Cracking The Spine

Could you survive the UK’s most gruelling, bog filled 7-day race along the 261-mile Pennine Way? 

- Damian Hall

You hurt. Everything hurts. You can’t remember not hurting. It’s dark. It’s always dark. It’s raining again. Sideways stuff, like pins in your face. You’re tired. So tired. More tired than you’ve ever been. You’ve no idea when you last slept or how many hours of shuteye you’ve had in the last week, but it’s probably not in double figures. You’ve been sleepwalking. Probably. Definitely. Who knows? Are you even awake now? You fantasise about sleep like it’s chocolate. (You also fantasise about chocolate like it’s chocolate.) Oh yeah, you’re hungry too.

It’s a huge effort to force each leg forward. Sometimes you slump to the ground, submitting to the sleep monster, heavy on your back. But as the ground is frozen, a nagging voice somewhere in your half-consciousness tells you it might be the last time you shut your eyes. Though that idea’s kind of welcoming too. 

Could be worse? You’re also lost. If you weren’t topographically befuddled in these huge, boggy, alien hills, you would at least know that if you continued shuffling pathetically forward, however slowly, it will end. But going in the wrong direction, there’s no way out of this Kafka-esque nightmare, this cruel ​labyrinth trap, this zombie existence. And you haven’t started hallucinating or crying yet... that will come.

That was me on night five of the 2014 Spine Race. I’ve done many races since, but never have I been as mentally, physically and emotionally low as those long, dark, chronically fatigued and perplexing half-alive hours.