Written by Jess Williams - https://runninglynxjess.wordpress.com

Attrition; /əˈtrɪʃ(ə)n/ noun; the process of reducing something’s strength or effectiveness through sustained attack or pressure.

The 2016 iteration of the Arc of Attrition could only be described as an all out physical and mental assault. Gale force winds, horizontal rain, waterfalls, mad dashes across wave lashed beaches and thick greasy mud; it had it all! I had crewed on the inaugural edition of the Arc last year when the weather had been bitter cold but calm and beautiful, what a difference 12 months on.
I had something of a sub par 2015 as you will know if you’ve previously read my other blogs, qualifying for the Arc back at Hope 24 in May was really the only race I ran that had gone to plan. So in 2016 I’ve binned plans and a,b,c goals, and started to think in terms of what I want, why I want it and how much I want it.
The Arc was important to me because it was home turf, run by my club – so I would know lots of people on route – and it would be my first hundred, having previously done the RAT and with the upcoming Quest I have a hankering to cover as much coastal path as possible on my own two feet. I also didn’t choose a more straightforward first hundred, because it wasn’t about just checking off the distance for me, I wanted to pit myself against the elements and see how I coped.

For the first time in history – probably – the 10 day forecast proved to be accurate, and a severe weather warning had been issued by mid-week; gale force winds and heavy rain were predicted throughout with the weather warning in force from midnight Friday. Plan; get as far as possible whilst the going was good. The trouble was, the coast path had been lashed by rain for weeks turning the ground to thick slippery mud, for which my Inov8 race ultra 290’s proved useless. I had pre-empted the mud from the recce I had done in January, and purchased mud cleats, trouble was they didn’t want to stay on and the left was flapping off just two miles into the race and trying to fit dirty cleats into my race vest was filthy business! Poles had seemed like they would be useful but the technical nature of many parts of the path means you need your hands free for scrambling down rocks; dilemma….. the poles stayed put.
By 10 miles I had developed a couple of hotspots and the medic was kind enough to tape my – decidedly grotty – toes, I apologised profusely, but he said he’d seen worse! I had 14.5 miles to go to the first checkpoint at Porthleven, and the mud, wind and rain was already beginning to drain me, I tried to keep my spirits up by taking in the views. I was relieved when around mile 17 a guy called Chris, also from Mudcrew, caught me up and we chatted for a while before I headed off around Gunwalloe having found a bit of a second wind. I remembered from the previous year that Gunwalloe was around 4 miles from Porthleven and I was looking forward to seeing Duncan at the checkpoint.

The sun was setting as I crossed the beach before heading up onto the road to Porthleven and people started to put on their head torches, but it was still light enough for me to see clearly and I enjoyed the inky blue of twilight and the sound of the sea. I was on my own for a couple of miles now and as the blackness came in I put my headtorch on and before long I was on the final stretch of road to Porthleven, where big hugs from Jane Stephens (Team Mudcrew directors!) and my friend Luke and most importantly DRY CLOTHES!! Duncan had got stuck behind an accident, so I changed my clothes and ate a bit of food before heading to the car and stocking up on supplies and more dry clothes for the next leg.
I bumbled along for a bit around Porthleven harbour trying to get my damp hands into dry gloves which proved quite tricky, but eventually I managed tug them on using sheer brute force! Satisfied, I headed back onto the coast path, the rain was coming and going but it wasn’t too cold so I decided I would try to avoid putting on waterproof trousers as they were that bit harder to run in.
Somewhere along the path I managed to take my first wrong turn…….brambles. I should have remembered this from my recce in January, but unfortunately the night has a way of making things look that bit different. After slogging my way up the hill I saw a sign that said ‘Rinsey circular walk’, damn, same mistake I made in January too! I felt pretty sure that if I took a shortcut down the bank in front of me that would lead me back to the coastal path, there were a couple of brambles but nothing too bad so I headed downwards towards where I see other head torches bobbing in the distance. Before long however, I realised that I had made a pretty big mistake as the brambles started to get thicker. I tried to step onto them in an attempt to push them down with my weight but it was still painful going. Going back up would be worse as gravity would be against me and my weight wouldn’t help to push them down, so I had no choice but to plough on. The bank seemed to go on forever and with the howling wind and ability to see only as far as my head torch beam illuminated I was starting to feel quite panicked – by now the brambles were up to my thighs and blood was running down from my knees. I could finally see the path but one last obstacle lay in the way – blackthorn. By this point the red mist had come down and I just wanted out of my current situation so I went kind of nuts and kicked my way through the hedge like a loon. I stumbled onto the coast path feeling wide eyed and filled with adrenaline, never so relieved to have my feet back in the mud! I continued on and finally made it to Praa Sands where Duncan was waiting, I wasn’t expecting to see him until Marazion and my spirits soared at the sight of him. I hung around for a couple of minutes, happy to see him after my bramble adventure, before giving him a hug heading onwards towards Marazion.

