There’s a particular kind of silence that only exists at 5:15 in the morning. Not peaceful silence. Not cinematic silence. The kind where your brain is still booting up like an old Windows XP desktop while you voluntarily stand in a field wearing trainers, questioning every life decision that brought you there.
And then suddenly, you’re off.
The pack disappeared almost instantly.
Within minutes I was being overtaken by what felt like the entire county of Cumbria. Trail runners floated past me with fresh legs and organised hydration systems while I lumbered along carrying the grace of a shopping trolley with one dodgy wheel.
Then came four hours alone.
No runners ahead.
No runners behind.
No reassurance.
Just me, my thoughts, and the growing suspicion I had somehow wandered off the route and accidentally entered a separate event entirely.
Every gate looked wrong. Every hill looked identical. At one point I became convinced a sheep was judging me personally.
Then, finally, two figures appeared behind me.
Michelle and Ben.
The back markers.
And honestly, thank God for them.
From that point on, the day changed completely. What had become a lonely mental grind turned into a slow, stubborn march forward with conversation, encouragement, and shared suffering. The pace wasn’t quick, but none of us really cared anymore. By that stage it had stopped being about times and positions and become something much simpler:
Keep moving.
At checkpoint two, roughly ten miles in, I was told I probably wouldn’t make the cutoff.
They gave me the option to stop there.
And for a second, standing tired and aching, it would have been very easy to say yes. Warm car. Finished. Comfortable defeat wrapped in sensible reasoning.
Instead I said I’d continue until somebody physically told me to stop.
So the three of us carried on towards Coniston. Slowly. Relentlessly. One foot after another through tired legs and fading energy.
And eventually, that’s where the cut off finally caught me.
Game over.
Except it didn’t feel like failure.
Weirdly, it felt like progress.
Because there’s a difference between quitting and being stopped.
One is surrender.
The other is simply running out of road for the day.
I’m proud of what I achieved. Proud that I kept going when the easier option sat right there in front of me. Proud that I found a way to continue even after the event quietly became something very different to what I’d imagined at the start line.
Most importantly, I already know one thing:
I’ll be back next year.
And next time, Coniston is only getting the trailer, not the full ending.
Bipolar Ironman 