"Each step forward has a sacred meaning of its own"   Sri Chinmoy

Machen Mountain Race - August 2022 - Machen, South Wales

With thanks to Jonny Lam for sharing his photos via Flickr!

Usually I'm in New York over the August bank holiday but this year I was at home in Bristol, seeing video of Cliff from Jo'Burg take the honours in our 47 mile race and a few clips of the excellent Rockland Marathon, now in its 20th year. The race I had my eye on was something in a totally different sphere, as once again I was hoping to make a return to fell racing. I love running in the hills, especially racing in the hills, even though it has brought me mixed fortunes over the years with injuries. Machen Mountain looked like the ideal race for a fell running return, with the short distance and marked course. It's run at the intriguing time of 3pm on Bank Holiday monday, which meant the journey which would normally be around 40 minutes took me over an hour, but I was still in Machen with plenty of time to warm up before the walk to the start.

The course began with a steep road ascent, then another climb on woodland trail before a plunge back down over fields to start the main climb up the mountain. There were styles that slowed me down, but that gave me a chance to look up from my feet and take in the sunlit mountainside and see the beauty of where I was running. We were soon strung out in single file, with the occasional move up and drop back as some walked the climb and others jogged it. I found pretty much the whole thing runnable for once. The trail led through woods with views down through the trees over the valley one way and up the hillside to a tightly-packed plantation of grey, burnt pines the other. I was sweating in the afternoon heat, placing my feet carefully, feeling pretty strong. I was also happy to still be in sight of a runner from Chepstow who I rarely keep up with in fell races, so measuring myself against him I felt I was doing pretty well.

Soon we were out on open hillside, dry and dusty, rutted trails leading up to the shoulder of the hill near a trig point, but not quite going to the summit, before we descended and looped around the hilltop and climbed again to touch the trig. Here there was someone taking photos and someone handing out bottles of water, but I didn't need a drink at that stage so I just touched the trig and began the painstaking descent of the dry, steppy trail.

I was slow going down, running in trail shoes on hard ground and having to take care in the ruts left by trials bikes. I got overtaken by one or two on that steep descent but I'm used to that. We passed through the burnt trees, a silent and serene forest of scorched pines, on a decent trail where I could actually open up my stride a bit and maintain a good pace. I had enough energy and muscle strength still to negotiate the tricky sections without the awful feeling of "jelly legs" that you sometimes get towards the end of a fell run. Eventually we could see the finish and dashed down a path to turn left into the garden where the finish line was, only to find that the runner ahead of me had gone straight on where it should have been a right and I had followed without checking - so the end result was we had both missed out several hundred metres of the course.

So all in all I had a fabulous run and loved the race, but having my mind disengaged in those last few minutes led to a DNF instead of a result. That was a shame, as I thought I was in decent shape and could have finished in a reasonable time, but if I've learnt anything from studying and living by spiritual philosophy over these last 30 years, it's that we have the right to action but cannot claim the results - that dates back to the Bhagavad Gita but it's as true today as it was in those ancient times. When things go well we can't get too high and when things go wrong, like with a DNF against our name, we can't get too down. Dom from San Dom, the organiser, later informed me that the wrong turn two of us had taken had been taped off but the tape had somehow come down or been taken down - knowing that I at least felt a bit less embarassed by the DNF! The race was great and I enjoyed the experience - I just hope I get the chance to go back one day and run it without the error at the end. It's a fantastic course, remininiscent of the Bedwas mountain race and Pentyrch, with that mix of hills and trails and road. Never mind the result, it was a great day.

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