The Charlie Ramsay Round in a nutshell, for anyone who's not familiar with it: a 56+ mile loop on Scottish mountain terrain with 28,500 feet of ascent and the same amount of descent, with a time limit of 24 hours for an "official" finish. The round takes in 23 Munros (originally 24 but one was demoted following a survey!), which are peaks that are more than 3,000 feet high. Most people have support runners on the various sections, but there aren't many easy access points to the loop so support can be somewhat limited. Compared to England's Bob Graham round, which I did last year, the terrain is generally rockier and there are more sections of semi-scrambling. And for my American friends, the loop is generally not on "trails" like we think of them; there are some sections with a path but you are mostly running on rock or grass. When I started my round, there were 99 previous finishers, only 5 of them women.
You can go either clockwise or anticlockwise, and I chose anticlockwise for the aesthetic value of ending on Ben Nevis. The round is essentially four parts: first the Mamores, a difficult section of 10 peaks on mostly rocky terrain, second, a largely flat six miles on the valley floor which nevertheless involves a fair bit of bog and thus isn't as fast as you would think, third, a circumnavigation of Loch Treig and its five Munros, and fourth, the most difficult sections of the round, the Grey Corries, Aonachs, Carn Mor Dearg, and Ben Nevis.
The crux of this report is no doubt going to be keeping the writing from being as long as the round itself. That is as good a reason as any to gloss over the first few hours of my run, which can be summed up as way too hot, humid, windy, and slow. Despite working much harder than I would have liked to, I was 10 minutes behind schedule by the second peak and only a few minutes better than that by the third. My first thought was to avoid pushing any harder so as not to risk a blowup later on. My second thought was that there was no point carrying on at a pace that wasn't going to get me to the finish in less than 24 hours. I upped the effort level significantly and gained my 10 minutes back, plus a couple to spare, by the seventh peak, An Gearanach.
I knew I was in dangerous territory, working at what was essentially an effort level that I could reasonably expect to maintain for only about 9 hours. But getting back on schedule was a massive morale boost, which in turn seemed to reduce the amount of effort needed to maintain my pace. A further boost just afterwards was heading up Na Gruagaichean, which is my favorite peak of the whole round, with its impressive views, friendly descent, and the fantastic ridge running that comes after it.
The rest of the Mamores went reasonably well, at least relative to how my run had been going so far, and I had good company from Jim for part of the time. On top of the last summit in the Mamores, Sgurr Eilde Mor, I even ran into Charlie Ramsay's neighbor! She took a quick photo--I was nervous about time and in a hurry to get going--and then it was off for the big descent.
From Sgurr Eilde Mor it's a big, steep descent to the valley floor and then there is the easy section to Corrour. It didn't feel very easy on this particular day but I tried to ignore that fact and concentrate on what was coming up next. Which was...
Carrie and Giles! And Chuck, who was off doing some proper running when this photo was taken. I had been starving when I made it to Corrour, but I tried to spend as little time as possible there and instead ate on the move during the nice gradual walk up Beinn na Lap. It took me all of about two seconds to steal Giles' delicious hummus wrap, an improvement over my previous best of waiting roughly an hour to steal his food during my Bob Graham.
After some good food and a lot of fun catching up with everyone (Giles had done the Bob Graham just two weeks earlier so it was a great surprise to even get to see him), it was suddenly a completely different day--not a day full of heat, suffering, and difficult running but rather just some enjoyable time out in the hills with friends. We all managed to make it up Chno Dearg, which I thought was the hardest hill of the round and which had apparently been the scene of more than one relationship "incident" in the past, in one piece and ahead of schedule by a solid 10 minutes, a cushion that we maintained coming into the next support point at Fersit.
I had a longer stop at Fersit in order to try to get some more substantial food and drink down before the night section. Well, maybe slightly more truthfully, I knew there would be two kinds of cake at Fersit and I wanted plenty of time to sample both. Sadly for my weight, my friends Dave and Claire are both expert bakers... And Helen had made me a coffee and Beth had made me pasta; total support stop luxury!
