Morning broke on day 2 to the sounds of bird song. I began the usual morning routine on a multi day race: coffee, breakfast, re-pack kit and a visit to the washrooms. Luckily I had a packet of facial tissues ‘just in case’ which turned out to be a life saver since none of the toilet blocks, at the start line or the campsite were furnished with loo roll.
Back in the Sahara at MdS I woke up each day excited for the stage and raring to go but today I felt broken and fearful of what was to come. I was tired and in pain and knew that the stage contained almost as much climbing as the previous day. The one silver lining was that today included the Sete Cidades crater, pretty much the whole reason I signed up for this race!
I caught up with David who had once again used his super power to achieve and excellent nights sleep, even managing to sleep through the noisy arrival of the last runners back to the campsite well after dark.
The start line beckoned and before we knew it we were off again, gingerly to say the least! I had enough experience to know that I wouldn’t feel this bad all day and just needed to give myself time to warm up. The early parts of the route were accommodating in this regard, relatively flat and paved and I gradually began to pick my pace up from ‘technically a run but barley’ to ‘Sunday morning easy jog’. The course could be split up into three main parts, the run to the crater, circumnavigating the rim, then the run down to the finish.
As my legs began to surrender to the fact they would continue to move for the next 7+ hours I wished David well and picked up my pace further. The first part of the course was an uninspiring mix of country lanes and farmers fields. Not a horrid place to run but nothing like the previous days thick forest or high mountains. I actually don’t remember much of this first third of the day, wether through exhaustion or boredom, save for a snap and sudden pain in my arm whilst climbing a hill along the edge of a field thanks to the carbon poles in my left hand brushing an electric fence. Apart from this my first recollection of the stage came as the course began to ramp up for the long climb up the crater rim.
The clouds were hanging low over the island, the crater concealed in the mist. Before long we had climbed into the cloud and mist and mizzle filled the air. I caught up with another runner and struck up a conversation. He was at the head of a large group of soldiers taking part in the event and I got to hear about his recovery from injury and his motivation to compete in a race he was told he would never be able to do. Not for the first time chatting with another running took me out of my own head and thoughts of aching legs, and five or six kilometres passed in a flash. I left my knew friend behind as forest and field turned to mountain road. The thick cloud dampened down all sound but my footsteps and breath as we climbed higher and higher.
A concealed pathway to the left took us off the mountain road, easily missed especially without the aid of a GPS watch, as the group of runners in front of my found out to the cost of another 500m to their total distance for the day. We turned up the path together, me still on the way up, them now coming down, and entered into a beautiful park area, at least I suspect it was beautiful but we were still firmly ensconced in the cloud with only a few hundred metres of visibility. The path snaked around up and down through a forest of firs, making detours from its general direction to give us glimmers of picturesque lakes shrouded in the fog. I began to find myself cursing the course designers for making me climb and descend unnecessarily only to not be able to see whatever point of interest was lurking.
Our sightseeing complete, the course straightened up, climbing steeply out of the firs and on to the arête of the crater. I was now at the back of a small group as we approached tight culvert. The main route was to squeeze through the narrow cut but with the runners in front somewhat stuck I decided to climb the left side and walk along the edge, once up there I realised to my horror there was nothing to my left but a sheer drop down into the crater below, hidden in the mist. Best to move slowly and deliberately! This somewhat reckless detour put me at the front of our small pack coming onto a steep 300m concrete path at the top of which was a checkpoint. Arriving into checkpoints in a bunch is not a great idea, if your at the back you end up waiting for the friendly volunteers to finish with the others before they can fill your bottles and whilst it may on be a few minutes if it happens at each checkpoint it becomes costly, not to mention at this altitude it was cold.
I left the checkpoint first and pulled away from the small group, the course descending from the highest point on the crater. This was to be the money shot of the whole event. The reason I had entered this race in the first place. The stunning views out over the crater down to Sete Cidades. Today though, was a white wall, nothing visible beyond the edge of the path. I had a chuckle to myself and pushed on, my quads begining to scream once again from the steepness of the path downhill. We were now firmly into section 2 of 3, we would round the crater with a bit more climbing then enter the final 3rd, with the last 20k essentially downhill all the way.