In some random fields a fellow runner in a green jacket started chatting to me, we ran for a couple of minutes before I introduced myself, to my embarrassment it was my friend Shaun, in my defence I had been running for about 10 hours by this point and we both had hoods up, but still! It was nice to have company as the night can start to seem gruelling on your own, so we chatted away about how it was going and headed towards Penzance, after crossing a rocky beach with a small group (including a lovely guy called John who thankfully had a gps unit, as we weren’t sure that the beach was in fact the right way!) we were only a short stretch from the road. The mud had been draining so we were all looking forward to road shoes and tarmac.

That didn’t last for long. When you are running on the soft stuff it might seem tough, but the impact is so much lower. After two miles on the tarmac we were back to walking again, feet bones aching in protest. It was a flat 6.5 miles though and Mousehole came up relatively quickly. I dashed off to change into warm dry clothes and a thicker waterproof before stuffing down some warm beans….. bliss. The so-called ‘Arc Angels’ were lovely, buzzing around and be generally reassuring, it doesn’t make it easy to leave when you are surrounded by smiling faces in a warm pub! But leave we did. Chris who I had met earlier in the day decided to exit the race here and Shaun’s friend Mark also. Then we were two, we trouped up the road out of Mousehole and were relieved to finally rejoin the soft coast path! The next part was fairly painful, although we reached Lamorna where Vicky and Elaine were waiting for Shaun in quick time. Justin Lowell – a fellow Muddie – was marshalling here and told us that we’d be looking at some 25-30 mile pace chunks over the next few miles. It didn’t help when a wrong turn took us inland into a giant field of what appeared to be parsnips! We resorted to the power of google maps at this point to put us back on course, but we probably lost around an hour before we got back on to the correct path. When we did finally pick up the trail again, we were confronted with the longest set of steps I have come across so far on the coast path, it was, a painful descent. On reaching the bottom a short run preceded a somewhat soul destroying uphill climb almost equivalent to what we had just descended….
“You know how we were just saying that what this course needed was more steps?” I joked, better to laugh at the situation…..“Did they ever consider bridges?” Shaun replied.
It was very slow going but magical in the dark, the paths were waterfalls in places, beaches strewn with what we jokingly called dragon eggs and ship wrecked metal that loomed out of the blackness, and we managed only brief sections of running, which meant we had a very stop start pattern to contend with. We reached Porthgwarra in around four hours – roughly 8 miles on from Mousehole. The clock was ticking, but with only four miles to go and around 4 hrs before the checkpoint closed knowing that the next section rounded Land’s End and would be flatter we felt pretty confident of making it in time.

Around 5 am the rain came in and we became hopelessly lost on the criss cross of possible paths leading to Land’s End. I was kicking myself when I took out my trusty fenix hand torch and realised we could see a lot further (it had been so slippery on the paths I stuck to the head torch to free my hands for balance). We had ended up at a farm, and after a long time looking at google maps we were starting to get cold, we phoned one of the RD’s – Andy T.* – in desperation, and after fixing our location he got us back on track. By this stage I was feeling very disorientated and despondent and was shivering uncontrollably whenever we slowed, I knew it was in all likelihood hypothermia setting in. At this point I said to Shaun that if we made it in time to checkpoint 3 at Sennen Cove I didn’t think it was going to be feasible for me to continue as I wouldn’t have enough time to get warm again before setting out on what was likely to be a more arduous leg. It was a miserable realisation. We arrived at Land’s End with around 5 minutes until the cutoff at Sennen Cove, and half a mile to cover. Dejectedly having lost the coast path again we decided to take the road, we’d picked up another runner – Carl. The three of us headed out onto the road, before realising we weren’t 100% sure which way we needed to go! Fortunately for us there was a bus waiting at Land’s End, we decided to ask the way to Sennen Cove. So three soggy runners, shivering and crestfallen climbed aboard, the bus driver glanced up with eyebrow raised; “You must be bloody mad….”, and with a brief exchange he kindly offered to drop us at checkpoint 3. The time was 7.31am when we arrived at Sennen Cove, just after cut off.
I was sad that my journey had ended there, but I had learned a lot on the way, the kindness of strangers, the value of friends new and old- awesome to catch up with a few faces I hadn’t seen since Hope 24 and Summer, how much difference a hug from someone can make and how seeing someone you love when you least expect it when you’ve been through the mill can lift your spirits immeasurably…..! I was certainly dampened physically, but could only have been happier if I’d been able to carry on, for the first time in months I had run feeling positive and relaxed from the start – ok, apart from that bit in the brambles and the hypothermia – but an hour out of 19 and a half isn’t too shabby.

So here’s ‘til next time (even though I am 50% certain that I said never again around 6 am – but then, you can’t trust a person who’s not slept for over 24 hours!)**.

*I’ve been reliably informed by Ferg after he read this it wasn’t him we spoke to, thanks for putting us on track Andy, or we’d probably still be out there!! :o)

**Duncan is 100% certain that I said never again. I’m pretty sure that’s just a bad memory.

“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt