5 Days to go…

Just a few days to go and then I’m heading for Fort William ready to face one of the biggest running events on the planet, Cape Wrath Ultra.

In a nutshell, racing about 250 miles across the Scottish Highlands over and through all terrain, mountains, river crossing, marshlands and whatever weather is thrown at us. It’s going to be quite a beast, I may have a little cry.

This is the first year for this event but it’s devised by the same team who have brought us the notorious Dragon’s Back Race for many years so is undoubtedly going to be more watertight than my trail shoes. DB is a beast of an event 300km the length of Wales (hence the name) with a pretty high drop-out rate which is a clear indication of just how tough it is.

Like the Dragon, Cape Wrath Ultra being 100km bigger still has attracted people from across the globe, I’ve seen in the list of entrants people from Arizona, Sweden, Australia and more so it’s clearly got some minerals to entice the ultra-hungry among us. This is what we believe the breakdown looks like, (subject to getting lost, avoiding rivers, crags, peaks and bogs…)

  • Day 1: 37km (23 miles) 500m ascent
  • Day 2: 57km (35 miles) 1,800m ascent
  • Day 3: 68km (42 miles) 2,400m ascent
  • Day 4: 35km (22 miles) 1,400m ascent
  • Day 5: 44km (27 miles) 1,400m ascent
  • Day 6: 72km (45 miles) 1,400m ascent
  • Day 7: 61km (38 miles) 1,600m ascent
  • Day 8: 26km (16 miles) 700m ascent

My efforts and suffering are fuelled by my desire to make a worthwhile difference for a local charity I am proud to support, Anna’s Hope.  Anna’s Hope makes an incredible difference to the lives of children battling or recovering from Brain Cancer and being a small charity it’s all run voluntarily which means every penny (plus gift aid) goes to the right place to help transform little lives. 10p per mile anyone?! 🙂  www.justgiving.com/Darren-Grigas

4 Days to go…

These last few days have seen a lot of chatter in the CWU Facebook group with lots of last minute panics and questions.

This lovely graphic came in from one of the chaps and it shows we’re in for a hilly ride. Click to enlarge.

Packed and ready!

Just a few more days to pack and re-pack and then I’ll be updating this post from the highlands if/when I get a signal.

Until then…

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