Jura

Good morning folks

I trust you are in fine fettle.
This blog will (hopefully) be shorter than the usual ramble-on-a-thon.
Primarily because it is mainly about one thing, JURA.
(Secondly, my back is shot to pieces and if I sit down for too long, I might not be able to ever get up again!)

Round-up

Other things have been happening, alongsidethe focus on this race/trip.

1) I passed my Advanced Motoring Test, which wasn’t easy (for me).

2) We all went out for the first time in yonks!

3) We marshalled at the Old County Tops fell race and Lina had her first ever fell run (not the OCT, just up to Stickle Tarn), on a weekend when the Lakes was at its absolutely glorious sunny best 🙂

4) It stopped raining at times!

5) Barrow men and ladies teams both won .
Beating the Flat Cappers is never easy, so it felt good 🙂

6) I got promoted at work, (for a job nobody else wanted or applied for), I was kind of pushed into it, so watch this space!

JURA.

Jura Fell Race 25/05/24
Distance: 28 km / 17.4 miles
Climb: 2370 m / 7776 ft

“The Paps are not the sort of place people should run. But they do, every year. The Isle of Jura Fell Race is a frankly ridiculous phenomenon, with 250 runners saying their prayers before bashing off from sea level up not just the trio of Paps, but four other peaks, with a scarcely believable 2730m of ascent over nigh 30km.” (Source: The National Scot website)

(IF YOU LIKE, SKIP THIS WAFFLE STRAIGHT TO THE VIDEO IN THE FINAL BIT AT THE BOTTOM!)

The Isle of Jura. 4th largest island of the Inner Hebrides, home to 200 people and 5000 red deer over its 142 squre miles. Famous for George Orwell (he wrote 1984 at Barnhill Cottage), Corryvreckan whirlpool (where Orwell nearly drowned) and a Distillery.

For me the main event and focus on this race, “The Isle of Jura Fell Race” came along at a bit of a mad time.
I like my job, it is generally fairly steady, but it hasn’t been recently, plus the driving test, plus the promotion application/interview, plus other stuff outside work, plus a slow puncture that became a fast puncture the week of the race, plus other stuff (i,e. life).

Which all meant that everything was very last minute.
I had set my kit aside, but the rucksack I had did not have Tardis qualities, so my skimped down kit got even more skimped.

Jura is quite different to other races. There are several options:

1) Drive over from Kennacraig on the Calmac Macbrayne ferry to Islay (2hrs), then the shuttle (10mins) to Jura, carry all that you like and either camp, or sell all your internal organs for some digs, (the hotel was full but there was one place offering accommodation for £1000 per night).

2) Take the fast ferry (£30 each way) from Tayvallich, landing on the pier right next to the campsite. 40 minutes each way.

3) Leave your car at Kennacraig, take your pushbike across on the CalMac ferry, then the diddy ferry, then ride 8 miles to the campsite.

Traditionalists go for option 3, so we did too.

My mate John had offered to drive from Kendal, so I was up at 4am on the Thursday morning, away at 5am and Kendal by 7:30am, not exactly feeling the love for the race and thinking of other options (weekend in the Lakes, new shoes in Kendal, turning around and going home!)
I don’t know why, but the lead up had been poor with training too and I had hurt my back, so my excuse book was wide open.

Luckily John was up for it, so northwards we went!

The weather was wet, wet, wet on the way up. We made the ferry on time and then got straight on the shuttle ferry.

Feolin ferry port (!) feels like a very lonely place after a long day. The handful of other runners sped off as I tried to work out how to attach a second rucksack to my bike. (Riding a singlespeed bike with SPD pedals and studded fell shoes, with a massive rucksack on my back). John kindly offered to take it on his rack, otherwise I might still have been there now.

8 miles of “undulating” road got us to Craighouse and a blustery campsite.

After the first in a row of army rations pack meals (cheap Wayfayrer’s style boil in a pouch meal), things felt better and I slept like a log.

Friday morning dawned with midges, sunny and dry, but oh for some breeze.

