As those that read this blog will be aware, I now have quite a history of Spine racing. After the 2021 DNF I have been on the start line of at least one Spine Race every year, three times with my wife Sharon. One of those events was the full Winter Spine in 2024, surely the pinnacle of Spine Racing. I finished, did OK, and so the question everyone was asking is ‘Why have you entered it again???’. A fair question and one largely rooted in hubris if I’m honest. My ambition for 2026 was to complete the full Winter and Summer Spine Races in the same calendar year. I do also seem to have a number of other ultras booked for 2026 so this is going to be my ‘racing year’ – after which if I have any sense I’ll retire from ultras and stick to Parkrun and my Scalextric car collection.
Anyway, for whatever reason I had entered the 2026 Winter Spine Race. My 2024 race had been quite successful and I still had all the kit so this time I didn’t have to go through as huge kit choosing and buying exercise. This is a good thing, as Spine kit can be expensive. The only things I wasn’t fairly sure about were my traction aids and my shoes. Yaktrax had been of questionable durability and difficult to get on in 2024, and Inov8 had discontinued my favourite shoes.
I’d purchased some traction aids made by Vargo that weren’t kit check compliant but were easy to get on and off. In 2024 I spent a miserable few hours in ice from Middleton to Langdon Beck because I couldn’t face trying to get my (broken) Yaktraks back on my shoes. My plan was to carry Yaktraks for kit compliance but use the Vargos as they were easy to get on and off and (I judged) would be grippy enough if I was just walking. Shortly before the event Kahtoola released a new version of microspike called the Ghost. It combined an elastomer frame with metal spikes, making it both light and (hopefully) easy to fit. I bought a pair and made sure I knew how to get them on my shoes but that was it, we don’t really get much snow and ice in Essex and anyway I only bough them a week before the race… For shoes I ended up taking three pairs, two made by VJ Sport and the nearest Inov8 equivalent to what I had before.
Anyway enough about kit. I’d booked us into Rushop Hall B&B, a lovely Spine friendly (they will serve breakfast at 6am on Spine morning) place, only about three miles from Edale. It isn’t the flattest three miles but that isn’t a problem in a car…
Storm Goretti chose to visit the UK on the 8th and 9th of January. Whist it was the Southwest that got most battered, other parts of the UK (including Derbyshire) saw significant snowfall as a result. We were travelling to Derbyshire on the 9th so I spoke to Jan at the B&B who told me that the main roads were clear but the lane down to the B&B was a bit dodgy and we’d be better off parking at the top and walking down. We took her advice, and also ate in a very nice bar/restaurant called REMS in Chapel-en-le-Frith before going to the B&B so we didn’t have to go out again. I used the walk down to the B&B to try out my Vargo grippers (I hadn’t tried those out before either). I found them OK for grip but a bit sketchy in terms of staying on my shoes – however I hadn’t really adjusted them properly so I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. We checked in, arranged a time for breakfast the following morning and went to bed.
Fortunately there was no snow on Friday night and so the drive down to kit check wasn’t too bad. I did manage to lose one of my Vargo grippers on the walk up to the car and, despite searching, assumed that particular part of my strategy was no longer viable. Fortunately I found the offending item on the way back and so still had far more ‘traction aid’ options than I knew what to do with.
Kit check was fine, I was checked by another Colin so maybe the common bond of a slightly unfashionable name helped but anyway I passed and got the Stamp of Lindley.
I was so happy I actually smiled in my photo for the tracker page.
Snow was forecast for Saturday night. We decided that if I left my drop bag on the Saturday then if the worst came to the worst, I could walk to the start on Sunday. Not ideal but better than missing the race altogether. I packed my compulsory kit into my rucksack – and found I was without a poo kit! I knew I had one at kit check so the most likely explanation was that I had dropped it there. A quick walk back the Peaks Centre revealed this to be the case. Had I not decided to pack my kit before dropping my drop bag I wouldn’t have discovered this until I was back at the B&B and, whilst I had spare paper and bags, I didn’t have a spare poo shovel.
We bumped into Clive, who was also at the B&B supporting Enfys, another Spine runner. He lived in the Lake District and had proper winter tyres on his car. He kindly offered us a lift to the start the next day, much to Sharon’s relief. We thought we could probably drive to the point where the road to Edale left the main road, which would only leave a mile and a half for me to walk (mainly downhill) but if we could get to Edale that would be much better.
After a 6am breakfast Clive did indeed manage to drive us down to Edale. I had my tracker fitted and settled down to wait until it was time to make my way to the start.
At 8am the 2026 Winter Spine Race started! As is traditional I jogged excitedly up the main street of Edale until we turned off onto the ‘Offical Start of the Pennine Way’ – I’m not sure I will ever stop finding that spelling mistake amusing – especially as it is cast into a very ‘Offical’ looking sign.
We crossed to Nether Booth – where, for once, I didn’t stop for a photo with the phone box, and pressed on towards Jacob’s Ladder. It was snowy underfoot but not slippery so I didn’t feel the need to try any of my possible gripper options (at this point I was carrying four alternatives, Yaktraks, Kahtoola Ghosts, Vargo cleats and some Amazon instep grippers I borrowed of Sharon as the Vargos weren’t a blinding success so far.)
