; but which are sadly not easily available across most of the Yorkshire Daes).
With my stomach sorted, and entering the part of the race route that I’d recced, it felt like the event had properly got going. The next section runs from Skipton to Settle, and is around 18 miles long. The first bit is a right old slog up some really unsatisfying hills, such as Weets Top, which goes on forever and doesn’t have a proper summit to show for it. This was the section that had felt so hard in training, but it was really heartening that, fitness-wise, it didn’t feel too difficult this time around. Once we got to Gordale Scar and Malham Cove, the scenery is so spectacular from there onwards - with panoramic views over West Yorkshire and Cumbria, and limestone cliffs emerging from lush grass banks - that I didn’t really register any ascents, and the downhill into Settle was glorious. I’d recce-d it in the dark, so I hadn’t appreciated the wide soft paths and the views north up towards the Three Peaks.
At Settle, we had completed over a third of the race distance: we were about 37 miles in and it was 4.30pm, 10.5 hours since the start. Ye Olde Naked Man cafe was just about to close, but we got there just in time for a cup of hot sweet tea, a croissant (yay!!!!), a packet of crisps, and a short sit-down in the sunshine. I’d already covered my longest distance since 2020, and I was feeling really good: not tired, not achy, and buoyed up by much better weather than the forecast had suggested.
The next section took us from Settle over to Broadrake, a bunkbarn close to the Ribblehead viaduct, where we were looking forward to an indoor checkpoint providing hot food and drinks. Going into the race, I didn’t have any preconceptions about timing for competitive reasons, but I did really want to get to Broadrake before nightfall, so that I wouldn’t have to do the very steep descent off Ingleborough in the dark. On my way up, I decided that Ingleborough is my least favourite of the Yorkshire Three Peaks. Pen-y-Ghent is fun: short, sharp, a bit of scrambling, a distinct summit, and it looks good in profile. Whernside has great views on the way up, onto the viaduct and tarns, although the steps down into Horton are seemingly made for giants. But Ingleborough has a rather boring ascent, and the summit is downright horrible, with sharp loose stones and shale that are as difficult to walk on as a ball pit in a soft play centre, and much more painful. And, to add insult to injury, the summit is almost always hidden in thick grey cloud. BUT NOT THIS TIME! As recompense for the ascent, we actually got views out over the viaduct and way beyond, to Langstrothdale, Swaledale, Widdale, with a lovely series of sun rays that reminded Alan of Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
As this implies, we did indeed get down from Ingleborough before dark. The near-vertical path on the northern face used to involve slithering down on your stomach, gripping the grass and mud with your fingernails and questioning your life choices. But a few years ago, some lovely people put in some rocky steps and, although it’s still steep and a bit perilous (especially when wet), it’s a lot less terrifying.
When the steep bit’s over, there’s a long gentle downhill run into the village of Chapel-le-Dale and, a few miles beyond, the Broadrake bunkbarn, where there were no croissants, but some excellent cheese toasties and hot sweet tea. By this point, it was about 10.30pm and dark, so we put on our head torches and headed out into the night.
I’d been wondering how a fast runner like Alan would find pairing up with a much slower runner like me. It’s not just a matter of competitiveness; it can be very uncomfortable to run way outside your usual pace. It places different stresses on your body, and requires varying your self-care routines (taking on nutrition etc) to accommodate the different calorie burn. It’s also very different, psychologically. At Broadrake, we were approaching the two-thirds mark, and at his usual pace, Alan would have covered the remaining 39-ish miles in around 8 hours. But my pace meant that I was budgeting more like 12 hours for that distance. That’s a lot of extra time on your feet while sleep-deprived, and I wondered if Alan would find it irritating, especially as my relative slowness was partly a matter of choice. I could probably have gone faster, but I simply didn’t want to: I wanted to remain at a pace that caused me no pain, and which felt sustainable for a very long time. Alan and I have done a lot of shorter runs together, and he knows my thoughts about running for speed vs running for other joys, so he knew the deal. And it’s not like I don’t bring ANYTHING to the table: I’m good at navigation, I’m good at reminding Alan to eat or put on extra layers, and it can be really beneficial to have someone to chat to and stop you spending too much time in your own head when things get tiring. And ultimately, there’s a tacit agreement between ultra-runners that it’s YOUR day out, and your day alone, and you have to do what works for you, and I would have had no hard feelings at all if Alan had decided to run ahead for the rest of the race. He didn’t, for which I’m very grateful - but I think he found the night section tough, because the slower pace meant he got pretty cold. At Dent, though, about 7 miles outside Broadrake, Alan’s brilliant wife Ruth had parked their car in the public car park, and we’d left bags with extra clothes and snacks to pick up. It had been a bit rainy since getting dark, and it was blissful to put on an entirely fresh set of running clothes and CLEAN SOCKS. Then it was another 6-7 miles over the aptly named Long Moor, and into Sedbergh where, at 4.30am, it was already light.
