Day 5 (evening, it’s getting dark and I am still on top of another bloody mountain)
So here I was, scrabbling around in my pack in the dark on the top of the Beacons, the waves of panic competing with the waves of nausea as my stomach lurched from hunger to God knows what.
“Where the f*%k was my head torch?”
Flashback to charging it the night before, was it now sitting back in the tent, all smug and charged whilst I sat above a very steep, very technical, very dark descent with only an hour before my race was over with no torch?
Finally, I felt the hard casing of the torch in a random pocket in my race vest and it felt like my last chance had just been handed back to me.
3 miles away in the valley the glistening lights, warmth and tea of evening camp called as well as the big red clock ticking down to the 10pm cut off…. Torch on, I can see again…the race is still alive.
I had clicked the enter button to Dragons Back Race in 2021, and 35 months later I finally started it due to a succession of back injuries and I can’t even remember what else. Would have loved to say that gave me the time to get to the start line in the best physical shape of my life, it didn’t, but I did get to the start line and knew this was my only chance at this race.
The Dragons Back race is a 6-day, self-navigation, mountain race from north to south of Wales, a long way and as many mountains as they could possibly get in. Everyone I knew who had actually completed it were heads and shoulders above me, standing in Conwy castle at 6am at the start of Day 1 I knew I was “punching”.
Fast forward 5 days of running, falling, cuts, scrapes and one sprained ankle and I was in bits. Had seen Tim and Aubrey who had come out to support earlier that day and the lip was definitely a bit wobbly.
But I did make it down that night and I did make it before cut off (just) to be greeted by friends Carz, Rachel and Mike who were working on the event (lip wobbled a bit then too).
The prelude to day 5 were 4 days of hanging on, day 1 was amazing, ticking off the first 20 or so miles, loads of overtaking, feeling great, I was actually doing it after all this time….hell yeah! That was until the most innocent of holes coming off the Glyders beckoned my ankle in and I found myself on the floor, with an ankle rapidly increasing in size with waves of faintness, for a good while I thought it was all over, but it got me to the end of day 1 and thanks to medics strapping it every morning, it wasn’t over yet….. Day 2 was wild, Rhinogs, rock, mud and a torch finish. Days 3 and 4 I loved, less elevation and familiar from recent recces, I felt I might actually be able to get to Cardiff. Seeing Caz each day at the support points was always a highlight, he steadied the nerves….
After very little sleep and food it was finally the morning of day 6 and just a long 40 odd mile chatty hobble to Cardiff Castle, to family, burgers and beer…. Bliss.
The Dragons Back Race simultaneously breathes life and fire into you but at same time it drains you, the running is one thing, the elevation another, the terrain from the vertiginous drops of Crib Goch to the wildness of the Rhinogs and the endless bogs of everywhere else, it strips you down. Throw in muddy camps, wet tents and damp sleeping bags with minimal sleep this was tough. But this was what we had come for.
It’s a very personal race, people do it for so many reasons and have vastly differing outcomes, there are so many issues to overcome, navigation, blisters, nutrition, broken bones, through to just good old exhaustion. There are hundreds of stories about each Dragons Back race and they are all very different, but they are all epic.
If you really want it and can find the time to train obsessively for a few years then go for it, but if you can’t train obsessively for whatever reason and still want it then go for it anyway. As they say, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog”.
Martin Everett