In 2024, apart from it being very cold, the weather on the Kinder Plateau was the best I’d ever had on a Spine Race, blue skies and sunshine. In 2026 things were very different…
To be honest, the snow and lack of visibility weren’t massive problems. The Sprint and Challenger South had been over the day before (and I was nowhere near the front of the Full) so the snow was broken, and I’d been up there often enough to know more or less where I was heading.
The biggest problem doesn’t come out so well in a photo – wind. Within about the first two hours of the race I would guess that 75% of the competitors (including me) had lost their race number. Basically if you had pinned your number on it probably touched down somewhere between Barnsley and Huddersfield. I don’t know how strong the wind was (I think some one said around 50mph) but I do remember at one point a small group of us had stopped and were just standing braced against our poles waiting for the gust to die down so we could move again.
Apparently people had been ice climbing on Kinder Downfall the day before but I was mainly concentrating on the tricky business of remaining upright – which I managed with varying degrees of success.
There is a short sharp drop just before Mill Hill. The sensible people were putting their spikes on for the descent. I sat down, pushed off and went ‘Weeee!!!!!’ a lot as I slid down the slope on my backside. People seemed to find this amusing but for me it was the safest and easiest way down – after all I could hardly fall over from that position.
I think I did put my microspikes on at the A57 Snake Pass crossing. certainly Devil’s Dike was less unpleasant than it is when it’s wet and muddy. By Bleaklow the weather had improved somewhat and the impression I got was that the amount of snow was decreasing as I went North.
The view from Torside towards Laddow Rocks promised less snow – however I suspected this just meant there’d be a lot more wet from Laddow Rocks to Wessenden Head.
At Torside I found Glossop Mountain Rescue, who very kindly supplied me with a cup of coffee, which I felt I’d need given I knew what was coming.
I don’t mind the climb from Torside to Laddow rocks, but the narrow path along the edge isn’t my favourite. However coming down was no better as everything was very wet. Jumping over the various small streams was a challenge and I was very glad I had knee length waterproof socks on a number of occasions. Black Hill appears to try and be interesting by also being Soldiers Lump. It isn’t. The best name for it would be Black Lump, or even Beige Lump, because that’s what it is an uninspiring, boring, slightly annoying lump.
I should remember that boring isn’t necessarily bad. When I got to Dean Clough, boring was not the first word that sprang to mind – no, it was an expletive. There is a diversion for Dean Clough when it is in spate and I wondered if I’d missed it. However I saw some other people some way behind me so guessed I hadn’t and that the snow melt was rapidly increasing the amount of water in the clough. I stepped in, got almost all the way across when I felt my legs being pushed out from under me. I kind of threw myself up onto the bank and, very inelegantly, just about got away with it without getting soaked – apparently not everyone was so lucky. I believe the diversion may have been instated not long after I crossed.
Eventually I reached to only location (apart from the finish) marked on my GPS for the first leg, the legendary Nicky’s Food Bar. I stopped for a bacon roll, coffee and some chocolate.
I was very careful to return to the Pennine Way without falling into the enormous bog I found in 2021 and crossed the M62 to head towards Blackstone Edge, and the inevitable moor associated with it.
The weather was somewhat improved and I got to the A58 without any drama. The section around the reservoirs leading up to Langfield Common is a fairly easy to run section, with tracks leading to slabs, until the final section up towards Stoodley Pike, where the path gets rockier and slightly harder to follow in the dark.
I always take a photo of Stoodley Pike. Many of them are like this one, a vague outline in the dark. I don’t usually miss the path down from it though… Anyway a short bit of ‘cross country’ soon had me back on track.
The River Calder has cut a very deep valley into the countryside, in fact it is the lowest point of the first leg of the Spine Race. This means there is a fairly steep down followed by a fairly inevitable up on the way across the river. The ‘up’ starts out by going under the railway line and past some houses. it does not immediately turn left through a gate. It does go through an entirely different gate further along the route. I’ll put that small error down to tiredness and wishful thinking.
The rest of the leg consists mainly of crossing farmland until you reach the diversion off the Pennine Way to the checkpoint. There is a bridge to cross and a particularly annoying section where the path runs in a trench between two walls with a few rocks in the bottom to trip over but other wise its out onto the road to Slack Top, followed by an extremely slippery and muddy path that ultimately leads to CP1 at Hebden Hey.
It had taken me over two hours longer to get to Hebden Hey than it did in 2024. However the conditions underfoot had been much more benign in 2024 so I wasn’t panicking just yet. I was till comfortably within the cut-offs and had decided before the race started I wouldn’t be lingering too long at the checkpoint. The reasons were twofold. Firstly, being the first checkpoint, it tends to be very busy and quite noisy so sleep was unlikely. Secondly the first two legs of the race are a total of 108 miles long. The Lakeland 100 is 105 miles and takes me around 36 hours and goes through two nights. My reasoning was I could therefore stop at CP1 for food, a change of socks and to recharge stuff, before heading out, much like doing LL100. Of course the fact I had taken two hours longer than 2024 already meant that the first two legs were likely to take significantly over 36 hours but I still felt it was the best strategy.
So we will leave me at CP1, eating as much as I can and preparing to go out into the night…
The Only Way Is Pennine... 