The Bob Graham Round: Training

Part 1. Training. How to train for the legendary British mountain Round; if you’re a mere mortal 20 mile a week stroller

This essay has been a few years in the making, and I’ve a lot to say, so it’s going to take 2 main parts. After a brief introduction, I’ll do my best to structure it into:

Training: What I did physically, and mentally in the 8 months preceding my attempt.
The Round: The not-to-be-underestimated pre-run organisational logistics, and a bit about the execution - What it took to fool my legs, and more importantly my brain, into getting round and back to Keswick.

So, my history with the BG is a bit of a cliche I suppose. I fell in love with mountains in 2003. My early years of obsession were a voyage of discovery. I didn’t know what scrambling was or what fell running was, and I started running in the mountains [of Wales] initially, out of a child like enthusiasm. I vividly remember scrambling up Tryfan and then Bristly Ridge and looking at The Glyders and thinking ‘I could tag all these tops before I drive home if I start jogging’. No-one else seemed to be jogging but I was puppy keen, and so I ran, basically greedily - to be able to enjoy more views. A few years later my brother gave me the legendary book: Feet in the Clouds (Richard Askwith); which tells the story of an obsessed Southern softy attempting the fabled Bob Graham Round. After that, I got involved with friends’ attempts and supported on all the stages over the next few years; but always thought a full Round to be way beyond my capabilities. Basically I was always totally shattered by running a single Leg, so the prospect of 2, 3, or more, felt completely preposterous. I also thought I could ‘put off’ an attempt until I was 42 (like Bob Graham). But I was so sure I’d be unable to get round successfully, I was extremely reluctant to ask friends for support, and thus my put-it-off plan also morphed into a naive solo run daydream. For this extreme numbskullery, I did what I now consider to be a galactically stupid amount of training (about 8-9 runs over ~2 months, building my max distance, quickly and painfully, up to a limped-finish 34 miles in non-mountainous South Devon)… And then, for the 24hours of my 42nd birthday, I just went for it; and, surprise surprise, failed. After that, after emphatically confirming my worst imaginings, and then some (I collapsed, embarrassingly swooning over in front of people on Scafell Pike), I’d basically binned the idea and consigned it to memory as one of life’s more humiliating follies, until an old school friend and fairly handy road runner - Neil - contacted me and said we should make it our joint goal for 2019. Train properly, be dedicated and recce the stages together each month, and support one another. Commit everything to it for 8-9 months and make a bucket list ambition actually happen. He sounded confident. With a degree of reticence I agreed. I was still very dubious of exactly how far we’d get, but I wanted it enough to put the hard yards in upfront and see if that process did put me in with a credible chance.

So here’s the Part 1 I promised at the start, here’s what I did from January to August:

Training:

January. As stated in the subtitle, I was a 20-25 mile a week jogger. Doing the same trail runs through the woods, the same 10k loops near home, and the occasional longer run for variety. To start this project I’d picked the arbitrary amount of 40mpw as a starting point (I’d considered that to be the amount of miles that real ‘runners’ ran. If you were running 40mpw, you were a runner. I thought). Never mind that this was nearly doubling my current miles, if I was going to do this I was going to have to up the ante, so my plan started there. Up the miles. And the height gain. Let’s do some hills. See how January goes and then build methodically from there. Laughably, I’ve got an Exercise Science honours degree.

South West Coast Path. Photo: George Malkin

I had a rough weekly routine of: 1 x Long Run (>20k), 1 x Steady 12k, 1 x Hill reps, 1 x faster ~10k (this routine was kept deliberately organic and flexible and I tried to run to feel, but I also tried to get those ingredients into most weeks for variety and specificity). But another pattern emerged too. After a week of this I felt like Superman. After 2 weeks of this I was utterly, utterly exhausted. Then, in weeks 3 and 4 I seemed to catch up with the overload and consolidate. By the end of January I had done 160 miles (I stopped on the 28th and took 2-3 rest days somewhat intuitively, before increasing the load in February. Throwing hills into the mix meant I’d accrued 5,300 metres of height gain (tracked on Strava, so a figure not counting any steep walk ins for climbing trips (there weren’t many, truth be told)). This, even factoring in when I’d trained - what I’d considered at the time to be quite hard - for Tromsø SkyRace, was the most height gain I’d ever achieved in one month of running. So January felt like quite a full on month.

