A baby at mid-camp, and other running tales from a new mum

It’s 5 in the morning, and I’m already climbing out of the valley, my sights on the sun-tipped summit above me. The record from our Czech cottage to  Boubín (1362m) and back stands at 1:52 (Václav Paris, 2012), a time that seems impossibly fast to me today. I’m not even taking the fastest route, and there’s a good chance I’ll need to stop somewhere along the way.

Team Paris-Rawlik(jr.) set the Boubin buggy record

There’s a difference to this summit bid though... it’s a team effort, and only one of the pair is pulling their weight. The other is asleep, wrapped in a sheepskin to keep off the morning chill, dreaming of her next feed. She doesn’t even wake up when I reach the col and transfer her to the carrier, stashing the buggy in the bushes as I clamber the last 1.5km upwards along the boulder strewn track. I reach the top, touch the cairn and turn, supporting her head with my hand as I pick my way down. Back at the buggy I execute a hasty changeover and we’re running again, flying down the hill through the forest. We arrive back at our cottage in time for breakfast. My teammate sleepily stretches and smiles, clearly delighted to have run our target sub-3 hours time (2:53).

My teammate is our daughter, Rowan, born in November just 10 days after her last fell race as a ‘bump’. She surprised everyone by entering the world bottom first, eschewing convention from the word go. Seven months later, I’m preparing to go back to work (Konrad will be on baby duty for a couple of months now), and it seems like a good time to write up the next instalment of our running diary.

In spite of Rowan’s unconventional presentation, I was lucky to have a fairly straightforward labour and delivery. By the following morning we were out walking with our dog Moss, and within a couple of weeks I was venturing into the Pentland Hills with Rowan in a sling on my tummy. At 4 weeks post partum I started a bit of gentle jogging (with Moss, I didn’t run with Rowan until she was 6 months old), and after my 6 week GP check I slowly eased back into training. Konrad and I developed a routine in which he would look after Rowan every day from 6 to 8 am whilst I went running.  Other, more innovative ‘maternity leave training’ strategies included hill reps and intervals, whilst Rowan slept in her buggy in full sight.

Ready to race at the Mourne Highline

Returning to fitness wasn’t all plain sailing. I pulled something in my back when lifting Rowan up in the night, and just as I’d recovered from that I developed mild posterior tibial tendonitis (an injury I’ve had once before), which grumbled on for about 6 weeks, stubbornly refusing to settle. With these breaks in training, my first serious race back - the opening counter for the British Fellrunning Championships (Mourne Highline, Ireland, in April) - arrived all too quickly, and I lined up on the start line feeling somewhat unprepared. The weather (pea soup fog) and the linear course (necessitating that I finish) did little to quell my nerves, and I purposefully started well down the field. To my great surprise, I not only made it back to the finish without getting lost and before Rowan started to cry, but I also finished first lady. The rough terrain helped by slowing everyone down, as did the fog (I raced Emma Gould for much of the race, but she went wrong on the final descent), nevertheless it was a great boost for post-baby running morale. Caitlin Rice, a good friend who also started out with Glossopdale Harriers, finished second, which I was delighted about. She has since won the short counter (Tal Y Mignedd), which we didn’t travel to, so the next two races in the British Championships should be exciting. 

My next race, just a week later, was the Teenager with Altitude in the Lake District (24.7km, 2300m ascent). Rowan had received her vaccinations the day before, and spent the majority of the night awake, so my preparation wasn’t exactly ideal, although it did involve a generous amount of midnight cake eating. The day was also unseasonably hot, more suitable for swimming than running, but it did make for wonderful views. Sharon Taylor had a great race, and although I could see her in front of me for much of it, I had nothing in my legs to mount a credible chase. Nevertheless, it was my longest run since having Rowan, and I was plenty happy with the result.

On Beinn an Oir (second Pap)

A month later, after another chunk of training and a couple of 24-hour round supports (a Bob Graham and a Ramsay – both involving ‘pass-the-baby’ from daddy to mummy between legs), we travelled to Jura for the annual highlight of my racing calendar, the Jura Fell race. It felt great to be there, racing, and part of the scene again. Despite a fall coming off the third Pap, during with I slashed my knee open (fellrunning legend Wendy Dodds and I had matching injuries at the finish, although she had 4 stitches, whereas I just got glued together) I finished in 3:49 (1^st F, although still 11 minutes off a PB). The following day Liz Barker and I swim-ran the islands of Small Isles (more on that to follow), and the remainder of the week was spent taking Rowan onto the Paps for her first race recce, introducing her to the sea, and trying not to let her eat too much sand.

Team coach, in obligatory LAMM mid-camp attire

On Thursday we headed north to Harris for the Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon (LAMM). To those who don’t know, a mountain marathon is a 2-day orienteering-type race, which is run in teams of two, carrying everything necessary for an overnight camp. When this year’s fantastic location (Harris) was first announced last winter, we predicted it was going to be something special, and set about trying to work out how we’d be able to compete with Rowan in the mix. We made a plan that involved my mum carrying Rowan into mid-camp, where she could sleep with me and breastfeed overnight before travelling to the finish the following morning with my mum. Luckily for us the organizer Martin Stone was incredibly accommodating, and set up a private email correspondence with my mum to ensure she would know the mid-camp location (something we wouldn’t know until our clock started ticking on day 1 of the event). Konrad and I had originally planned to run the Elite class, but after some deliberation we switched over to the Score class, on the premise that the 7-hour daily time limit would be preferable as a fixed end point for Rowan. I expressed a bottle of milk for day 1, and my mum packed the breast pump for me to use at mid-camp to do the same on day 2. We were set to go.

It felt simultaneously ridiculous (most people wouldn’t even dream of mixing the two), and also completely natural (fell runners are not most people), to be travelling to a mountain marathon with a baby. In the end, as I predicted, the support from everyone was overwhelming, and Rowan was made to feel very welcome. In fact, she was extremely well behaved and even those camped right beside us hardly heard a cry. Moss, who also walked in with my mum, actually caused more hassle, as he went acutely lame overnight and thus secured himself a lift out of mid-camp on the boat with the injured runners on day 2 (by the evening he’d recovered, so we think he just wanted a boat ride). 

Reviewing our route choices at the end of day 2

Anyway, to get back to the race... We had a steady first day, neither of us feeling particularly brilliant, not taking any risks and finishing with 10 minutes to spare. It was a little too hot for racing, but the views were absolutely spectacular, in particular the final descent to mid-camp (which was located at Loch Crabhadail, a splendidly remote stretch of soft green grass beside an incredible white-sand beach). Being amongst the first teams back, we were sure that others would pass our temporarily leading score of 300. But we were wrong; by the end of the day we were still in front, albeit with several teams barking at our heels (with scores of 295, 280 etc.). With this incentive, we went out hard on day 2 and gave it everything to try and keep the lead. We even took the option (which secured a 50-60-35 point control trio) of climbing back over An Cliseam (799m), a summit we’d already bagged on day 1. We cut it fine, a little too fine in fact, and finished 2 minutes over time, both falling at the finish control – me because I tripped up, Konrad because he was overcome by the heat. Still, we came away with a day 2 score of 379 points (385 minus a 6 point time penalty), which gave us a comfortable margin over the next team. Martin announced at the prize giving that this had been the last ever LAMM, and received a thoroughly deserved standing ovation that refused to finish. In these circumstances, our win felt particularly special. Although as I’ve come to realise, the greatest prize in any race is now the little person with the beaming smile, waiting for us at the finish line.