I don’t enjoy racing, and enter these races for and adventure but was being suckered in to trying to beat some of the athletes around me. I was feeling pretty good about myself as the course had continued to circumnavigate the crater, the path rolling up and down. I had settled into power walking the ups and breaking back into a run on the downs and as we had descended out of the clouds the view across the crater had opened up and the sun was beginning to shine. I thought I had left my little group of runners behind when suddenly out of nowhere one the the ladies in the group trotted past me whilst applying suncream to her face. As she disappeared into the distance I was powerless to keep up. Let’s go back to not treating it as a race.
The last real climb of the day approached on the far side of the crater, the road taking us up to an abandoned hotel, a relatively new building, maybe only 20 years old but left disused for at least 10 with ivy and plant life taking over and giving it an end of the world, eerie feel. I caught up with another runner, a Canadian lad who had grown up in the Azores before emigrating and had come back to see family and run this event whilst he was here. The path peaked and turned steeply downhill, more firebreak than trail with fist sized rocks lining the route. My new friend asked if I wouldn’t mind chatting on the way down to take his mind off his sore legs. Absolutely! It’s strange how powerful chatting to someone can be, my quads where agonising by now, the path so steep that each decelerating step was accompanied with a stabbing pain but two minutes into chatting and I had forgotten about my legs and we had sped up. 20 minutes later and the track turned back on itself with a small but steep uphill, my new friend wanted to continue running whilst I would walk this part so I wished him farewell and dropped into a walk.
There was now around 20k to go, with 100k down that was nothing! I joined the path on the cliff top that would snake downhill all the way to Ponta Delgado and began to lift my pace as the mental maths in my head churned. 6 minutes per km, is a maximum of 2 hours left, downhill all the way I might be able to do better than that, let’s go! 20k is a long way to go to start winding for the finish and I was acutely aware that I was setting myself up dangerously to crash, psychologically as well as physically.
I kept the pace up, feeding myself caffeinated cliff blocks, and gambled that as long as I made the airport I would be able to grit my teeth and push through the last 5k from there. The airport was in sight and downhill the whole way. I past one runner who was moving slowly down a single track, having resorted to her ‘emergency podcast’. I gave a ‘only 10k to go’ pep talk on my way by, which actually had a more positive effect on me than her and arrived into the last check point a few moments later. I didn’t stop, having filled my bottles previously. For the first time on the course that day it was hot and I was sweating but with only 50 minutes or so to go I would be fine. They staff called out to check I was ok as I continued through keeping the pace going.
I could now see all of the path to the airport, with a few runners, including my Canadian friend dotted along in front of me. The airport was 5k to go, that’s only a park run, easy! I wouldn’t catch the runners in front, they too were moving fast having ‘smelled the barn’ too. The last few km into town flashed by and the last 500m along the port front into the finish line felt great. I had met my objectives: finished the Ultra X 110 Azores and given a good account of myself. I received my medal, had a photo taken at the finish line (which disappointingly never materialised) and sat in a heap watching more runners arrive, elated and exhausted in equal measure.
Did I enjoy the race? I’m not sure. I’m glad I did it and I’m proud of myself. The course was savage, much harder than I had expected mostly due to the mountainous nature of it. When I reflect on it now though I don’t look on it with much fondness as it was missing the elements of MdS that I liked so much, the camaraderie, the adventure. My camp mates were friendly enough but there was no effort on anyone’s part to move beyond the superficial, since we would only know each other for a handful of hours. The camp was well organised, but filling a bag of dehydrated food with hot water on tap isn’t really boys own adventure stuff. The 2 day nature of the event makes it feel very much like a race and less like an adventure. I was however an excellent excuse to visit the Azores, a place I otherwise would be unlikely to visit.
The event organiser Ultra-X were spot on and apart from the fact that I didn't get a finish line photo, I have no complaints and would happily enter one of their events again.
Next up though... the BeyondThe Ultimate Ice Ultra...
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