GB Ultras : Race Across Scotland - Volunteer Report 2018

Yes, I know, I've been silent on the blog this year - I'll come back to that another time. I felt I needed to put some words down about last week's incredible experience volunteering at the 214 mile ultramarathon that crossed Scotland on the Southern Upland Way - so I guess I'm back! And by 'some words' you might appreciate that a 100 hour race will take a little time to go through, so I'll do my best to keep it concise! But this is still gonna be long, sorry.


I signed up for helping at this race a very, very long time ago, probably when I first heard about it through Neil Rutherford (who is ultimately responsible for the GB Ultra team picking this route, so runners - that's who you have to blame, lol). Looking for my next volunteering challenge after Western States, my first 200 miler seemed the perfect opportunity! I was completely in the dark about what it would involve... and due to it being the first year the race was being ran, the organisers were a little in the dark too! I rocked up to registration with having had only an email with checkpoint cut-offs and suggested duties for me, and a phonecall with Wayne, one of the Race Directors - and was largely stepping into the unknown. Well, I SAY 'unknown', but ultramarathon volunteering is nothing new to me, and it was easy to get going straight away.

Registration, Photo Lois Simpson

We were in a hall in Portpatrick, the night before the race, and I was introduced to Haydn and Jo-anne, running registration. Together with fab Scottish ultra volunteer stalwarts, Eddie and Linda Welsh, the five of us made up the registration desk. It didn't run as smoothly as you'd hope, but we got through the queues, and around 9pm once the hall emptied out, we sat down with Jonathan, one of the other Race Directors, for a bit of a briefing. It was uncomfortable to know there were still a lot of 'we'll see how things go' type plans, and nobody really knew what stuff was going where, and I was somewhat panicked to discover how very few volunteers there actually were for such a massive event, but I also realised that the runners would be very spread out as the race went on, so told myself it was obviously do-able... And hell, I was still crazy enthusiastic!! I'd loved seeing familiar faces in the hall, and meeting loads of new people from the GB Ultras Community was really fun and welcoming: if a little confusing. "Hi, my name's Roger." said a cheery volunteer, followed immediately by: "No, it's not, I'm just kidding. It's Adam." - errr, okay? I remained unconvinced until I'd heard at least 5 other people refer to him as such, and also had a sneaky look at the volunteer list, haha.

Marshal briefing, photo Wayne Drinkwater

 

My logistics for the evening had been slightly flawed, but thankfully Mark Caldwell asked his host for the evening, Frances, if she had room, and she very kindly opened her house for me, which I reached a little after 9:45pm. A little chat, and time for bed by 11. I lay in bed for 5 hours or so, too wired to sleep. I told myself I was at least "resting"- but I recognised this would not bode well for me. Got up and Mark and I headed back to Portpatrick. While Mark got himself ready for the race, I found my pile of CP7 checkpoint food etc. to load the car. It seemed like a lot, but not a lot, at the same time. I went to watch the start of the race, shortly after 6am, then filled my car up, and drove to CP1 (Castle Kennedy).

When Jonathan arrived with the van, we set up a shelter and tables for CP1, and started to lay out food and drinks. This was around 13 miles into the race, so no hot food here - just water, coke, and squash, and a whole variety of snacks and nibbles. Bit of chat with the team here, and the race medics, and then the first runners arrived. The first one handed us a bag FULL of nondescript white tablets: "found theses on the trail, someone ahead of me must have dropped their salt tablets"... "um, there's nobody ahead of you. OMG WHAT DID YOU JUST PICK UP?" - no time to worry, we binned them and dealt with the runners restocking bottles, sending them on their way. :)

The race had online live tracking, and we were tuned in to a few lost souls along the way. When it was obvious a runner had took a wrong turn and left the trail, we waited a little while for the tracker to next update, and if they were still going the wrong way, Emma gave them a phonecall to get them on track. We realised that some of the course markings had been removed by locals - always fun for race organisers. (Grrrrr.) But in the main, runners were advising the route was well marked, so we left them to it.

Once the last runners came through, we tidied everything away, and I headed to my second checkpoint duties: CP3 (Glentrool). Haydn and Jo-anne were leading this one, and with Sue, Ruth and a few other volunteers, they'd already got set up and cooked some pasta, heated soup, etc. By this point, I'd identified that I'd have to leave early, due to having to collect the key for the Beattock Village Hall earlier than hoped, so I stayed in the checkpoint for a couple of hours as the lead runners were coming through, making hot drinks, helping runners etc... I felt bad about having to leave before the checkpoint got busy, but CP7 was my priority. So I packed up and headed across to Beattock.

