Some of the members of the club have probably been wondering where has Jim Masters been? Well I can reassure you all it wasn’t to take a break, in fact it couldn’t have been further from the truth. He has spent the last 12 months training for what is probably one of runnings biggest challenges. I can hear you all ask what is the Bob Graham Round?
Bob Graham was a keen walker around the lake district and he set up this challenge of climbing 42 of the lake district peaks in 24 hours. You are talking about 66 miles of gruelling technical terrain which varies between peat, bog, slate, grass, rock and even the odd river and to make it worse unless you are up there with some of the best fell runners in the world you are going to be traversing these mountains in the middle of the night. Still not impressed? Well how about the fact that if you attempt this you are climbing around 28000 feet, that’s about as high as Mount Everest.
A Bob Graham Round attempt isn’t attempted without a support crew. The round is usually split up into 5 legs. You will have a support for each of these legs which will consist of a navigator who are usually Bob Graham Round runners themselves and due to the great community within this challenge they offer their services to others, they also act as witnesses to make sure you reach the summits. Then there is the support team who are there at each checkpoint with brews, food and water at the ready. You also have a few support runners to carry the kits, water and food. In the Tour De France they are called Domestiques, in running they are called Donkeys. This is where myself, Dan Lewis and Jeremy Jehan come in. Jim informed of this attempt a few months ago and asked us if we would support him, come up to Lake District for the weekend, it wont be a hard pace and you can enjoy the views. We all jumped at this opportunity to run around the lakes, little did we know we were to be handed the responsibility of leg 1 which starts at midnight and finishes at the ungodly hour of 4am but too late to back out now.
Fast forward a few months and it’s the night of the big day. Jim looks ready to take on this monumental task, although restless to get going and get it over and done with after all this preparation. With a few hours to go we all decide to get our heads down as its going to be a long night, in Jims case its going to be a very long day. We awake at 2230 to be greeted a lovely rainstorm this was going to be a fun start, but with only minimal grumbling we assembled our kit and shared out what Jim needed to take between us and headed off to the start point of Keswick Moot Hall. A very surreal experience being in full running gear in the middle of the high street as people enjoy a Friday night out on the town. After a few minutes we are joined by Mick who is the Navigator, a very experienced ultra runner and has also completed the Bob Graham Round before. After a few good lucks it hit midnight and is time to start, we headed out of Keswick for about half a mile and then start to climb. At this point I realised something, Jim has been training bloody hard because what he classed as an easy pace was nothing short of a power walk up on of the biggest mountains in England. He was going to keep this up for 42 peaks and 66 miles. We proceeded to climb up the Skiddaw, after 1 mile there was a few complaints that despite the drizzle it was really warm, after 2 miles of climbing those complaints died down because as we ascended the mountain we turned the corner and started to feel the brunt of the weather, turns out I was wrong. We continued climbing for nearly 5 calf burning miles to a height of 3000ft, with no idea where the top was we blindly followed the navigator with the light from the head torch getting swallowed up by the darkness and the wind and rain lashing at our faces. What felt like a lifetime but was in fact only about an hour and a half we hit the top and there was more than the trig point there ready to greet us it felt like we were in the eye of the storm, literally getting blown from side to side as somehow Mick unerringly lead us to the trig point stone, Which Jim ran straight up to and touched, which ticked off the first summit on his list only 41 more to go, at this point I couldn’t have been more thankful I was only doing 2 more who in there right mind would want to do this, you don’t even get a free t shirt at the end, but at least I thought I can recover on the downhill. At this point I realised something else, Jim knows how to descend, in mere minutes Jims easy pace quickly started to outdistance mine. This is a technical, steep and rocky descent on the top of one Englands highest mountains in the pitch black with gale force winds blowing you from side to side and Jim is descending like hes running down the road. Even our own mountain goats Dan and Jeremy were starting to lag behind. At this point I started to pray for some flat because we really needed to follow Mick as we had no idea where we were. This should highlight there difference in class out in the fells I never thought that when running 12 miles I would be worried about holding up someone running 66 miles. Fortunately we regrouped ready to start climbing the Great Calva a mere 690m climb through mud, peat and bogs where you could quickly submerge up to shins, not to mention the extra hazards of running in the dark along paths that are only every crossed by people attempting the Bob Graham Round, but once Mick who might be part bat navigated us up a mile and a half to the trig point. Jim once again not even out of breath touch the rocks this time which symbolises summit number 2 and proceeds to practically skip down the descent. There was 2 surprises left for us tonight, the first of which was what was described as a stream crossing at the start of the climb to Blencathra I would describe as a fast flowing river. Whilst Myself, Dan and Jeremy are dancing through like old women who have just had their nails done Jim and Mick who just waded through were off on the climb once again, heads down into the wind and rain. It was certainly an unusual experience running the dark, after a few hours you start to get tunnel vision and the fog was so thick this night that I actually thought my eyes were steaming up, I was seriously looking forward to dawn but we just had one more summit to reach. Turns out the summit wasn’t the difficult part of this climb which was my last surprise. Jim once again reached the summit at about 3:30am right on queue for getting in within his target time. Then we started the descent, all I can say about this is that I actually feared for my life. Clambering over the crags it felt like a scene from Cliffhanger but with a lot less skill. The 3 of us quickly lost Jim and Mick, who knew how to tackle this. It left us to find our own way down and really regret not doing a recce of this in the light. It turns out we descended what is called the parachute jump, which the top fell runners use when trying to set records. We are not top fell runners and it took us about an hour and a half to get down, by this time Jim had got to the checkpoint refuelled and picked up his next team for leg 2, at least it had stopped raining and the sun was coming. All I wanted was a cup of tea and to go to bed. It was at this point it really hit home exactly what Jim was attempting here. This isn’t just 66 miles, this is 66 miles of some treacherous terrain and through all sorts of weather conditions where you needed skill as well guts and strength. It was also great to see the amount of support, Jim was never running alone and no matter what ungodly time of the day there was always a group there ready to offer support and encourage and felt honoured to be just a small part of this. Jim continued to scale the rest of the 40 peaks including the behemoths like Hellvelyn and Scafell Pike always smiling and still chatting. The support crew all got together in Keswick town back where we were nearly 24 hours ago to await Jim and see if he was successful. Not only was he successful but he was literally sprinting through the high street outdistancing his own support group even after a gruelling 66 miles in an incredible time of 21 hours and 45 minutes.
I have always had huge respect for Fell Runners but after only experiencing a small part of what he went through that respect has increased massively. I can only report on the small part I experienced in this challenge, for the full race report you will have to ask the man himself.
