The finale: a reason to race

We were towards the back of a bunch of yachts when we were at the south end of Lismore island. Most of them went to the west of the island, we went to the east behind a couple of other boats. At this decision point, we got really focussed on racing. If we had made the right decision about Lismore and if we raced well on Ben Nevis, we had the chance of moving up from something like 14th place to 5th. We all felt that 5th place in 22 year old Tactix would be a really good result for us and something that we really wanted. Enter race mode.

We had a good sail in excellent wind with the spinnaker up around the east of Lismore. When we popped out at the top of the island, the western fleet were some way behind us. The eastern 3 boats were within 2 miles of us, ahead of us. The good thing about being behind other boats is that you can see whether they are sailing into good wind or into bad. This helped us to creep up on the other boats.

Loch Linnhe (in the background), near the Corran Narrows: taken from Glencoe. This is the countryside we are sailing through.

Iain and I planned the run up Ben Nevis. All the numbers pointed to us being able to do 3 hours if we really applied ourselves. This seemed unlikely as it never seems to go to plan on the Ben. 3 years ago I had a dreadful run on the ben. On the previous two years, we have run conservatively to avoid an injury so we didn't mess up our chances of winning the overall event. This time there seemed to be little to lose from just going for it. We decided that if we told the marshals that we expected to be on the Ben for 3 hours then that would put some pressure on ourselves to deliver. We also had a look at the running form of the boats ahead of us and realised that there were some good teams to chase and overtake to get our 5th place goal, so we really did need to apply ourselves.

The wind was really strong when we dropped the spinnaker and took down the mainsail. Tactix was rolling quite a bit. It was all quite hairy. After the frantic sail removal, it seemed like no time before we were stepping off the pontoon and up to the marshals.

It was obvious to us that we were running well as soon as we set off on the tarmac paths towards the Ben. We seemed to be comfortably running under 7 minute miles all the way to the Ben Nevis inn. We passed a couple of teams by soldiers bridge and caught sight of Testa Rossa before Ben Nevis Inn and focussed on catching them.

We ascended strongly up to the lake, passing Testa Rossa half way up, then took the direct route up in preference to the zig zags. We really powered up this, ascending at about 20m/min. I kept expecting our rhythm to break, but it never did. We ran on the flatter sections in the cloud at the top, clipped the checkpoint at the cairn and then headed down.

Descending was colder than ascending, but there was no time to add clothes. The further down we got, the warmer we would be. We also descended really well. Iain seems to be very good at this. He seemed to spot good little lines through the screes. I just tried to hang onto his tail. Once we hit the main path by the lake, it became harder underfoot. You also have to place your feet really well on the fixed stones here. Iain is better at that than me. I do most of my running in Wiltshire. Iain does most of his in snowdonia. Iain is more akin to the rocky tracks.

My brother was at the Ben Nevis inn. It was nice to see someone who was cheering for us. We didn't have any supporters on any of the other legs, so it made a change to see a familiar face.

Iain and I didn't talk to each other on the road run back. We both knew what we had to do and just pushed really hard. Although the transition to road running was initially difficult, we were soon into our stride again and were really pleased to be running at under 7 minutes a mile again. We pushed hard all the way and were almost sprinting at the end in order to try to get our 3 hour time. We crossed the line and were told we had done 2h59m: a time we were really stoked with.

We were given our finisher's medals (which are really nice), drank fizzy wine and reminisced about the great race we had had. It was a real team effort as ever. We were well pleased with our 5th place in Tactix. Winning the King of the Mountains was a nice bonus. I liked the way we ran better and better on each stage.

This year Ben Nevis was my favourite mountain. We had such a great run on it. It has really inspired me to go and do some fell running. It's been too long....