Walking into my checkpoint, I took a bunch of 'before' photos, so I knew how to leave it afterwards, then explored the facilities. It was a lovely little hall (WITH A DISCO BALL), but I couldn't see how best to lay it out for the race. I had had to open up around 12 hours before I was expecting the first runners (14+ hours as it happened), so I took my time unloading my car with all the food, etc. then drove into Moffat to the supermarket to get a few other goodies, plus binbags. With hindsight, I should have waited until I'd PROPERLY sussed out the kitchen facilities before doing this, but that's a lesson learned for another day. Once everything was inside, I settled down to have my dinner, rest, watch the tracker and listen to some music. I'd texted Jonathan to see when the dropbags would arrive, so in the meantime I started to sort out the food I'd brought, bring some tables and chairs up to the hall, and inflate the mattresses. Jonathan brought the dropbags through about 9-ish, and after we brought them all into the hallway, we spend a good hour or so raking through every single bag in his van looking for the bags for a runner who'd dropped out. It was tiring work, we had to take every bag out of the van, and put them all back in, so Jonathan had some food in the hall before heading off again into the night. His phone was going constantly, and he was driving between checkpoints without any rest throughout the entire race; I genuinely don't know how he does it.

After he left, it was late at night, but I still had a few hours until Haydn and Jo-anne would arrive. I tried to lie down for some rest but it really wasn't happening, so I decided to carry up all the drop-bags and sort them into order. (Haydn later commented I'd laid them out how he would do them - I definitely know my way around a drop-bag checkpoint, lol.) - they arrived about 4am. We watched the tracker, and about 4:30am-ish decided we could get about two/two and a half hours of sleep. So the lights went out and we stretched out on the mattresses with their dogs. I think I got about 90 minutes of broken sleep, before I was up again. We were all up shortly after 7 and starting to prep food.

Calm before the storm. Photo Jo-anne Jones

Herein followed a long story which I've cut for length, about the first runners coming through later than we'd expected (about 10:45am), and us realising we had no bread, the kitchen didn't have a colander to drain cooked pasta, and there was no tin opener yet only half of the tins had ringpulls... Jo-anne went out to buy bread and coke, and very soon we were starting to see the runners coming in thicker and faster. Here, the checkpoint is 121 miles in, so this was a sleeping point for many of the runners. There wasn't a huge amount of room in the hall, and cutting a long story short, at one point I counted 27 sleeping bodies in various parts of the hall, including the corridor outside the toilets, and under some tables in a storage room!! One guy was sleeping under a chair, when another runner came in and sat on that chair to get some food and sort his bags out... Genuinely, a room of chaos. :)

We were a staff of three: Haydn was checking runners in and out of the hall, and Jo-anne and I were doing all the food and drink, plus drop-bags etc. Although we had a pretty good routine going, and were working well together, I was starting to get somewhat frazzled as the hours ticked by - runners would arrive, need food, then get a couple of hours of sleep, and wake up wanting food again just as more runners would arrive. Lol. Thankfully, one of the DNF runners, Chris, was available to help out with the drop-bags, and in the latter hours of the checkpoint, Leon arrived and took over in the kitchen, meaning Jo-anne could get some well needed rest.

Ultrarunners know all about the highs and lows your emotions go through during a race, but I've not really experienced it as a volunteer, until around 5am on Monday morning, having had a total of 90 minutes of sleep since Thursday night (plus the little bits of quiet non-sleep 'rest'), I burned my finger on a bit of toast, and just as Jo walked into the kitchen I had a brief but tearful meltdown, gulping pitifully to her that I was supposed to be making three rounds of toast, two teas and a coffee, some beans, and a bowl of soup, and I had lost all memory of WHO THEY WERE FOR. Or whether I was adding milk and sugar to the coffee and teas. And - I remember wailing with my arms flailing around me - PEOPLE KEEP ASKING FOR THINGS. Haha. I was a bit of a wreck, lol. Jo helped me pull myself together, which took less than 5 minutes. Jonathan was around again, and he sliced up a whole pineapple, which we then realised can be eaten by a hungry runner in MUCH less time than it took to chop! Leon was in the kitchen now, so I walked away and got fresh air. The whole hall was stinking; I don't mind admitting it, the runners had been wading through bogs in the rain for almost two days by this point, and bringing their cold damp bodies into a packed-out hall, taking their shoes and socks off, and warming up, was doing wonders for the pungency of the air!

As time went by, the runners departed. We started the clear-up as the last few runners were still out there, and as the last ones came in under the cut-off we were able to close up without timing anyone out. I handed the keys to Jo-anne, and drove round the corner to the 'Glamping Pod' I'd booked at Moffat Manors caravan park literally 5 mins away. It was the best decision I'd ever made. A proper bed, small kitchen, and powerful hot shower - bliss!! I got about 9 hours of sleep. :)

In the morning (it's Tuesday now), I got back on the marshals whatsapp group to see where I was needed for the final full day. Original plans had been for me to go to Checkpoint 11, Longformacus, but Anna at Checkpoint 10 (Lauder) was in need of soup, so I said I'd bring some to her, and Hannah (CP11) decided she didn't need me at 11, and I should just stay at 10. So, I pulled into a petrol station at 6am on Tuesday morning, cleared their shelves of soup, and headed to Lauder!