February. 45mpw equated to 180 miles this month, with no luxurious back to back rest days. Thanks Calendar. As well as that round-numbers incremental increase; I’d decided to aim for a jump in height gain too. I wondered if I could get 6000m vert in February? Still psyched, I attacked the month. Starting to make hill reps a priority, I created little loops at my favourite forest trails that would basically go up, and down, and up and down. I stuck to the 45 weekly miles and was thrilled to see the height gain grow and by the 28th, I’d done 181 miles, and 6,900m height gain. I was tired, but good. Determined. Building cautiously, I added another variable into the mix: In March I wanted to increase my longest run distance. In January that had been 25miles, in February it was 31. It felt achievable to beat that in March.

From a glorious Nantlle Ridge out and back with Libby

March. Progress is never linear. My first fail. 50 miles a week was starting to become quite time consuming. I became a little disorganised around work and was scrambling to get runs in sometimes. Twice arriving at Sunday night having only squeezed 30 miles in so far that week and ergo needing to do 20 to stay on target. And of course it would be raining, and dark, and I’d be at home - meaning the monotony of pavement pounding, for 3 hours. Grim times. Other weeks I’d be working away from home, or a 24h shift would mean I’d only have 6 days to squeeze the miles into. I was doing great with the hill reps though, and racked up another PB of over 8,100m vert. But my long run was a relatively paltry 18 miles. I wasn’t too disheartened but I did know my time management and planning needed to be better. For April therefore, I planned my upcoming week each Sunday night and wrote the sessions down beforehand (Tuesday I’m at work 8-6 so I’ll only really have time for a 10k that evening; off Sunday so Long Run then; etc), and I stuck to them like glue, come whatever weather.

Helvellyn range in a hooley. 40mph gusts not pictured

March was also our first trip to The Lakes. We’d said we’d build up on stages the same way we built up on mileage and vertical gain; so for March we ran Leg 1 on a Saturday (only just on 23h pace) and Leg 2 on Sunday (very windy and very cold we sacked off Fairfield and Seat Sandal), but were satisfied with our double days in the fells. After this we’d try back to back legs, on back to back days. NB: ‘Doubles’ were occasionally used as a replacement for an LSR. If I did that, I’d try to go slightly further (in total), and to run them late & early, so as to get the combined mileage into a 24h period.

April. 55 miles a week now. For me that was somewhere around 7-8 hours of running. A little more than an hour a day. Every day. But take a day out for a rest day, and/or a 24h shift at work when you physically can’t run, and that number is then squeezed into 5-6 days, and consequently the average miles per day goes up. But by now I’d caught up on the chasing my tail practiced through March; and I was much more ‘on it’ with my weekly planning and this helped hugely. We didn’t get to The Lakes this month because we couldn’t both get the same time off work. We had run there on the last weekend of March anyway so we booked our next trip for the first weekend of May (Neil was travelling from Scotland, I was travelling from Devon). My monthly figures were great though, 237 miles (when I’d been aiming for 220), 9,760m height gain (a 4th consecutive personal best), and a max distance back at 30miles again. I experienced the same fatigue/energy pattern of: First week - this feels great! Second week - I am baggage! Third and fourth weeks - acclimatising to the volume.

