HOW TO RUN
THE KLA...
·
Acclimatisation is
key – arrive in Ladakh
well in advance, ideally
allowing at least 10 days
of acclimatisation.·
Go easy on the uphill
of the first 30km until
you’ve passed the
highest parts unscathed.·
Keep your water under
a layer of clothes, or it
will freeze.·
Force your food down.
Appetite loss is a
symptom of AMS (acute
mountain sickness).After around 20km of continuous climbing,
fatigue was taking its toll but the cold was
still biting, my frozen water testament to the
temperature dipping into the minuses. When
I put my hydration pack inside my jacket so my
body heat would melt my water supply, a layer of
ice dropped out from between my f leece and the
jacket. My sweat had frozen against my body.
A little further up the pass I hit 5,000m and
found I couldn’t run any more. Breathing was
difficult, so I settled for a fast walk. At 5,200m
I was reduced to a laboured trudge. They were
seriously hard yards but my goal of finishing in
10 hours just about kept me moving.
I reached the top just after sunrise, 5,370m
above sea level. The views over the Himalayas
shining in the first rays of the dawn should have
been the cure for all ills, but an agonising pain
in my knee seemed immune to their beauty, and
I felt drained. Luckily, the ice in my hydration
pack was starting to melt against the heat of my
body so I could at least start to rehydrate.The downside
The first 500 or so vertical metres of the descent
(over roughly eight kilometres) were tough. I
was cold to the bone, and my knee was breaking
my rhythm with incessant jabs of pain. It turns
out that running at above 5,000m – even downhill- is damn hard. So I continued to trudge.
At that point my spirits were as low as my
speed, my energy levels were in free fall and I
felt like throwing in the towel. I was in dire
need of spiritual nourishment to renew my
sense of purpose. Instead I got the morning
trucks making their way up from the bottom,
forcing me off the road as they sped past.
Somehow I kept moving and at 4,900m, things
started to change for the better. It was as though
I had woken up from a bad dream, and I found
myself running. Running! Suddenly I was
cruising around hairpin bends, untroubled by
my hunger, exhaustion or the pain in my knee.
Then a jeep passed with my wife and friends
shouting at me through the windows. From
there on, my race – for me it was always a race - fell into the pattern of all long-distance events:
I struggled, then I pushed through. I struggled
some more and pushed through again. Through
it all I chased the 10-hour goal I’d set myself and
that kept me going.
By the time I came to the realisation that
10 hours had slipped out of my reach I was,
thankfully, too close to the finish line to be
too def lated or to consider giving up. After
10 hours and eight minutes, I collapsed on the
pavement in the busy main bazaar of Leh. I was
spent, physically and emotionally. None of the
hundreds of people around me had a clue what
I had just been through; there was no MC to
announce my achievement; no medal draped
around my neck; not even a celebratory cup of
Coke proffered.
My wife found me, still collapsed in a heap,
and sat next to me for a while in silence. I shed
some tears as I ref lected on the joy and the pain
of a once-in-a-lifetime experience among the
towering peaks at the roof of the world, the
ultimate runners high.
HIMALAYAN ULTRA
SEPTEMBER 2019 RUNNERSWORLD.COM/UK 057