Me dashing around a bit, photo Anna Roberts

Now, I've not met Anna before............. and I did NOT expect to find the Mad Hatter at an ultra checkpoint in the Scottish borders, lol. She'd full on decorated her checkpoint (which made me feel bad about the ONE string of fairylights I'd put up at CP7, lol) in Alice In Wonderland theme, and it was bloody fabulous. The smell of burned toast throughout the building was a nice touch, as Leon took delight in showing me the last bit Anna had made - black on one side, white on the other, a certain ying-yang appeal... :) It probably took away from the scent of stinking ultrarunner, at least. I handed the soup over, and shortly afterwards told her to get some rest. Our BIG mistake there was not looking at the tracker, lol. Within around 5 minutes of her putting her head down, we had 6 runners arrive in the hall. Poor Anna had to get back up immediately, as it was all hands to the pumps for me, her and Leon: no rest for the wicked. Soup, pasta, toast, coffee, tea, go go go...!!!


I stayed all day at the hall helping the runners, and trying to take some of the work off Anna. Gareth, another DNF runner, was corralled into service taking photos of the runners, lol. As well as the usual stuff (drop bags, hot food and drinks, helping with whatever the runner needed) with about 50k to go, the runners were starting to get more nervous about cut-offs, so I was doing calculations and taking the need to do sums away from them. :) A little later I was clearing tables and chairs away, while waiting for the last few runners to arrive, when the WhatsApp group was sending out appeals for beans, soup and bread at CP11. They were running very low, and only probably a quarter of the runners had been through. Jonathan said he'd take some food through for them from his van, but they'd need to wait. They couldn't wait... so I checked with Anna, grabbed a tray from Jonathan's van, and headed to Longformacus.

My arrival meant that Ruth could head off to the finish to see friends cross the line, so I agreed to stay and help out a while. Hannah didn't think my presence was necessary when she got back, so I got back in the car and drove to the finish to help out there! But things seemed under control; Sue was running the kitchen well, finished runners were basically staggering through to the shower blocks or collapsing on a mattress to sleep, and Wayne was outside to be at the finish for every single runner. I pottered around a bit, helped check legs for ticks (!!!!) and helped get things for runners when they needed, but in the main felt a bit of a spare part - so 11pm I headed home (to Edinburgh). I threw my race tshirt in the washing machine for a quick wash, then slept for around 5 hours, before heading back to the finish at Cockburnspath. I got to chat with a few finishers, which was brilliant, and talked to some of the other volunteers for a bit. I'd offered a lift to Edinburgh to some of the runners, so about 8:30am, we left, and I headed to Edinburgh train station to drop off the runners. Home by 10am, to see facebook posts about the final runners crossing the line, before I got back into bed to try and catch up on what sleep I'd missed over the past five days. Exhausted, elated, humbled, inspired, and pleased I'd got in touch with the race team; it was an experience I'll never forget.

The race was won in around 68 hours I think, by Trevor Cichosz from the United States. He did amazingly well, and full of smiles every time I saw him. In fact, what I loved the most about this race was the total international spread of runners competing, and the huge community feel from everyone. All the runners, no matter what country they were from, were dealing with this brutal race together, and helping each other out. There were little-to-no language barriers ...except poor Christophe who asked me to wake him at Beattock in two hours, and then - unsure of his language skills over 40 hours into an ultramarathon - jumped straight back out of his sleeping bag panicked that he might have asked me to wake him at 2am by mistake (about 4 hours)... Haydn speaks fluent French and thankfully could help him out!

Wayne and Jonathan put on one hell of a race. Hopefully next year back on the Southern Upland Way they can get a few more volunteers, and the logistical lessons learned from this year can only make future events stronger. Next year, my already-booked family holiday is likely to clash with the race, and I'm genuinely already gutted I might not make it, but I very much doubt this is my last involvement with the GB Ultras Community - let's hope they'll allow me to help out at other races of theirs in the future.

This write-up was really about MY experiences, volunteering at the race. The runners themselves had a very different experience, and theirs is not my story to tell. More than half of the starting line dropped out along the way, the terrain and the weather was unforgiving and the distance brutal. What the runners did out there is magical, and while I only knew a small handful of them at the beginning of the race, by the end I was wholly invested in how each and every one of them did. So it would be wrong of me to pick out anyone in particular... I've spoken to some of you afterwards, and believe me when I say whether you crossed the finish line or not, I am in AWE of you, and what you managed. Thanks for letting me be part of your journey across Scotland. x