Not Flying, Just Falling

that trail run where you are descending like a demon until abruptly you are not

Tripping over whilst running at breakneck speed on a mountain is very much like how a cigarette might feel when being smoked by a hipster 17 year old; one second its on fire, smoking hot, and the next extinguished, dropped to the floor like a bad habit.

No longer cool.

For one glorious minute I am gliding down a steep old farm track. A track so old there are still ancient cobbles remaining. Either side of me are small ruts from centuries of carts, and more recently tractors, but the middle section is a joy of worn grass and gravel.

Funnelling me down is a drystone wall, part collapsed, part intact. There are hillsides full of sheep and glorious mountains half-revealing themselves through the cloud. This is my reward for an early morning climb up the fells.

Like Bode Miller down Val Gardena, I start to weave left and right as the track deteriorates, dancing over rocks and potholes like a dragon-fly over a pond, barely even touching the surface. My arms are like wings balancing my form, guiding me down to the narrow lane that will take me over the stream, through the village and drop me back in time for breakfast.

Aaarghhhh!!

And just like that I’m face-planting something grassy, rocky and smelling of cow. And unlike in Amsterdam in the early 2000s, this time I’m not exactly sure what I tripped on.

There’s no guilty rocks sticking out the ground, no tell-tale potholes or loose stones, no small children or dogs, not even bramble or gnarly roots; just me sat on my ass picking grit out of my hands.

The damage is a gashed knee, a shoulder scrape, bloodied and muddied elbows, punctured palms and a bruised ego.

But for one frighteningly glorious moment I am flying.

Runners rarely get the same feeling of flight as cyclists do. While not under-appreciating the effort to get to the top of Alpe d’Huez in the first place, cyclists can at least free-wheel their way back down, hovering a metre or so off the ground, getting a sense of how Icarus must have felt.

If disc brakes fail on hairpin number 21 then actual flight can also be experienced.

That’s not to say it isn’t possible with training, practice and dedication to the art of descending, to forget you have breakable limbs and soft fleshy bits, and give in to gravity.

For runners that feeling is more difficult to attain. It takes a lot more dedication, passion and mental strength to forget one’s legs when pelting it off the back of Yr Wyddfa down the Llanberis path or off a boulder-strewn Scafell.

Until something doesn’t give in; one foot hitting an obstacle causing the other to land unexpected or not land at all. While other things also land in unexpected ways, like the collar bone, shoulder, face, hands and knees.

And then the runner might appreciate the plight of the cyclist who missed the hairpin.

So what went wrong?

Did I trip on a rock or a stone?

Did I look up, get too relaxed, forget my feet still need some visual guidance and ignore, even if just momentarily, the golden rule of descending: pick a line and keep an eye on it?

Sat in the middle of a farm track feeling sorry for myself and looking for something to blame won’t change what has already happened.

This isn’t the first time I’ve tripped over, and it won’t be the last. Philosophically-speaking it is merely a sub optimal outcome for any breakneck descent.

However I didn’t break my neck, so that’s a positive.

“I think you can experience no greater sense of freedom than what you feel when you run on a ridge that seems to hang in the air. It’s like running along the edge of the blade of a sword, taking care not to fall over one side as you accelerate with every step to leave the blade and the danger behind, though at the same time you don’t want it to ever end. There is danger, but you can think only of flying, of giving your legs the freedom to go faster and faster, letting your body dance as it keeps its balance”.
Kilian Jornet

Kilian may or may not have experienced a painful season-ending face-plant when writing this. But his is a feeling we too, as runners, might all expect to experience at some points during our trail running adventures.

They say expect the unexpected when going out for a trail run. But that doesn’t make falling any easier.

You can read all the blogs you like titled how to help avoid falling while trail running or tips to prevent tripping while running. It won’t help when you do take a tumble down the mountain at 20mph.

It’s surely counter-productive in itself to even expect to fall; expect not to fall and be fast and confident or expect to fall and be slow and deliberate.

A good fall will bruise only the bits you can see. A bad one might take you out of the game for a while.

Like legendary marathon runner Dean Karnazes almost said:

“Unless you’re not pushing yourself, you’re not living to the fullest. You can’t be afraid to fail fall, but unless you fail fall, you haven’t pushed hard enough.”

So next time you fall, especially when descending like a demon, be thankful you’ve pushed it hard enough to eat dirt, and wear those bruises, stitches, crutches or cast like the badge of honour they are.