It suddenly felt very relaxing to have no pressure to do anything at all, we were at the race start, a day early, knowing that you could start up a fellrunning conversation (fell shoes grip, nav errors, “Have you races this before?”) with anyone nearby. Happy days 🙂
We decided to go off for a pedal.

The “Three Arch Bridge” is the last checkpoint on the course, leading to 3 miles of road, BUT, for extra spiciness, a mile of that was covered in metal sheeting, to protect the road from heavy plant machinery, used to buld a jetty, to land a boat, to bring a new boiler to the Jura Distillery on the Friday night, to then be taken up 3 days after the race. (Please do not rain on race day was the thought of all, as this would up the stakes even more!)

After a ride down the coast, I headed back to a filling campsite and the arrival of the rest of the P&B crowd. Midges forced an early retreat and quiet descended early over the campsite on the eve of the race.

Saturday dawned early (it stays light late and gets light early in Bonny Scotland this time of year). The midges were out in force, so after kit check and registration, I sorted my kit inside my tent. My jelly babies had all congealed into a massive mutated lump, like some kind of chewy dog toy.

Start time always comes round in no time and at 10:30am, to the sound of a trio of Bagpipers and a decent sized crowd, and OFF.

The race consists of 3 “Pips”, 3 “Paps” and one final “Pip”.
The Pips are smaller than the Paps, but they aren’t that small.

An absolute bogfest up to the first Pip, I can feel myself going backwards, with that all too familiar “my legs are not working” feeling I have had in my last 7 races.
People steaming past me left and right, then into the clag and on my own.
Nobody in sight, in front or behind.
Hoping not to get lost so early on, I check my map just as the mists lift enough to get a sighting. Pip 2 follows, then some friendly P&B support on Pip 3 and then the race proper begins.

A long descent to the valley precedes a LONG climb up the first Pap.
The clag lifts, the sun shines bright and a tailwind gusts, making pirouettes an additional bonus when lifting one leg on some of the scrambling bits. The view from Pap 1 shows the work left to do…
Scree slopes are usually runnable, but this scree is different.
Bigger and looser boulders, potential to snap something!

Paps 2 and 3 are in the bag, but Pip 4 has the potential camel to break one’s back, and it does.
I had started getting pain early on. It is normal for me (with me being lanky tall, with crap posture) to feel it on climbs, but on the final Pip, I just can’t straighten up, welcome cowbells and enthusiastic marshalls at the summit and the last Pip run off would be a joy if only I could run properly, but that is not a problem for long, as 2 miles of bottomless slop bog follows the bottom of the last Pip reducing me to a ploughing slog, then a river crossing and finally the Three Arch Bridge. All that is left is 3 miles of road.
(Some runners change into road shoes here, but my size 13 road shoes didn’t make the cut and are sat in my lounge in Tadcaster, along with a heap of other stuff left behind!)

I dig in and run the best I can, doubled over, trying not to trip (almost going a cropper) on the metal bit. Helped on by a P&B clubmate on a bike, despite busting a gut, I cross the line 24 seconds over the 6 hour mark. (Finlay Wild would have showered, got changed, had his tea and rowed home by this point. His record is a very impressive 2:58:09)
A tough old race with a bit of everything (climbs, bog, scree, cliffs, more bog, road, metal road…)
Not my best every performance, but I am well chuffed to finish.

Prizegiving waa followed by a Ceilidh, but we were on the early ferry, so I hit the hay and slept the best I could with a jeffed back.

Sunday dawned wet and midgey. By 8am were were off, and with less than 10 seconds to spare, we made the shuttle ferry, then blagged our way onto the early CalMac (we were booked on the 6pm crossing, 9:30am would get us home slightly earlier), back to Kennacraig, back to Kendal and back to Taddy by 9pm.

An awesome weekend. a cracking race route with a bunch of brilliant people.

(For the record, Scotland is my favourite place in the wholem wide world, but I am not keen on midges!)

And finally…

If you can put up with some brief shaky camera footage of the race, this is the before, during and after of my Jura Fell race weekend 🙂