The ascent out of Sedbergh is uncompromising: it’s an incredibly steep climb straight up onto the summit of the highest mountain in the Howgill fells, The Calf. It was a major psychological landmark in the race. I had thought that, if I could get to the start of the ascent, I would have done 70 out of the total 90 miles, and I’d be likely to finish. It was also the last of all the big climbs, with less than 1000m of ascent remaining over the final 20 miles to Appleby. But - and it’s an enormous but - it’s an utterly exhausting climb. I’d made myself recce it a number of times, hoping that each time it would feel easier, but it never did. And this time didn’t break the pattern. On the way up, Alan started asking me about my favourite James tracks (he, Ruth and I are going to see them play live in a few weeks), and I had to splutter in reply, “can’t talk. Can’t breathe”. It took an hour-and-a-half to travel 4 miles from the centre of Sedbergh to the trig point at The Calf’s summit. I’d also (mis)remembered the subsequent 6 miles from the summit to the next checkpoint, down in Wath, as entirely downhill, so it was a bit painful to realise that it was more like a rollercoaster track, swooping down and up and down and up over the Howgills (whose profile always make me think of sleeping elephants). But the surface was glorious to run upon: peat, which was mostly dry enough not to sucker in a foot, and springy. There were beautiful visual effects from curtains of clouds repeatedly drawing in and parting, alternately hiding and revealing the surrounding vista. And it was a real mental boost to be on the home straight to the finish.
We had a bit of a sleep-deprived moment, though, when Alan ran on ahead to warm up, but then took the wrong track up a hill. I went on the right route around the base of the hill, assuming I would catch up with him once I came round the other side. But there he was nowhere to be seen, so I guessed that he was over the brow of the NEXT hill, and I put on a spurt of speed to get over it - but he still wasn’t there. It turned out that he’d actually gone backwards to look for me and to find the correct route. A phone call to Punk Panther HQ put him right, and I came back into signal and let him know where I was, and we met up again, just in time for the utterly lovely, long, soft, springy descent off the Howgills and down into the penultimate checkpoint at Wath.
Before the race, I’d thought of the remaining 13 miles as the home straight - but, when you already have 77 miles in your legs, 13 miles is too long to feel close to home. I wish I’d recced this section more than once, and more recently than I had done, because I think it would have helped me, mentally, to have particular landmarks in mind to punctuate the distance. Instead, a lot of this final bit felt like a slog where I just tried to switch off my brain, quash any negative thoughts before they escalated, and count down the miles. I kept letting my imagination wander to the soft pair of fleecy socks that I had in my finish bag, and the pile of cheese toasties I’d eat at Appleby, but it was a mistake to think about these things when there was still so far to go.
We’d been lucky that the dreadful weather forecast for the previous day hadn’t materialised, but the rain properly set in in the last couple of hours. I thought I might quite appreciate a refreshing blast of water, but in reality it was very cold and I wasn’t moving fast enough to appreciate the cool-down. I started to oscillate between being freezing and shivery when we were up high and exposed to the wind and rain, and then uncomfortably hot and claustrophobic in my layers, when we were down low and the rain ceased for a little. Each stile felt harder and harder to get over. At Great Asby, the site of the final checkpoint, I got a bit confused when a woman who was acting as support crew for her husband told us that she couldn’t find the checkpoint and that she thought they must have given up in the rain and gone home. Assuming that she was right, I ducked into a bus shelter to have a snack, put some plasters on the soles of my feet, which were starting to blister, and express my irritation that we’d been abandoned. (I was feeling quite irritable in general by now). We then headed out of the village - to come across the checkpoint! Having already had a little break, we didn’t stop here, although it did make me feel warmer towards human nature to discover that the marshals hadn’t abandoned us after all.
Now it was 6 miles to Appleby - and we could sense that the end was getting nearer and nearer, because random passers-by and hikers starting saying ‘well done’ to us. After about an hour-and-a-half of traipsing through sodden fields, we came to “Rachel’s Wood”, which, I remembered, was only about a mile or so from the finish. I stopped for an obligatory selfie, and then we had a march through another sodden field, through some very overgrown footpaths (which were a pattern throughout the entire race; a hazard of running in mid-summer) and onto the road into Appleby. There’s a short curved slope towards the town centre, and then a fabulous downhill, perfect for a sprint finish towards the route’s end at the Moot Hall. Ryk, the race director, was there to greet us, and handed out medals, t-shirts and a framed certificate and route map. When I got home, my lovely lovely children had decorated my bedroom with “Congratulations!” banners and balloons, and put a hamper on my bed, containing fluffy socks, silky pyjamas and bubble bath. They EVEN put away the online supermarket shop when it arrived later that evening (slightly eccentrically, it has to be said. Salad in the freezer etc).
Today, I feel remarkably well. I wouldn’t fancy going for a run, but I can get downstairs without too many problems. And I’ve realised that I’ve ticked every single one of the boxes on my checklist of Things I Wanted to Get Out of This Race. When I spoke to our nanny, before heading off to Saltaire a few days ago, and leaving the kids with her, I said that, even if I didn’t manage to finish the race, I felt that I’d already got something massive out of it. Signing up to the race had motivated me to get so much fitter, to put my energies into long, beautiful runs in the Dales, and to counter the anger and dismay I had felt about having the possibility of long-distance running taken away from me by my husband’s death. The medal is just the cherry on top of icing on top of the cake.
What a lovely read! I’m so pleased you have found a new mindset for your running.
Really enjoyable read thank you, honest, descriptive and believable thank you .