“Don’t be overheard complaining…Not even to yourself.”
Marcus Aurelius
Bealach Horn
Racing is lonely.
You are out there, for a long time, with only you.
The end of the first day, and the start of the second, were not good. My body was not playing the game I was asking of it. My mind was following the lead.
Alone.
The low places in the mental battles are not easy to recover from. Without some strong will, deliberate intervention, or an external stimulus, they can spiral downwards for a long time.
I trudged my way towards Bealach Horn.
So grateful to be away from the tarmac, but dragging my feet up the trails. The last 24 hours had not been what I wanted. I felt awful and I couldn’t drag myself out of it.
Up ahead, pushing their bikes, I saw people. The mental shift was instantaneous.
I wasn’t alone out here.
Bealach Horn is big, wild, and remote. The hills around you are from another world. From a time before time. It feels like the lands of giants.
Like ants passing through, seeking our exit. We are united as one, a single entity – Human.
With my spirits buoyed I rise up the trails to meet them. I don’t yet know who, but the kinship is pre-defined. We have made the same choices.
Steph and Cirdan. They are not racers, but they know of the race. In many ways, they were expecting my arrival.
We don’t stop to talk, we keep moving, riding a bit, walking a bit. Broken conversation, misheard words. I’ve never felt so welcomed to such an unconventional social occasion. I talk, they listen. They talk, I listen.
They were riding the route as a holiday. And they were smashing it. They were fast, and they were capable. The company was so welcome. Their story was so exciting. And their riding was so impressive. The Bealach Horn did not bother them, they took it in their stride.
What a holiday.
The thoughts that had been rattling around my brain for long, lonely hours were upended, spilt out in a flurry of words.
I was complaining, I was theorising, I was distilling.
I relaxed, I felt better, I came back up from the void. My mindset was completely changed.
I rejoice in the time alone, I crave it. I feel free, I feel like me. Except when I don’t.
Like time travellers, we cross the Moine Thrust, moving through millions of years of geological time. Unnoticed by the insignificant ants traversing the bog, the hags, the rocks. Heads down, our clocks move to a different timescale.
My new found colony members slowed, planning a stop to rest and eat. They were not racing. I pushed on. Despite my struggle, the ticking clock had not left me. It was up there above the void, throwing away seconds faster than I was comfortable with.
Tick, tick, tick.
Steph and Cirdan married the next day in Ullapool. The trail was their aisle. The mountains were their church. I was a brief guest.
“Last summer, a tall birch tree blew right over in the wind. It was a shame. A week later, the wind turned, and it blew right back up again. It’s alive and well to this day.”
Wendy, Drumbeg Stores
Drumbeg Stores
I stopped.
I felt no hurry. It was a nice feeling. It was warm, there was real food to eat and kind people to talk to.
Stephen and Wendy, who run the Drumbeg stores exude an incredible sense of ease and tranquility. A striking contrast to the relentless intensity of the race.
I embraced it, I relaxed in it, I ate and I listened.
Wendy told me the story of the birch tree. About there being less migratory geese this year. About the road during tourist season. About other racers who had passed through. But in that moment, I was not racing anyone.
I’d never relaxed this much in a race.
I loved it.
I sat, looking out over the calm water of Loch Drumbeg, trying to picture a tree falling over, and then falling up. In the current warm, calm weather it seemed a work of fiction. But in what felt like another life, I have experienced the wrath of the local weather and I believe it.
The contrast between the non-stop, clock-ticking, relentless pace of the race, and the calm, in-the-moment, slow pace of daily life in the local area was never more apparent. I briefly entered the local world. I stopped. I noticed.
I had found a new pace of the Highland Trail race. But I didn’t come here for a ride.
I came here to race.
“Treat every race as a question, that way there is no losing, only answers.”
Mike Hall
Carnmore Bothy
The cold seeps deeper.
The landscape offers no respite. The rain, cold and looming, approaches from behind the mountains. The warmth of the afternoon sun in the valley behind and below, gave no indication of the incoming weather front.
