Life has a habit of getting in the way sometimes doesn’t it!! This post is probably at least 2 months (that said weeks when I first wrote it!) late but hey…better than never!!

What a weekend! So, back at Easter I was at home (Plymouth home not Ireland home or London home) staying with family. They actually live just the wrong side of the Tamar and do a lot of sailing. Neville and I were chatting about this race; the South West 3 Peaks

It

It basically involves sailing around Devon and Cornwall intermittently jumping off the yacht to cycle somewhere and run up something…amazing! Naturally I was all over it. Ned wrangled together a crew and I managed to rope another mate, Dan, into coming along. The rules were you needed a crew of 6, of whom any 2 had to do each of the land legs, how you split them up was up to you. As much as I might like to think of myself an experiences yachtsman on this occasion I decided discretion was the better part of valour and aloud Nev to  muster a crew of able seamen to allow Dan and I to focus on the running and cycling. At first glance we didn’t really think much of it. Dan has run an Ironman and is well into training for the Celtman Ultra-Triathlon, I’m in pretty good shape at the minute as well (even if I do say so myself ;-)) so the distances spread out over 3 days seemed eminently do-able… Dan and I left London Thursday afternoon bound for Falmouth where we would meet Nev and Musk-Ox. The train journey was long and uneventful, we met Nev in the pub (natch) with Mark…more about him later…legend… We got fish and chips, retired to the boat, ate chatted about the weekend ahead and generally got excited, really very excited. This is us on board that evening, near left of the shot is Dan, next to him is Mark, back right is Nev and front right Trevor. There was a 4th sailor, Rob, who hadn’t yet arrived. We made our way over to St Mawes to moor up, at which point the tactics began. The race would start with a 5 mile run after which Dan and I would jump into a dingy and be rowed to the yacht. Discussions quickly turned to where the best mooring was for a speedy getaway a short row and an easy route out of the harbour and out onto open water. With that settled we headed ashore to the pub…there’s a theme here (I should clarify that all this talk of pubs isn’t some attempt at sounding manly and giving it the big “I drank 8 pints then did this race” business. I was resolutely on the hot chocolates and diet cokes…the same cannot be said for the sailing team!). Eventually I tucked Dan in for the night (Dan hasn’t spent a great deal of time on a boat and was understandably nervous so we shared the quarter birth) to ready ourselves for the weekends festivities. Following a morning briefing the race began at St Mawes Harbour with a 5 mile run to St Just and back, this was relatively straight forward, for Dan at least. We started strong forged our way the front of the 12 strong field and settled into a rhythm…a rhythm that for me at least was soon broken by what in hindsight was a sign of things to come…come…a sharp incline up effectively some garden steps and into a series of fields. At this point I was unceremoniously dropped from the lead group…it turns out a couple of marathons and the occasional 10km does not a strong runner make!! Dan spotted I was hanging and dutifully dropped back and we finished together in 5/6th about 1 minute behind the leaders. Now Dan will kop a lot of stick over the course of the weekend so, credit where it’s due, he could easily have won the run (or at least so he says…no seriously I don’t doubt him…well maybe a little). What happened next was miraculous. I will confess to being a judgemental man at the best of times…the aforementioned Mark was our designated rower to get from the pontoon the run finished on back to Musk-Ox. The previous day we had discussed helping out, 2 of us paddling Indian style. Frankly Dan and I weren’t concerned about being too fatigued, certainly not in the upper body, to manage a quick row back to the boat and obviously rated ourselves to be pretty pretty quick…obviously. Suffice to say, despite arriving on the pontoon a good minute behind the first runners, and despite having a noticeably longer row to our vessel we boarded Musk-Ox and were at sea before any other crew. Mark was rapid!! I don’t know what he was doing with those oars but we went across that water like one of those water walking running lizard jobbies (googled this and it is commonly known and the “Jesus Lizard” apparently). From here our much deliberated mooring paid dividends and we were out at sea in no time and on our way to Newlyn. I’d love to give an in-depth description of what happened over the following 6-7 hours as we made this trip but I am, unfortunately, completely unable. For 2 reasons really firstly I was asleep for a good portion of the journey and secondly, what discussions about the sailing I was party to frankly meant very little to me. I can tell you 2 things…the tide was fowl so we hugged the coast line and we sailed from St Mawes to Newlyn significantly faster than anyone else! Now seems a good time to say that Nev and the crew clearly knew a thing or two about what they were doing. The amount of pensive staring off into the middle distance, subsequent discussion and seemingly minor adjustments seemed to pay real dividends in terms of our speed across the water. The great benefit of the guys doing such an awesome job in he sailing was that it meant we arrived in Newlyn in daylight ready for Dan and I to head off on the bikes again. The seconds land leg was, on paper at least, going to be a real tough one for me but built for Dan, a short cycle along the coast and then a half marathon along the south west coastal path from Polruan to Land’s End. As a comparatively weaker runner, and following a pretty average display in the 5 miler earlier I was pretty worried about letting the side down. The ride went pretty much as expected, following a sharp climb out of Newlyn we turned west along the coast, the roads were rolling but smooth and we arrived in Porthcurno, dropped the bikes, changed are shoes and set off for the run. Now if the garden steps earlier had caused me some hassle, the constant up and down of the coastal path proved brutal for both me and Dan. Fortunately for me it was a bit of a leveller. Having grown up down there it was familiar terrain, if not a familiar route. It’s fair to say Dan was pretty put off but the terrain! I lost count of the number of times he said “this isn’t a walking path” or “there must be a quicker route by road”. On a flat, tarmacked half marathon Dan would probably put a good 30 minutes into me, as it was; we ended up going at a similar pace. The run, though brutal, was utterly spectacular.

