May 18th - Scottish Islands Peaks Race

Thursday’s unpleasant weather had turned pretty wild through the night, and at the Friday-morning briefing we were told that the race was to be cut short to avoid the dangerous sail around the Mull of Kintyre, and would now finish at the end of the Jura leg. It was generally received as a wise decision, but there were still one or two disappointed faces around. Several boats decided not to start, among them those carrying Kate Jenkins and Dave Rogers, Manny Gorman and Stevie Bell and Christine Menhennet and Elsie Baxter, so Westerlands turned out to be under-represented this year.

I ran the Oban race as fast as I could, which was not very fast at all, trailing well behind Crispin all the way, until he waited for me for the final run-in along the road. My performance was limited by my crappy sludge-filled lungs and lack of energy, and we clocked about 2 - 3 minutes slower than last year. Crispin was looking ominously strong.

The sail to Mull was a real white-knuckle ride. The guys pushed the boat possibly slightly harder than they should have in such big seas, and at one point we very, very nearly capsized. Apparently this ain't easy in a trimaran! After only 2 hours we arrived on Mull with a lead of about 10 seconds over Phil Davies and his partner off Memec and Jill Mykura and Jackie Lee. I was feeling really shitty, and the other four just ran away from us. Crispin must have been very frustrated, but kept it under his hat, bless him. He stopped and waited for me to catch up after 12 minutes, and immediately he saw the state I was in he asked if I wanted to chuck it. How could I possibly pull the plug after 12 minutes, when the guys had sailed out of their skins to get us there so fast?

The 5-miles of road was covered through driving rain and buffetting winds in about 38 minutes, and my recollections are lost in a fog of weariness and gloom, . The track onto the hills felt a little better and our progress to the coll at 330m was slow-to-steady. We seemed to be gradually pulling up on Jill and Jackie, who had gone off very hard and were probably paying for it in the sapping conditions. Eventually we caught them on the boulder-field on the way to the summit ridge, and stayed loosely with them to the summit (where the checkpoint had been blown away!), exchanging occasional banter whenever the wind allowed us to hear one-another. I kept having coughing fits, each of which had the effect of leaving gasping for breath, as if I'd put in a 10-second sprint for the hell of it. Jill was descending superbly on the narrow winding path through the scree. A squall went over during this stretch, which assailed any bare flesh (legs and faces, mainly) with icy wind-driven needles of rain.
We were continually buffeted by an extremely strong gusty wind which sapped the energy and the spirits and had robbed my fingers of any vestige of dexterity long before the summit.

Crispin and I had a steady trundle to the 4th checkpoint, by which time J&J had disappeared behind us, but the runners from Playing FT$E had caught us. We took a lower line than the others down to the track, over miserable tussocks and a nasty traverse. The wind was STILL in our faces, which seemed a bit harsh, as it seemed to have been there throughout. The Symons brothers went charging past looking fresh as daisies and very quickly disappeared into the distance.
By the time we reached the road I was shattered, and humbly accepted Crispin's offer to carry my pack for a while. This proved to be a bit of a master-stroke, as it enabled us to pass the runners from FT$E, one of whom had given up his pack to his partner, and who looked even worse than I did. After about a kilometre, I took my bag back. To be honest, it didn't seem to make much difference, but something, possibly the comparative rest or more probably something psychological had put a modicum of life back into my legs and we pulled steadily away from our closest rivals.
Near the finish we were told that the race had been abandoned for safety reasons, and that if we held our position we'd finish in the medals. This happy news boosted me considerably - only now did I realise how much I was dreading a hard run in foul conditions with disfunctional lungs and lifeless legs on Jura - and we finished pretty strongly. This was largely due to a clever piece of psychology on Crispin's part. He'd noticed that my head goes down when I'm trailing, so he decreed that I should stay in front. It sounds basic, but it certainly made a difference. Back on board, we learned that Memec had managed to run over his runners in their dingy, trying to pick them up under sail, and that one of them, possibly Phil Davies, had been plucked from the water unconscious by FT$E, while the other runner and his rower were fished out of the briney by Memec. Later reports suggested that this story may have been a bit embellished, and that no-one was unconscious, but Steve (Blue Chip skipper) informed us that while we'd been on the hill, our crew had decided to chuck it in any case. It must have been a hard decision, as for all they knew we were still in the lead, and we knew that Steve had invested a lot of cash and energy into winning this year. Maybe the near-capsize had swung it!

We crept across to Loch Aline to weather the storm, and crashed into bed at 10:30 after a couple of games of cards. My perennially troublesome ankle had held up remarkably well on very rough terrain, which was encouraging. In retrospect, I’m pretty amazed I got around the route without a complete physical collapse, but I suppose I didn't really have much choice!

SIPR 2007