Leg 2: 13.2miles, 5900ft ascent, target time just get there!
Mickey P, Stuart, Martin, Mark Bell, Mike M
Setting off up the road all my thought’s were, it’s over I’ve shredded my heels and I’ll never be able to run with heels like this for another 60miles, but all these people had come to help I must give it a go. Clough Head was next, going up was easy it’s the downs were I could feel them, time to test the heels again on the downs as soon as I touched the summit I was gone, next second I had Mark on my shoulder slowing me down, Mickey had told my pacers in the a way that he’s best at, not to let me get away again, when Mickey caught up with us he too gave me a telling. Think it was some thing Like this: Dave: ‘we may as well give up now theirs no way I can get round with heels like this’. Mick: ‘get them ******* thought’s out of your head your ****** doing it, I’m in the driving seat from now on and this parcel is being delivered safely to Dunmail I don’t want to hear anything like that again’ Baring in mind this is Mick telling me and I’ve edited most of it. Was this my downer that everyone talks about? No way was I thinking more like leg 4 for that or would I have another downer?
With me well and truly told off, I needed a fresh plan. Get some the pain killers into me was the first step and then think…………………………. what would Joss Naylor do if he was in my shoes, just blank it out I recon or grab the nearest sheep pull off some wool and wrap my feet up with it. No I’ll blank it out, then I need to slow down and try to protect my heels as best I can from here on, I’ll do more grass running and try keeping off the heels as much as possible and just get to Dunmail. Time soon passed mostly by Martin spending most of the night teaching everyone Italian, sorry but he failed with me on that count. Darkness was approaching we would soon need head torches, I was wanting to leave them off as long as I could, even asking Martin to turn his off just a little longer, but as we started up low man they were on. For some reason mine failed, I had fitted new batteries Friday Lunch time and check it at Keswick before I started but it was dead. Luck was on our side, we had spare batteries! But it was having none of it, Martin kindly gave me his Light but running next to Mickey’s light you don’t really need anything else. We continued at a good pace everyone doing there bit picking me back up from my downer then bunching around to shield me from the increasing winds, at Nethermost we split me and a couple of pace topping out whilst some stayed on the path making our life very easy to find it again, we did this again at Dollywagon before long we were at the tarn were we split again. Three of us went up Fairfield the rest went up Seat Sandal, then two headed down early to order me a milk shake.
Fairfield had always been a descent I was worried about because the path is becoming very bare causing me to slip and slide around and its zig zag path giving my knee’s great discomfort, so the descent was always going to be slow but tonight it was extra slow. Seat was done and I was looking forward to seeing my Queen. We started to drop but things seemed different in the dark and we were heading way too much to the left and we kept losing sight of Stuart, he was Naving us down, then a shout from Stuart ‘go far right’ we were traversing towards the path near the beck but I could see the pit crew below us it was daft to keep traversing in my mind so me and Mickey simply head to the lights possibly not the best line off Seat but we got down safely.
I jumped into the van enjoying some bread and soup then that milk shake I’d asked for, all the time Paul was checking out my feet. ‘Pretty good ‘he said with little movement from the plasters he was happy and so was I my DHL driver had delivered the package to Dunmail almost in one piece.
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