On walking ...

Henry David Thoreau described walking as a ‘holy art’, derived from those who set out ‘à la Sainte Terre’ (saunter), to the Holy Lands in the Middle Ages. Walking 100 miles, however, may seem less of a pilgrimage and more of a punishment, and certainly involves more profanities than any holy art should. But there is something to be said for its epic qualities.

Preparations are biblical in proportion, and probably incredibly annoying for anyone who is not interested or has to live with someone who is obsessively going over a route description for the 27th time, checking the weather three times a day, working out what to eat and when, and the optimal way to bandage feet and change socks en route.

And like any good religious allegory, that which is written in the aftermath is more likely to be based on scraps of memory that have a tendency to shape-shift with each retelling. As the pain and blisters are forgotten the route is relived and the mythic quality of the challenge grows: the brightness of the full moon that lit our path, the appearance of a 'swamp man' who guided people safely through the mud, the forbidding presence of Scrawsden Farm (I'm sure the owners are lovely people but I'm pretty sure their dogs belong in a 'Twilight' movie).

Along a trail that included the stark beauty of moors (Bodmin and Dartmoor), forests, industrial history, and 14,000 feet of ascent, I should at this point wax lyrical about the celestial qualities of the Cornish and Devon countryside. That part of the world, is, after all, known as ‘god’s own country’ (although I think several other folk intent on raising their sense of self esteem also use the phrase). But I confess that in the last 20 miles the route could have been in the Himalayas and I still wouldn't be able to remember it. What I do recall is cursing the very idea of ever doing another 100 miles again as I limped up the last vertical creek bed and down the final knee collapsing descent to the finish.

The beauty that I do remember is that of walking within the quietness that descends on people who must concentrate to stay awake, stay on track and stay upright. It is both funny and concerning to see people falling asleep on their feet and veering off into the bushes. I had my own scrapes with the countryside, mostly brought about by trying to read the map and route description at night and walk in a straight line at the same time.

Now a route description, like all good myths, is a very subjective thing, being just one person’s interpretation of the landscape. For example, where our route description said ‘bear right 90 degrees to pass along a ridge and then bear left 270 degrees to head towards the tor opposite’, I would probably have said something like ‘just head for the great big rock on the hill … you can’t miss it’.  And the instruction to ‘pass on the right side of the line of trees/barn/ruin’ becomes tricky when you start to ponder if that should be your right or the tree’s right; a choice that is not helped by my directional dyslexia. It is perhaps ironic that I choose orienteering as a sport but tattooing the letters ‘R’ and ‘L’ on the appropriate hands has helped.

There is fantastic satisfaction when shedding a page of route description and map at every checkpoint, indicative as it is of another set of miles done and only so many more to go. But this joy is matched only by the terror of getting down the road and realising that you have accidently thrown away the wrong page. This swinging of emotions is perhaps the best way to describe what it’s like to walk 100 miles. Finding the peanut butter sandwiches at a checkpoint … joy. Finding you have to wade through yet another field of mud … not joy. And so it goes for, in my case, 35 hours and 40 minutes.

The physical existence of the route description became a lifeline to reality, though, when approaching evening on the second day. I avoided the hallucinations that many who complete 100s have suffered, but instead was struck several times in the last miles by moments of transcendence when I was suddenly aware that I didn’t know what I was doing, why I was doing it or where I was going. All I knew was that I had to follow the route description. This incoherent rambling apparently continued verbally for some time after the event as reported by my long-suffering partner who once again was spending a weekend waiting in a community hall for me to arrive bearing a litany of things lost, bent, broken, unclean and drifting.

The transcendence is probably a neat trick on the part of the body to try to get the head to stop overriding the pain indicators that by about 40 miles are already starting to max out depending on how hard you go. Blisters, for example, can reach impressive proportions. I didn’t feel them too much this time thanks to some nifty taping and the screaming pain of something tearing in my right foot (who knew you needed a flexor digitalis longus tendon to make your foot move). 

As I dragged my sorry self into Checkpoint 12 at 80 miles, with an ankle that was starting to look like an elephant's trunk ready to throw in the towel, it was only two cheerful blokes who encouraged me to swallow my pride and some pain killers that got me out the door and home again. Whoever you are, and the dozens of others who helped along the way, I salute you. The true legends of an endurance event are those working in the Checkpoints where food and drink and funny stories are served. Never have I felt so graciously cared for, so well fed, so cheered up, so supported by strangers, working all through the night and into the next day for nothing but the love of the sport.

I was also encouraged by fellow walkers, complete strangers who helped each other even when detrimental to their own interests; who inspired in their ability to slice their own blisters or butterfly clip their own cuts and keep on going; who swapped food, plasters, water and directions. I kept running into people that I'd met at other events over the last six months that created a sense of fellowship. I thought often of the much older woman who sat next to me on the bus to the start, a grandmother who’s grandkids know never to ask for her on a Sunday as she’s ‘out running’. There were the awesome ladies from 'the North'. I don't know what they put in the water up there but it's special. And Stephanie, on her 6^th 100, who hadn’t been able to eat or drink anything without throwing up since about the half way mark, who still made it home an hour in front of me.

No-one really knows what brings on the nausea – perhaps the disorientation of simultaneously walking and reading maps at night or perhaps the body unable to get enough energy to sustain itself. After beating out hundreds of miles in practice events I had worked out that my body rejected all attempts to be a sophisticated athlete when it came to nutrition. No amount of scientifically developed carbohydrate or protein bar or gel worked. Just cheese. ‘Eat lard, go hard’ seems to be my body's preferred motto so whoever made those cheesy biscuits and that quiche, you are a legend.

Just as my body is a bit old-fashioned, so too my approach to navigation. It’s possibly just envy that those with GPS don’t spend an extra couple of hours on the course finding their way as those of us with just map and compass do, but such technology seems to lose the art of walking, or at least way-finding. Okay, it’s not fun when it’s 4 in the morning and freezing and I have lost my place in the route description and therefore have no idea where I am. But the skill of map reading, of understanding the scratchings and squiggles on a piece of laminated paper, brings us into a deeper relationship with the landscape as the brain translates two dimensions into three.

At the end, however an endurance eventer finds their way home, we all share that sense of achievement and the most delicious of meals where we can actually sit down and stay down (it could be cat food and we’d still enjoy it). We recount our favourite and most horrendous bits and forget the throbbing feet. One of my fellow saunterers pointed out how 'unnecessary' the routing of this year’s event over stony tracks had been. Strictly speaking, the whole event could be classified as unnecessary if we were to hold to it standards of normal bodily stress.

But therein also lies its exquisite nature. In a world that is increasingly automated and technologically mediated, there is great freedom, as Thoreau recognised in the 19th century, in just putting on boots and walking. Doing so over long distances may not increase any sense of freedom but it does require that the body, long subsumed to the predominance of a brain-led economy, must be felt. In order to finish, the mind must  override the body but can only do so on the basis of trust; that it will not break down, that it will heal itself. There is no room in a long distance event for any of Descartes's dualism as unnatural tirednss and physical exhaustion blur or even rupture (hence the hallucinations) the veil between mind and matter. The mind extends into space via the body, and the body begins to think that it can go on.

So despite swearing I would never be so stupid as to do it again, the strange thing is that today I found myself going over the route for next year. The chance to be part of something akin to a holy art is all too addictive.