Words: Rob Savin
The railway line
There is a long, flat stretch of old railway trackbed somewhere in the middle of the Coast to Coast. Anyone who has walked the route will know the one. It goes on and on, and you are glad of it, mostly, because your legs are glad of it. Kirsty Reade ran it in sunshine this year and laughed out loud the whole way.
She had run it before, two years earlier, in the dark and the clag. Exhausted, somewhere past the halfway mark, she had convinced herself there was a significant drop on either side of the path. She had picked her way along it carefully, worried. When she came back and saw it in daylight, flat as a playing field in every direction, she could not stop laughing.
"I was just laughing to myself the whole way along."
It is a small thing. But it is exactly the kind of thing that makes you want to hear more from Kirsty Reade.
· · ·
Crossing the country
Kirsty signed up for the Northern Traverse for the second time because a previous finish had left something unresolved. Her first time across had taken three days and one hour. The one hour bothered her.
The Northern Traverse takes Wainwright's coast-to-coast route — St Bees on the Irish Sea to Robin Hood's Bay on the North Sea, 190 miles of it — and runs it as a race. The clock starts when you leave the beach and stops when you reach the other coast. You can sleep if you like. You can eat. The clock does not care.
"It's 190 miles," she told me. "Not 200."
I asked whether she had considered adding a lap at the end to round it up. She said she had considered going to bed.
This time she finished in 68 hours. I did the maths while she was talking. She slept for less than one hour across the whole thing — a doze by the river at Richmond that never quite turned into sleep because of the cold, a ten-minute nap at Glaisdale checkpoint, a couple of five-minute alarms set on her phone while lying at the side of the trail.
Less than an hour. In 68.
Three sections, and what they do to you
The route has a logic to it. Kirsty described it in three movements, and when she did, you understood why people come back to this walk — or run — more than once.
The Lakes first, roughly the opening 100 kilometres. Kidsy Pike in the dark on her second attempt, stars overhead, conditions clear enough to see the whole range. Then the middle section: Kirby Stephen, the Nine Standards, the flagged moorland paths where it used to be a quagmire. She was honest about it. Nice running. Slightly more boring. The legs finding their rhythm.
Then the North York Moors. Cleveland Way under foot and Roseberry Topping in the distance, and the particular satisfaction of knowing — knowing in your body as much as your head — that you are nearly there.
"I love that idea that it's a journey taking you across these different landscapes. When you see the North York Moors, you think, oh yeah, nearly there."
There is something in that observation worth sitting with. The landscape is the progress report. You do not need to check your GPS.
· · ·
What she carried, and why
Kirsty did not weigh her pack. She knows it was heavier than most of the other runners around her, and she is unapologetic about this. She carried two head torches. Spare batteries. A bivvy. Full waterproofs. Gloves — two or three pairs, because one wet pair on a cold night is a problem and a dry pair in your bag is not.
The thing she would not leave behind, and the thing she is most evangelical about, is a windproof jacket that weighs almost nothing and stuffs into a pocket. Not a waterproof. A windproof. Layered with the waterproof when the weather demands it, but pulled on alone when the air bites on a high ridge and the sun is still out.
"Whatever the weather, whether it's a sunny day and you're going up high and it might just get a bit windy — it just keeps the wind off."
Her poles, she has carried since 2010. Carbon fibre, very light, almost never used on a short run in the Lakes, essential on anything long. She cited a statistic about 20 per cent reduction in impact through the hips and knees. Over 190 miles, that is not a small number.
· · ·
The feet question
Twenty years of ultra running and Kirsty told me she only cracked the feet problem last year. That is a long time to be experimenting with your socks.
What she arrived at, after two decades of trial and error, is not complicated: very soft socks, tested over many long runs before the event, bought in multiples. Squirrel's Nut Butter applied thoroughly before she set off. And then, the thing she considers most important of all — paranoia.
Any grit in the shoe: stop immediately and remove it. Any hotspot forming: stop immediately and deal with it. Any tightness across the laces, any early pressure point, anything at all that your feet are trying to tell you — attend to it now, not at the next checkpoint, not when you have finished your tea.
"We're all really guilty of thinking — oh, I can't be bothered to stop, I'll do it next time I sit down. Just deal with it straight away."
It is the kind of advice that is genuinely useful and costs nothing. It is also, she admitted, harder to follow than it sounds when you are two nights in and the checkpoint is twenty minutes away.
· · ·
What she noticed for everyone else
Kirsty works at Big Trail Adventures, which means she was running a route that many of the people she works with will one day walk. She told me she spent stretches of the race doing involuntary recce work: looking longingly at pubs and hotels she was moving too fast to stop at, noting the campsite that would be perfect on a summer evening, thinking about the terrain and the footwear and the distance between resupply points.
"If I was doing this as a walk, that would be a really nice place to stop and have a drink. You definitely get a feel for that — mostly through looking longingly at places where you wish you could linger."
She pointed out something that gets missed in the planning: the sections are not equal. The Lakes miles are a different proposition to the middle section miles. Breaking the route into equal distances makes no sense if the terrain is not equal. Where you stop, and how tired you are when you get there, matters.
· · ·
On starting
I asked Kirsty what she would say to someone sitting at home thinking about their first long trail. She did not hesitate.
Start smaller than you think you need to. The Cumbria Way. The Dales Way. Even the West Highland Way before you commit to something bigger or more mountainous. Build a day you know you can finish, with time for lunch and a detour and a cream tea, and walk that day properly. Do not design a punishment for yourself and then wonder why you did not enjoy it.
"Set yourself up for a really enjoyable one. Stop and see the sights, have lunch, stop for cream teas. Just really enjoy it."
She said it the way people say things they have learned the hard way, even if the lesson itself is simple. Start well. Linger where you can. The miles will come.
