Mud run 2022 – Notes from an escaped mental patient.
Structure:
Checkpoint race. Find the marker (pasty) on the map. Note the number on the marker. Move on.
2:15pm start. Reconvene at 4pm at Gramps’ Hill to receive new instructions. Back at the finish point at 5. Remember headtorch.
Start line
“Sorry, he’s done what!? He’s slashed his right cornea open? Blimey. Well that’s one team we won’t have to worry about then.”
Some don’t make it to the start line. Others do, but make it no further.
Race to nowhere
Bang. The starter gun in my head goes off. George shouts ‘Go go go’. I notice Chris already 10m in front of me. How’s he done that!? I catch up. We sprint off unsustainably. “Where’s your partner?” I cry.
“JP. Right behind me.” Indeed he was.
“Where’s yours?” He countered. “Right behind me!” I proudly boasted. I need not check. My partner was Ian, a seasoned runner a
nd this unsustainable pace for me was a mere warm up for him. I need not check. I quickly checked.
This posturing continued until the first junction in the road/field. I waited to see which way Chris went, and then darted the other. This took us into the Devil’s punch bowl. An ominous name. But at least I need not worry about Chris and JP. At least for now.
The Devil and his punchbowl.
I check the map. Look up at the spot we need to get to. I see it. We set off, but spy another team at 10 o’clock. Three of them! Bearing down on the same co-ordinates but from a different angle.
We up the pace. Lengthen the stride. 5 men now sprinting across a field heading for an unknown end point. Christ. This is going to be a busy day.
Much of the first session was like this. In a tense high speed race across open terrain. Followed by intense periods of self-reflection. Followed by more chasing. And all the time evaluating our progress.
“I think we’re doing well.”
“I think we’re going the wrong way”
“Which way is North?”
“Excuse me. Can you help? I need help.”
We progress. We digress. We make mistakes. But we learn from them. Then we make the same mistakes. We spend what feels like a fortnight looking for a pasty in a river. Others do too. The cods, Becky and George, Teo and Andy. Everyone looking for the same pasty. How much time do we gamble? How much do we pay for this? We make mistakes, but we learn from them.
We move on. No pasty.
We trespass. We go through brambles. Scratches all over our gangly limbs. Number 26. We cannot find number 26. Shit, that says 28!
Time has slipped away from us in an unreasonable manner. The goblins grinding our temporal cogs are working furiously.
My thoughts grow darker
Chapman Knott appeared to be selling sketches on the side of a path. I’ll take your portrait sir – only costs a fiver. What’s happening.
Ian runs off with what looks like a 20kg dumbbell down a hill off into some woods. What’s happening.
Rob France forces me to sweep water out of a deep puddle using only my feet. Is any of this really happening?
I embrace it and tuck into some watercolours. Mixing the paints with rhythmic abandon.
Like the Eye of Sauron, Jonny sees all.
It’s just after 4pm and I received a new map from the Marshalls. We’re behind schedule. Badly behind. And it’s a bad schedule. This map looks suspiciously like the old map. I tried turning it upside down, but that just made it look even more like the old map but this time with new droplets of blood dispensed across the page.
This was the start of the night section. And as day shyly retreated into night, light grew dimmer and my thoughts grew darker.
Why wouldn’t Chris give me any straight answers. We couldn’t find that last pasty and now we can’t find this one. And no one seemed to know where that one in the river was. Sunk costs. Lost time. Why won’t Chris give me a damned straight answer.
This one was one of Dickie’s hidden gems, I was told. Where had he hidden it. Surely in a tree – he’s a tall man. No luck. Surely in a bush – he notoriously likes hiding things in bushes. Nothing. Where was it. I curse Dickie 1,000 times. 10,000 times. 2 minutes of looking. 5 minutes. 1,000 more curses. Sunk cost. Lost time. Must move on. 10 minutes of looking. Where was it! Why won’t Chris give me one single fucking straight damned answer!
I click my headtorch, increasing brightness up to maximum. This will help. Stuck in this god-forsaken quarry. I know it’s here somewhere. 15 minutes. Urgent discussions with Ian. He hadn’t had enough water or food by this stage and may have been hallucinating.
I asked whether we needed to just cut our losses. He replied: “we’re going to do so much running. We already have. No one’s going to do as much running as us. Surely. And that means we’re going to win. No doubt about it. No one’s running more than us.” He poked a stick into a bush, and then followed it up gingerly with his toes.
This was some heartening positivity from my partner, but was there any truth buried in it, or was it just a fine mist of pleasantries that I could completely disperse with one wild swipe of reason? He went on:
“I especially feel sorry for Ed Smith and Henry. Those guys are going to find it really hard. There’s no way they’ll do as much running as us. They are bound to come last! Last. No doubt about it. They’ll find all this really really hard. No one will do as much running as us.“ He was now really ramming his whole leg into this bush and wiggling it around recklessly.
More heartening encouragement? Or clear evidence of an untangling mental structure.
Fortunately I didn’t have to think on it long. The great man himself appeared out of the gloom. “Dickie!” I continued my cursing at inaudible levels now. The kind giant helped us find his fiendishly difficult hiding place. We had the pasty. 3 points. 20 minutes of looking but we had the pasty.
Alex and Alex turned up at that instant. 2 enormous hounds at their sides, 8 eyes glinting through the half-light. Ian had the pasty in hand. I cursed Alex and then I cursed Alex, before again turning and cursing Alex.
20 minutes looking for us; an easy find for them. A cruel hand dealt to a pair of blizzard weary men. No time to sulk. Must move on.
We consulted our map. Then looked at Ian’s watch. And then back at the map. Before one final look at the watch. There was no time. We could taste the pasties we were leaving out there in the dark, but we had no option but to just take Route One directly back to the finishing point.
Disappointment coursed through us, but it was all we could do. Our tired bodies thanked us for it.
Fresh tracks in the snow
We stood around several open car boots. The glass from a smashed window lay pounded into the muddy ground beneath our feet. The wristbands were handed in. The watercolour paintings were judged. The points were counted.
The winners were announced. Ed and Henry. Good gravy, how did they do it?!
Ian couldn’t help by cry out! “No!” He was lying down prone in the mud by this stage. “No no no! It can’t be!” A mouth full of hot mud. “But we did all the running! We must have won. There’s no way anyone but us won. We ran further than anyone.”
I got the help of a couple of others, and we bundled Ian carefully into the boot of my car. He was still mumbling something but his throat was too thick with mud, and his lungs too weak to clear the blockages, and in any case my ears were too tired to listen.
How had they done it, I wondered. It turns out they had been fastidious with their planning and efficient with their energy expenditure. They had traveled nearly the least distance of any team, but that’s because they hadn’t needed to.
And it became apparent that Henry was an expert truffle pig when it came to picking out those pasties from 500 yards.
What a day it had been. The Marshalls were thanked, but never enough. And George received warmth, gratitude and an invoice for the repair work to his car window.
It was an afternoon of creating fresh tracks in the snow in my mind mountain. My synapses tingled with the excitement of new experience.
I told a joke. It was a tired one. No one mustered energy to laugh. Except, wait. Yes. Andy Davies laughed uncontrollably and hysterically. And for a very long time. We just stood there watching. Remarkable.