I left Fersit with Tim and Beth plus their border collies Pip and May. I had first met Tim and the collies while we were supporting Meghan Hicks on her Bob Graham round, and I had watched in amazement then as Pip navigated BG leg 4 without any help. It turned out that Pip knows the Ramsay Round as well, so Tim and Beth may want to start hiring him out... Oh and Meghan, after your BG I found that Oreo that I tried for so long to feed you. As a joke, I brought it on the second half of the Ramsay with me, but I never ended up eating it so it is now one very well-traveled Oreo.
It doesn't really get any better than this--great company, warm sunny evening, and views in all directions. I had some nausea for the first time that day but other than that I was thoroughly enjoying myself.
After the Easains you drop right down into a col below the Grey Corries. This marked the end of what I had seen of the route; all of the remainder, except the descent from the Ben, was going to be new to me.
It was slightly intimidating setting off on the steep climb out of the col with the sun going down and with no idea of what lay ahead. Tim and I had picked up Pete as a second support runner, though, and with both Tim and Pete having finished the Ramsay Round themselves, I knew I was in good hands. Plus Pete brought coffee, which tasted delicious even if I did throw it back up every time...
I wish I could say that I could have made it to the finish in under 24 hours even without Tim and Pete, but I can't. Pete took care of the navigation while Tim did an impressive job of keeping me fed and hydrated despite my reluctance to accept most food. The nausea was fully set in and all I wanted to do was (a) stop eating, and (b) sleep, neither of which would have been conducive to a sub-24 hour finish. We spent the first part of the night a little bit ahead of schedule but quickly became just behind schedule, which shortly turned into a fair bit behind schedule.
There was also plenty of pure physical difficulty in the terrain on that last section. The grass slope leading up to the gully on Aonach Beag was so steep that Tim showed me his gorilla crawl technique. I remember finding it vaguely hilarious that it was the middle of the night and I was out there literally crawling up a hill in the dark, but I was too tired to laugh.
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| Unsuccessfully trying to get Tim and Pete to let me have a nap at the top of the Aonach Beag gully |
Aonach Mor was a much easier ascent ("like running in the Peak District" Tim told me, fighting words for me as a former Sheffield runner!) but the descent down to the col before Carn Mor Dearg was brutal and by the time we made it down, I felt like I had absolutely nothing left. But we were also about 20 to 25 minutes behind schedule and there were only two peaks to go. I knew this was it--if I didn't turn things around immediately, I would have no chance of making up enough time to finish in under 24 hours.
I would love to be specific here and write about how I managed to go from a semi-zombie state to making fairly good time. Sadly I've got no idea. It certainly wasn't more food, and I didn't have any caffeine. I suppose the lesson is that sometimes even the boring approach of simply trying harder can work. Whatever it was, we arrived at the summit of the last hill, Ben Nevis, more or less on schedule. It was quite a special moment when we topped out in the early morning light of 4:30 a.m.
At this point Tim and Pete were reasonably convinced that I could make it down to the finish in the remaining 1 hour 15 minutes. I was not so convinced. By UK standards I am terrible at descents, and for me, a rocky/grassy 4+ miles with over 4,000 feet of elevation loss, coming at the end of 24 hours on the go, is a tall order. I was getting more and more stressed by the minute as we started down from the summit. As we went through the only remaining snow patch, disaster struck--Pete took a scary fall and hit his head. The result was alarming:
But I was relieved to see Pete stand back up and to hear him speak without any obvious signs of concussion. It only took a couple of seconds for Tim and Pete to assure me that they had everything under control and that I should keep running for the finish. Pete quickly decided he could make it down on his own and sent Tim off after me. By this point I had become convinced that I wasn't running fast enough to make the 24-hour cutoff, and I think Tim was starting to share that view. He took the lead and sped up, with my only job to follow behind at the same pace. It's amazing how much better you can become at running over grass and wet rock when the alternative is brutal failure at something you've been wanting to do for a year!
In the end I needn't have worried quite so much--the youth hostel suddenly came into view sooner than I expected it to. We made it to the end in 23:46. Project for the year = done!