May. A new problem. Not 60 miles a week, no. Not working away from home on an intensive job requiring 18h days and sleeping in my car, for 9 days, no, not really that either. I treated that working time like a long ‘rest week’ (it wasn’t that restful!), as I hadn’t had one so far in the year. My legs were grateful, even if my eye bags weren’t. But the new problem was that Neil was struggling in the fells. Our May Lakes weekend involved Leg 3 (the longest leg), crossing not only the Scafell massif which is rocky and technical from around Rosset Pike to Wasdale; but then Leg 4 which is similarly rocky and bouldery. And road-runner Neil was totally snookered by the asymmetric ground. And I mean like really slow. Tottering like someone who might fall at any moment, arms out ready to arrest a fall. I was able to balance on the tops of boulders and kind of skip along fairly briskly. Neil is a way faster and far stronger runner than me but I found myself standing still, sometimes for several minutes at a time waiting for him to catch up. Each time I turned around and saw him hundreds of metres behind me, my heart sunk. I could maybe do a mile of this type of ground 5 minutes faster than him. Roughly. He might be a bit quicker than me up a hill (I was a bit quicker than him on descents), and on straight flat ground he’s slightly faster than me; However, while most of this mild variation evens itself out, on this ground he was worryingly slow. We discussed it and I urged him to make time at home to specifically address this weakness. Don’t play your strengths, work your weakness, for the bigger easier gains. Get out on some Munro’s - even if it’s only hiking, and practice on technical ground, practice it like a skill. He said he would.

Tom, with Neil a hundred metres back due to the slightly more technical trail

Because I’d lost 11 days of May to a work-gig, my monthly numbers were way down, but on the other 20 days in the month I’d tried to work the volume out Pro-Rata, and ended up clocking up: 112 miles, 5,648m height gain, and a long run of 22 miles. The two stages in The Lakes tested us both. Leg 3 really slapped us (Neil particularly was chastened) and getting up for Leg 4 & 5 on the Sunday was very hard, but we made it work just about. Starting groggily, we’d warmed up and ran quite well towards the end of that day, and felt comforted that we’d dealt with the emotional challenge of running when being knackered, and still managed a sizeable mountain run.

June. Back on it with a vengeance. No week away working, it was summer now too so gorgeous weather, and in fact it was only 9-10 weeks until our slated attempt dates, which meant I tried to kick on with real vehemence. But 65 miles per week now was a genuine time drain. Because of the height gain - by now I had created my own Strava segments that were Vertical Kilometers, which were great for vert but not great for fast pace (or enjoyment) which meant quite slow miles - some weeks I was spending well over 10 hours on my feet. Arduous hours spent not exactly pleasure cruising. This churning was draining emotionally and physically. At that stage, with time at work, and spent asleep, it started to feel like I wasn’t doing much else. Work, run, sleep, repeat. Friends were asking me to come climbing and when I did it was a shambolic waste of time where I was too exhausted to pull on. My legs were heavier. I’d noticed my thighs and calves get wider when I put my trousers on or off. My hips were tight. And I was just so, so tired.

Our June trip to the Lakes was now about back to back stages, on back to back days. Every month when I’d upped the ante, I’d been slightly intimidated, worried how I’d deal with yet more miles and hills, but I’d managed to cope. Each month I then looked back at previous months questioning what I’d been worried about! No getting away from the volume now though, I really felt like all I was doing was running. The nice weather meant I was missing out on fun climbing trips and I started to begrudge the running time and commitment. But I was near enough to the end, and far enough invested throughout the year, with 6 months training time in the bank, to want to see it through.

It did though, emotionally, feel very spartan. Get it done. Put these miles in the bank now, finish the project, and you’ll never have to churn up this demoralising VK ever again. The thought of failing spurred me on through some of those reps. Paradoxically though, I still wasn’t even that confident: our monthly recce weekend trips had left me pooped after every Leg; I really had absolutely no confidence in being able to manage 5 consecutive Legs. Our months stated goal to do 2 consecutive Legs, on back to back days (actually the whole Round in two halves, pausing at Langdale), felt like a real pass/fail test. If we can’t manage that (i.e: if we can’t manage it in 2 days with a pub dinner and an 8h sleep midway), then we should pull the plug and stop kidding ourselves.

