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FORCED TEAM CHANGES

Trefor was under some pressure from the Territorial Army to run the 20 mile Welsh 1000m peaks race taking place on the day before we were to start. This we firmly vetoed, particularly as he was down to run the second leg. However a few weeks later The TA finally scuppered his participation by moving their summer camp to coincide with the relay. They did not allow him to run the Welsh 1000m race either!

This was a terrible blow as I felt that Julie was irreplaceable and I had vision of having to do the Cuillin ridge myself, without Trefor's climbing abilities. I certainly didn't have the nerve to ask anyone to do so unrewarding a task as Julie's.

Having confirmed that Alun Powell was not able to be definite, John and I drew up a list of four names. Three I rang immediately, Craig Harwood I decided to leave until the others had a chance to answer as he was not as strong a runner.

Mark Hartell, whom I did not know at all, sounded very keen and said yes almost immediately once he had seen the route details. Mark, it seemed was a long distance specialist, and in addition to this event this summer, he was to set a new record for the South Wales 2000 footers, and attempt the record number of Lake District peaks climbed in 24 hours. There did not seem much to worry about there!

Steve solved the loss of Julie by coming up with Liz Peart, an ex-colleague who was in the process of moving up to Kinlochewe to start a bed and breakfast business. Steve and Liz between them took over the jobs that Trefor and Julie had undertaken.

At about this time I suffered a bout of a knee injury which totally prevented me running. As this followed a two week lay-off after flu I became more and more doubtful that I should run. John became very ill indeed but hoped to recover, whilst most of the rest of the team seemed to pick up some sort of illness.

Our second and final meeting took place after the Stuc a' Chroin hill race, the scene of Tony's ankle turning in 1990. John had not recovered enough to come, and it was only on the morning itself that I decided to start – I had been out running only once since the knee problem. In the event I retired when it started to protest, but I had felt good and covered over half the route so I felt happier.

The meeting was mostly to decide who should bring what. Liz's other half Tom, whilst protesting that he was nothing to do with the event came up with a load of equipment which he could provide.

I had decided to do the Skye section in the opposite direction to last time, and the way climbers don't tend to go because the trickier climbing is thus downward. My reasoning was that our target was only to get to the Munro summits, we could have abseil ropes in place thus speeding everything up.This of course all depended on getting climbers in position. I had been promised three climbers but had failed to get in touch with them over a whole month of trying.

Finally with only two weeks to go, they all fell through. I managed to get hold of two others, and once I realised that Colin was a climber and would be parked at the start anyway, I managed to work out a way we could get all the major abseils in place.

A further problem with Skye was that I was the only member of the team that knew it, and I was not down to do any of it in the event. We had spent some time trying to get various Skye experts who were also runners to navigate and accompany our runners over the ridge – no-one was available.

Steve spent a week up there recceeing the first part of his section with a friend Tony. He was happy about doing this section with Tony in the event. This left Mark, a competent climber but with no knowledge of the ridge. Alun Powell agreed to spend a few days up there the week before, and run it with him on the weekend.

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