We rounded Lands End at about 9:30-10ish and started running back to the bikes still with some daylight, which we were pretty grateful for given the terrain…admin not being Dan’s strong suit my head torch was our only means of light, which did a great job of lighting the road in front of me, but was of little use to him. Its fair to say that darkness and a lack of familiarity with these kind of more self sufficient outdoor pursuits slowed us down somewhat…another theme of the land legs throughout the race and a stark contrast to the slick and thoroughly well administrated sailing team! We boarded Musk Ox in the very early hours of Saturday morning, greeted by a freshly made stew (amazing) and then tuckered down for some well earned sleep!  The next land leg took us from Polruan to Jamaica Inn then up and down the highest point in Cornwall, Brown Willy (I didn’t name it). The 70k round trip climbed a total of 1300m but never went higher than 300 above sea level…in short; it was lumpy, sharp ascents and descents the whole way. As I’ve said before Dan is very fit and can go forever at a good pace on steady ground but these lumps really got to him! To both of us really, but I had the entertainment of Dan swearing incessantly at his bike and the road and the weather and me the whole way so it made life a bit more bare able!  On arrival at Jamaica in we were met by another incredible volunteer (I really don’t know how they convince these guys to sit in their cars at the side of the rode waiting for broken men to come and abuse their good will but they’re are much appreciated!). We dumped our bikes took on some food and water, pointed to a near by hill and asked “are we going up there?” “I think so” than kindly volunteer replied” and we dutifully set off for the top of said hill. Following another minor disagreement regarding our route planning (mine being somewhat more aggressive “lets jump this fence and make a b-line for the top” Dan more considered “let’s follow this around and see if there’s a faster way”) we jumped the fence and made a B-line for the top. We achieved this rather quickly and were really quite proud of ourselves until I realised we hadn’t covered nearly enough ground according to my Garmin and it probably hadn’t taken us nearly long enough…sure enough we could see a higher peak in the distance (always a worry when you’re supposed to be atop the highest peak in the county) and a quick Google maps search showed we were in fact on the wrong hill, having climbed an entirely unnecessary 300 meters or so and gone about a kilometre off course…clang! It turns out our somewhat haphazard approach to navigation off the bike was pretty ill-advised…who’d’ve thought we should actually have been in someway prepared for this! Anyway, we ran down off the hill we were on and made way for the larger hill in the distance picking our way through the rocky fields between. It was pretty slow going and hard work; again I don’t think this terrain was quite what Dan had in mind! We stopped for the obligatory selfie (actually obligatory, that’s how we were to prove we got there) and then from this most excellent of vantage points we picked a much quicker route back to the bikes!!

In hindsight I can see that what came next was the moment the race caught up with me. The whole way back to the bikes all I could do was worry about how much time we’d lost with that nav error. I was pretty sure the Marines wouldn’t be about to make the same mistake and our run back to the bikes from the summit was significantly quicker than the run out. Our sailing crew were meticulously prepped, everything, it seemed had been planned and executed, Dan and I were fit, but anything but well prepared and I hated the thought that just not being well enough organised could cost us the race. For this reason when we got back onto the bikes hammered it back, I was pretty sure I could make up time on the bike legs, this probably didn’t do Dan any favours as inevitably the ride back the Musk-Ox was equally as brutal as the ride out (somewhat unsurprisingly I suppose being, as it was, literally back down the same roads). One of the climbs was so steep and slippery because of the shade and the rain that our back wheels span as we tried to lay power down and climb, I was running a heavy gear and really had to pedal smooth to maintain traction. We made it back but it was at that point that it really hit me! We had to go around the Eddystone lighthouse into Plymouth and the water on the way out to it was as lumpy as the road had been on the ride back. All I wanted to do was pack my bag for the final and longest bike leg and then get my head down but with the boat rolling around and us tacking regularly up wind meant it was seemingly impossible to get anything done. The tiredness that had likely caused the earlier paranoia on the bike was turning into frustration, anger and generally getting a bit overwhelmed!! I wanted to scream, cry, sleep and just get that damn bag sorted but frankly couldn’t do anything of use!! Cunningly, the aforementioned well prepared and generally better at life boat crew (Trevor specifically I think) pointed out that once we were around the Eddystone the water would be comparatively flat for the run into my beloved P-Town. Safe in this knowledge I curled up into a ball, wedged myself into a corner under a bulkhead in the quarter-birth and got to some sleeping. If you’ve never been there, being that tired is an odd place to be, just an utter in ability to function, the smallest thing like an error on the road or the fact a boat is rolling around just becomes insurmountable. Naturally giving up and going to bed was the sensible thing to do…I woke up feeling something close to normality got the bag sorted and headed up on deck to see us cruise into Queen Ann’s Battery where we would go ashore and start the final land leg.