On the Saturday it was 28C. Neil had arrived late on Friday night, I’d been cross with him for this, as consequently we’d not eaten or pitched our tents on time and we needed an early start, meaning I’d eventually slept less than 5 hours, when I’d wanted 9. As the day warmed up I melted fast. Feeling fine on Leg 1 (22h pace), Clough Head brought me literally to my knees. The humidity sapped me of energy and pride and somewhere amongst the Dodds I decided a nice sit down was needed. Without even telling Neil, with my mood sinking correlated to the thermometer rising, I sat down. As I was sitting down I felt a powerful urge to curl up on my side, and I gave in to that. I remember thinking there were some little balls of sheep shit actually quite close to my face, and then the next thing I can remember is Neil shouting “Mark! MARK! Are you okay?!” I opened my eyes and sat up to find him running towards me looking angry. “You bastard I thought you’d had a heart attack for fuck sakes!” “I fell asleep”. He was incredulous, but I couldn’t fight the overwhelming lethargy. A caffeine gel did temporarily rouse me, but the rest of Leg 2 was past in a walk-jog haze, a whinge-fest, refilling water from streams as we’d drunk all our rations way before half way. We (again) bailed off the Helvellyn range early, again missing out Fairfield, and then trudged wearily to a pub near Grasmere, and guzzled a pint of Coke and a pint of shandy. Then walked along the road to Grasmere in a sulk and ate back to back ice-creams before a pride-swallowing taxi ride to collect our stashed car at Langdale (we’d intended to do the entire Round in two halves, over the 2 days). Woeful.

Learning that sleep deprivation and humidity were kryptonite. Done in on the Dodds.

That evening, with my tail between my legs, was the closest I came to pulling the plug. “Mate, I can’t even do 2 Legs”. On the Sunday we ran Legs 4 and 5 actually pretty well (it was 18C and overcast). I was really torn. We’d failed our own legitimacy test. But back at home I asked some trusted friends. They unanimously said, ‘still go for it. Everyone has bad days and it was just too hot really’. Monthly numbers were good: 212 miles (only averaging 55mpw because we’d failed to complete the right-at-the-end of month Round-over-2-days). But the other weeks had been 65mpw Pro-Rata. A whopping 12,783m height gain. 30m longest run. Decision time…

July. After we’d got back to Keswick on our June Lakes trip. We’d seen a club (Dark Peak Fell Runners) at the Moot Hall cheering in 2 of its members that they’d supported round. We got talking to some of them about our own training, and their own Rounds: Any advice then, were we close to where we needed to be? Neil’s volume was amazing, his weekly mileage averaging around 80 miles. Although his height gain was only a little over 50% of mine, and his technical running still disconcertingly slow. ‘The Completers’ we spoke to quickly identified this and said to him “You’re easily fit enough and stamina won’t be an issue, but you need to get out on rocky ground. Go hiking in the mountains and practice rough terrain”. “That’s what Mark says” he replied, infuriatingly. He said he would. With 6 weeks to go he simply had to address that weakness. If we were to go for it as a pair, there was no way I’d have the luxury of standing around for up to half an hour or perhaps more, per leg, on Legs 3 and 4. But after saying at The Moot Hall that he would address this issue, the next morning as we got in our cars to drive home, he said “I’m going to go back and get some fast half’s in, get my confidence back” “WHAT?! But that’s the last thing you need to do! Mate: it won’t make any difference whatsoever if you can run 6:30 miles or 6:25 miles if you’re then doing 25:00 minute miles up by Scafell. Better to concentrate on making those slow miles faster. Bigger gains if you can run those miles in 15 minutes or less”. “Yea maybe you’re right, we’ll see”. Yea. Maybe mate. Me, and Tom, and The Completers.

The Completers advice to me was: “Just ignore the hot day and pray for cooler temps on your Round. What I did was 3000m height gain per week, from 8 weeks out til the run, and that worked a charm. I cruised round taking photos and having a crack with my mates. 3000m a week. 8 weeks. Thats your recipe.” I loved the simplicity of that, it wasn’t far off what I’d built up to already. Getting that height gain by it’s very nature would put quite some miles in the bank and he’d said it with such a confidence too that it felt like a sort of magic formula. I decided I’d make that July’s main goal. Then the other thing I built into July’s plan was a golden nugget that came from a Kendal based runner that I’d met in May. A fell runner since school, Lakes born and bred, she’d looked at my training plan and sagely said, ‘Your weakness is long days. You’re doing the volume, and the height gain, but even your 30 mile plus runs are only taking you 6 hours or so. You need to do some 12 hour days and think about time not distance. Even if it’s only hiking, just go out and keep moving and make a really long day on your feet’. This also rang true. I kind of knew that the BG wasn’t about running and running, it was about stamina hiking. So for July, as well as the height gain, I actually eased back a bit on the sheer volume of miles and decided to make 2-3 really long days happen.