Frozen fingers clutching at the bars, full hand braking.
I sink deeper into the land. Descending like a stone, bouncing down the trail to the basin of the glen. A tired and cold body stiffening the usually agile ride.
I roll up to the bothy door. The draw of a dry shelter diminishing the compulsion for relentless forward progress.
I hear loud music and voices as I approach.
Oh here we go…
I knock on the door, and empty myself and my bike into the room.
Four bewildered faces look back at me. They are in shorts and flip flops. I am in full waterproofs, hooded, capped and glasses. I arrive with a puddle.
With whisky flowing, music drumming, and an intentional isolation, I was not who, or what, they were expecting at that moment.
Questions.
I answer, one by one. Their excitement building at the absurdity of my responses.
“You can’t ride that! Show me, show me! I won’t believe it unless I see it.”
“Fair enough.” I say. “I don’t ride all of it. When it is unrideable I walk.”
“See! See! I told you!” He proclaims to his friends.
The why of my current state of being is so far removed from theirs. And yet here we meet. A long way from the rest of the world. All seeking something, whether we know it or not.
By this time I’ve taken waterproofs off, put on a layer underneath, put waterproofs back on and dry gloves. My fingers nearly have feeling again.
“What, you’re leaving already!?”
I feel like I’ve wasted time.
“He’s racing!” his friends shout at him. His hands clutch the whisky bottle tighter.
I remove myself from the bothy, back into the rain.
Five minutes later, shortly after the Fionn Loch causeway, the rain stops and I’m overheating.
“I don’t want to be trying to chase the same experience…”
Glen Ling
Torridon.
In the early morning light the trails are at their best. The climb is a gravelly, rocky, fun fest. The descent the earned reward. The rock scoops, whirls and dips as we again find ourselves dancing through millions of years of time down the line of the Moine Thrust. The whole piece together, an orchestration in Mountain Biking.
It’s all over too quick, but the awe stays with you. As I pedal fluidly through the Attadale Estate, I see a rider on the hairpins above me. I am in the right place. My confidence has returned as well as my speed.
The track turns to trail for the descent to Glen Ling. I find my flow and the trail zips by under my wheels.
“Hello!”
I round a corner to a gate, Kerry McPhee whirls round. She was not expecting me.
When you’ve been alone on the trails since Ullapool, it feels like it will stay that way forever. You find peace in the singularity of it all. You forget other racers exist.
Despite passing each other three times, this is the first time we’ve met. Busily going about our own races.
Kerry is in awe of her first ultra. She is intently focused on the time, how far to go, the trail and resupply ahead. It is inspiring to meet at this moment, to share in the passion for the race.
We talk, ride and scramble our way through the rest of the singletrack. A proper walkers trail. Great riding interrupted by unexpected rock climbs and traverses. It’s excellent, I love this bit.
Having re-found myself and reassessed my expectations against reality, I’m back to checking the clock against my last race. I realise I am not that far away from it. We were both on track for a sub-four day finish time.
Spread out across the Highlands like ants, a trail of dots on a map. In meeting another member of the colony, it was beginning to make sense.
I realised I had been chasing the same experience from the start, and not meeting my expectations. I had been scrabbling around to re-calibrate, to find my Why.
Here in Glen Ling, keenly aware of how much there was left to ride, I was overjoyed by the simplicity of it all. We came here to ride a long way as fast as we could in a beautiful place. Everyone’s experience is only theirs, there is little comparison. Every race a new opportunity to dig into something else.
Tarmac along the coast, Eilean Donan Castle. Brief, picturesque respite.
Then a return to the thick of it, the home straight: Glen Affric to Tyndrum. Our paths didn’t cross again, but we both rode through the night and finished in under four days. Kerry’s an unbelievable first lap, mine a discovery of falling short of lofty aspirations.
This time round, I missed the mark. But bit by bit I realised something:
I was having fun.
There are other ways to race.
Andrew Hutcheson 
Leave a comment