Again, on paper a 35 mile trip to Oakhampton, a short run and a downhill ride home (something I had earlier professed to being pretty bloody excited about!) seemed eminently do-able, especially with the promise of this whole bloody thing being over at the end of it. Naturally it was not. The SusTrans route 27 is anything but straightforward. Starting off on actual roads, the route then headed into a public park and went over everything from tarmac to bark, then a concrete path, under some tunnels and across a couple of viaducts (which it has to be said, were spectacular, although at this time I was in no mood to stop and take photos) we then headed out of Plymouth. From here the roads were predominantly fine, but a couple of sections of horrendous, muddy, boggy rocky, narrow foot/cycle path really took there toll on morale (cue more entertaining swearing from Dan “This is borderline dangerous” being a particular favourite). As we rode there was a thick fog descending over the road, I’ll confess at this point to being somewhat wary of this…the running theme of general ineptitude in the great outdoors didn’t fill me with confidence for climbing Yes Tor blind on 2 counts, the first being this fog, and the second being the inconvenient darkness of night time. We eventually arrived at Meldon resevoir, only later did I realise I had a worried voicemail message from the event organiser because it had taken us so long…cheers! Here we dumped bikes and set to running…or walking or whatever we could to get up the blasted hill and down again before it was pitch black. Our navigation essentially consisted of me googling Yes Tor and getting a red marker, then pointing the helpful blue marker that denoted are position at said red marker and following our noses…again, not exactly Sir Ranulph Fiennes but it got us there, and in a round about way got us back again, although you’ll see from my Strava…not exactly the most direct route! I am now reliably informed by google that Yes Tor is really rather pretty…as you can see, our experience was somewhat similar, I suppose…note how the fog has even managed to blur my face despite the lens literally only being the length of my arm from my nose…

Now it was just for that lovely down hill spin back to Plymouth…which was obviously anything but…by this stage my Garmin had largely given up the ghost and we were navigating by road sign…sub-optimal when exhausted in the dark and with road signs being sporadic at best. A few slight detours and the same horrible terrain later we arrived back into QAB at around 2 am on Sunday morning. The feeling at that point was pretty indescribable! All of the guy’s from our crew, as well as some of the others and the event organisers were sat up waiting for us. We were so tired it took a solid 10 minutes for us to find them in the marina! I’d have loved to say I crossed the finish line arms aloft like I was celebrating a summit finish in le tour but the fact was I was concentrating too bloody hard on staying upright! We were heartily congratulated on being first across the line and, although at that stage the full result wasn’t known due to handicapping for the boats, it did turn out we’d only gone and won the bloody thing! Looking back on it I can say it was an awesome experience, easily one of, if not the hardest event I’ve ever done, it was so all encompassing, poor sleep, running, cycling, bad weather, the dark all things that make for epic weekends!

We headed back to skipper and cousin Neville’s place to get some sleep, I remember having some sort of midnight snack but couldn’t tell you what it was at this stage! We woke up the next morning and headed back to sort the boat before Dan and I got the train back to London. It was one of those weekends I will never forget, the guy’s in the boat crew were so grateful to Dan and I for our part but frankly we both couldn’t believe the effort these guys had put in so we could do a bit of cycling and running, granted it was tough but we can all run and ride bikes, the tactical nowse and sailing ability that these guys put in won us the race. In fact Dan and I were the 3rd fasted pair over land, although it has to be said that those that beat us had 3 or more athletes who shared the load of the running and cycling between them so none had to do all 3 legs as we had. But the speed of our sailing had meant Dan and I did very little in the dark which was probably for the best as I think adding darkness to an already pretty shoddy administrate performance could have lead to disaster! The inevitable question is would I do it again, and the answer is of course, yes. In fact I’d love to give it another go now I actually know what I’d be getting myself into! I was also reminded, before we left the south west for London, that I’ve always liked spending my weekends getting dirty as I spotted this picture in my Cousin Ben’s room that I slept in.

That’s me on the back right thrusting my medal at the camera (also quite liked winning too it would seem!) in the middle at the back to the right of the coach is Stef and immediately in front is Ben. It still chokes me to see pics like this, you can see here, even at 10 or 11 as we were then, Stef towered above us all. Always an incredible athlete I know he’d have loved to have pushed himself physically in the way I try to on the bike, only he would have made sure he was better than me, with his determination and outright bloody mindedness he would have been a real force!
A multiday, multisport event like this was great training for Long week in Japan, but also a stark reminder of how difficult it’s going to be. As always Stef’s memory pushes me on, and the love and support I feel from those around me and around the project. I’m sure I’ll get it done but it seems a long way off just now in terms of fittness but with only a little over a year left…just around the corner in terms of time!!