The first of these was when the penny dropped.

I’d decided to run across Dartmoor and back. On my doorstep and middle of summer it was logistically easy enough to have a long day on hilly tracks. Park the car early and do a long out and back. If you get tired, just walk. My longest run of the year so far was still only 31 miles, and the BG was 67. Sooner or later I needed to run 40, or 50 miles. So why not try that in the comfort of home terrain. But the miles and hours on my feet were only a part of the problem. Despite having hill reps on speed-dial, I was still telling myself, daily, that I wasn’t up to it. This internal monologue had been going on not just since January, but from years before. Since I read Feet in the Clouds I think. This negative attitude wasn’t just related to the BG either, I did this with big rock climbs too. I guess I’m just a bit of a glass-half-empty kind of guy. Which I hate, but was forced to face up to. It’s a dichotomy to be spending so many hours thrashing myself up and down hills, investing time and energy towards a goal I wanted very badly, but at the same time undermining all that effort with talking myself down. You’re not strong enough. You’ll bonk. You need too much sleep. You can’t cope with blisters. What if your knees hurt. Or you cramp. You’re going to waste your friends’ time, asking them to go all that way and support you and at some stage you’re going to quit and let them all down. You’re fit, but you’re just not cut out for this.

I know that doesn’t make sense and I’m not about to delve into the deeper psychology of ‘why’ I’m a bit bonkers and pathetic, but that’s the bare-naked truth of the situation, and sometime in July I resolved to fix it. I set off from Belstone at 7am heading South.

No map, the forecast was bluebird (too warm, again), and I knew the way well (I’ve done what locals and Marines call ‘The 30 Miler’ many times), carrying food and drink to last me all day, my plan was to run to the ‘South Gate’ at Ivybridge. Crossing the whole National Park is 31 miles. By 9.15 ish I was at Postbridge. Already too hot, and dripping in sweat, I’d drunk all of my fluid (I had reserves of chlorine tablets to allow me to safely drink from streams), so I popped into the Postbridge Post Office Stores to buy more. I bought 3 litres and immediately drank one. Put one into my soft flasks on the front of my race vest, and one into the back of my pack. “What time do you close?” “5pm.” “Okay cool, see you later then”. I forged on. It was roasting. I felt good but kept repeating that old Fast Show sketch: ‘Giggsy-wiggsy Scorchio’. Up on Ryders Hill, deep into the south Moor, and now 20 miles from my car, I kept trotting south but began to feel that serious ‘committed’ feeling that meant ‘each mile you run now, you’re going to have to run back’. Which is true from mile 1 of course, but felt especially pertinent at 20/40, 25/50 and so on. At 25 miles I was pretty close to the South Gate and going okay, BUT, I had been stopping to fill fluids up, and I had been gradually slowing from a run, to a jog, to a scurry, to a jog a bit walk a bit; and more importantly the time was getting on. I didn’t know exactly how long it would take me to get back to the Postbridge Stores, but I desperately didn’t want to miss my only sanctuary for food and drink in the 25 miles between me and my car on a scorcher of a day. I was now down to drinking from streams, and had one bag of nuts and 2 Babybells left. At 27 miles I lost my nerve and turned around. I could physically see the South Gate, and if I clocked up 54 miles, a double marathon, I’d be thrilled with my ‘long slow day’. That would also qualify as my ‘12 hours on my feet’ that had been recommended. Between miles 30 and 40 a slow degradation occurred. I forced myself to churn out a jog, really not wanting to risk the shop closing before I got there, but once I knew I’d definitely make it, my jog became a walk that was like a death march. I think I walked entirely the last 4 miles to the shop, and some of that was on gentle downhills. I had absolutely nothing in the tank and my spirit was very low. I got to the shop having done 40 miles. But while I was in the queue for my Lucozade and Coca-cola I was woozy. Physically swaying. The shop keeper spotted this and eyeballed me carefully. “Made it back then?” “Just about.” “You look like you should sit down” “Yea. I’m fucked” “Ice cream?” “Now you’re talking. What flavours have you got?” “There’s the list” “Rum n Raisin please”. “Go and sit down, I’ll bring it out to you”. I kicked my shoes and socks off and sat in the shade. My calves were doing a weird pulsing thing like an alien was inside them. While I marvelled at this and burped on the coke I was glugging, I got talking to two bikers and the shop keeper brought my ice cream out. Triple scoop. What a bloody hero. That ice cream changed my life.

