High Peak Marathon

HPM ="High Peak Marmite"

Eddie Winthorpe / 12.03.2012

As anyone who’s attempted to organise a team for the HPM will know, potential returning team mates fall in to two categories: those who say "never again" and those who’ve tried it before and still have something to prove.  It’s also my experience that people will either agree to compete several months in advance, or they’ll agree less than 48 hours before the race … yet never in the interval between.

The allure of spending the first Friday night in March traversing the featureless peat bogs of the Derwent Watershed is puzzling. It's certainly a classic event and always over-subscribed. Despite the High Peak Marathon being a well-established set of checkpoints, leading to a practiced, optimised route, it's never the same twice. Even the most experienced should be ready to be humbled by Bleaklow.

A week before the HPM on, it was clear that this year, the weather was going to be unseasonably mild, with an overnight low well above freezing. As competitors braced themselves for a “bog-fest”, the forecast changed to overnight fog, before dawn would bring rain and 20 mph Southerly winds, gusting 35-40.

I fall in to the category of those who still have something to prove on this race, after seemingly years of: racing with "unsuitable" team mates, or getting lost, or most often breaking a team mate half way round.  Over the years, we’ve raced across Bleaklow in the snow, driving rain and gale force winds, we’ve been borderline hypothermic, lights and bladders have failed at the most inopportune moments, maps have blown away and gloves have been dropped.  But we’ve always got round.

To be fair, I was desperate to race: I’d put in a huge amount of effort recceing, I’d imported a new head torch and on one recce, I'd even found myself in the middle of a night time blizzard, attempting to call in Mountain Rescue for a lost, benighted pensioner. So when Jim messaged me to say he was very ill on Wednesday and couldn’t take part, I was determined to find a substitute.

We couldn’t have been happier with the volunteer who joined the team: his reputation went before him: “a bloody nice bloke to race with”. Sorted.  We dismissed his concerns about his current lack of condition.  After all: this is the HPM and everyone knows you don’t really run the HPM: the terrain is too tough.  Well that’s not exactly true, is it?

We set off, trying to remain calm and casual, glad to be starting.  After all: getting to the start line is the hardest part of any race, isn’t it?  We cruised up to Hollins Cross – a little slower than I’d like, but it was fine. What concerned me was that we climbed straight into hill fog.  It shouldn’t be this low, should it?  I glanced at my altimeter: this didn’t bode well for Bleaklow!