I was sat talking to the bikers about calling a taxi, they told me if they’d had an extra helmet they could have dropped me back at my car. We chatted while I drank 2 litres of very sugary water, and ate my ice cream dream. The shop closed. One of the bikers went to investigate a pub dinner. I pulled my trainers back on. Put my 3rd litre of fluid into my bag and told myself that even if I walked 13 miles I could surely walk that in 3 hours (there was about 3.5 hours left of daylight, and I hadn’t packed a head torch). I said goodbye to the bikers and walked to the stile leading onto the North Moor. The first field being flat I thought I’d see if I could raise a jog. I could. This felt pretty miraculous and I carried this on where the track met the river and the open Moor. Then I walked up a hill. Then I jogged some plateau higher up. Then I sat down and took a photo. The temperature had dropped 5-10 degrees, the evening was warm but much more overcast. I felt 75% revived by my fluids (In total I drank 9 litres during the day) and the ice cream and grew increasingly confident that I’d get back to the car before dark. As my spirits rose I kept up the little bursts of walk a minute jog a minute, walk to that rock, jog to that rock. 45 miles past, 50 miles past (I was childishly proud of that when Strava announced it. Never ever gone that far before), and I came off the Moor and down to my car hearing Strava announce 53 miles, in 13 hours something, and sad as it may seem I let out an audible “Yes! Get the fuck in there” celebratory blurt and considered punching the air. I was chuffed. I’d never had a ‘second wind’ before, but whatever you call it, I’d proved to myself that I could keep on trucking. I’d always just stopped before, whenever I was goosed or done in. But even though it was kind of essential, my hand was forced in order to get back to my car, so I’d made myself do it, I was also running/moving better at 50 miles than I was at 40. This day stayed important to me for the next few weeks, and has, ever since, it felt like a real mental turning point in doing the Round. It seems bizarre that in 8 months of dedicated training that I only actually felt like ‘I might just pull this off’ in the seventh month, but there we have it. That’s how it was. I did another long day out in Snowdonia in the same fashion (the same week I broke my Horseshoe PB too, going Sub 2 which I was also proud of); but shorter, and in wet and wild conditions, something around 35 miles I think, but slow, another speed hike for the sake of having 10-11 hours on my feet. And that essentially completed my 8 months of training.

Sub 2 Horseshoe. My favourite run in the UK

I sent out a Facebook status request for pacers and support - a public beg for help which I had been very, very reluctant to commit to doing - if I wasn’t sure it was a real possibility. I was still nervous even as people replied and I narrowed down the dates Neil and I had blocked out of our diaries - by selecting the day that the most pacers and support crew could agree to. That was all in place by the end of July.

So the first week of August was a ‘drop week’, and the second week was a full on taper. In those weeks I shopped, made lists, sent out Group Chats, made a schedule, and was basically a bit OCD about the logistics and organisation (control freaks like things they can control), I’ll talk about that in Part 2.

Neil and I argued online about him not having done enough training on technical ground. He said he was expecting me to be slower by the time we got to Scafell so he didn't think he’d hold me back much by that stage (and considering I hadn’t managed to run Legs 1 and 2 without quitting, he also thought - and understandably so - that it was a bit rich me preaching to him that he had a weakness).

We argued several times, and that’s unusual for me, especially with a good friend. Looking back now I think it was exacerbated by the stress of nerves and also my first ever surge in confidence. I’d started to think ‘I bloody well will get round this thing and after the time and effort I’ve put in, I’ll be buggered if I’m going to wait for you just because you haven’t done what everyone’s said you need to do’.

In one of our arguments I said it out loud for the first time: “Oh I’m getting round all right. I’d need to get hit by a Meteor to stop me”. I surprised myself saying that, but I felt confident after I did.