7 Valleys: A Race Report by Connor Brown (110km)
The weather had turned, as it so often does in the Lakes: rain whipping sideways in the wind, night pressing close. At a hundred kilometres in, I expected the checkpoint to appear where it had last year – the warm, fluorescent welcome of Threlkeld Village Hall. Instead, it had moved further up the side of Blencathra, as if the mountain itself demanded a toll before letting us pass.
By then I had deliberately finished all my food and water, anticipating the checkpoint that wasn’t there, and my body was beginning to rebel. Pain had stopped flickering hours ago. Now it was constant, spreading through my legs, my back, even my arms, punctuated by sharp protests.
Finally, a constellation of flags glowed in the dark: the checkpoint. I stumbled in as though arriving from a battlefront – rain-soaked, wind-beaten – and was struck by the contrast of the room: almost unnervingly quiet. Two runners slouched in chairs; tables with jugs of drinks and a buffet of calorie-dense food held a calm orderliness that made the chaos outside feel even more intense.
A woman at the table looked up, concern edging her voice. I could barely stand, swaying drunkenly from side to side, unused to being still after so many hours on the move. I asked her to fill both my flasks with flat Coke, and while she did, I ate a handful of Freddo bars, sugar landing like reinforcements.
When I turned to leave, flasks stowed, she stopped me. “Are you really going out there again so soon?” Her question startled me. Of course I am, I thought. Her surprised tone transformed into something else in me – a sense, however misplaced, of being valiant, warrior-like. I stepped back into the night, not flying, as it had felt, but jogging, as the pace chart would later reveal, the last ten kilometres into Keswick.
*
The 7 Valleys is one of a series of races, all beginning on the same weekend and tracing overlapping portions of the Lake District. There is the 2 Valleys, a brisk 22 kilometres; the 5 Valleys, 55; the 7, 110; and finally, the 13 Valleys: 180 kilometres, attempting to capture, in a single continuous effort, all thirteen valleys that give this corner of England its shape.
Distance becomes a kind of hierarchy. The shorter races draw larger fields, their finish lines more easily imaginable. In conversation, a subtle code emerges: speak to someone doing the 2 Valleys, and they’ll remark on how far you have to go; 5 Valleys participants confess they could not imagine doubling their course. And when the talk turns to the 13 Valleys, the great arc that swallows the others, the tone shifts to reverence, as if those entrants had volunteered for something other than sport – a pilgrimage, perhaps, or an ordeal.
Last year I ran the 5 Valleys, my first attempt at anything ultramarathon-length. I had prepared carefully – or so I believed – even taking a week’s holiday in the Lakes to accustom myself to real climbs, rather than the beautiful but modest hills of the Peak District. But preparation and execution parted ways.
When I unfolded my poles for the first ascent, one refused to lock into place, leaving me with a single stick. That might have been inconvenient enough, had I not attacked the opening descent too aggressively, injuring my knee. The rest of the race became a slow negotiation with discomfort. I lurched and limped through the remaining kilometres, finishing mid-pack. At Threlkeld – the checkpoint I had expected this year – I sat for twenty minutes, nursing a bowl of rice pudding and scrolling through messages from my family, as though words on a screen could stiffen the resolve my body was busy abandoning.
My brother had entered the 7 Valleys that year. By the time I crossed the line from my 55 kilometres, he was still somewhere in the second half of his journey. I lay in the car, half-resting, half-waiting, trying to imagine what it would mean to double what I had just endured. It felt almost comic, inconceivable, that anyone could finish the 5 Valleys and then set out to do it again. The effort seemed less athletic than mythic.
Hours later, there he was: a headtorch bobbing into view, stride unhurried, expression blank. He crossed the line with no drama, as if the whole thing were routine.
Soon after, by some mix of cruel providence and shrewd marketing, an email about early-bird entries arrived just as I had recovered enough to have forgotten the full horror of the pain. With a sense of unfinished business and a few swift clicks, I was signed up for the 7 Valleys.
*
A smooth narrative might have stopped there, but the truth was more tangled. Overconfidence, inexperience, and impatience had conspired to put me on the start line of another race just twelve weeks earlier.
In July, my brother and I ran Race to the Stones, a 100-kilometre course along the Ridgeway. Its severity lies less in elevation or technical terrain than in length – comparatively flat, smooth trail, the Home Counties course is gentle next to anything the Lake District has to offer. Finishing left me with ten weeks to recover from the blunt trauma of a hundred kilometres and somehow build the hill strength I would need.
I’ll admit, in the weeks after Race to the Stones I questioned my choices. But doubt soon gave way to habit. I ran more. Hill repeats, which at first I hated, became something I almost looked forward to. Nothing fancy – just the basics: building mileage and elevation gradually, with cutback weeks for recovery. The small adaptations stacked into a foundation. It was probably the first proper training block I’d managed in two and a half years of running – though not without hiccups. About ten days before the race, I picked up a cold that lingered right up to the start. By then I was tapering, so the work was already banked – but each morning’s cough and sniffle added a little extra anxiety.
On race day, I felt strong. I believed I could do it. My goals were ambitious – maybe even unrealistic – but I had done the training and the homework: poring over past results, tracking previous top-ten finishers on Strava, noting the paces they’d held. By the arithmetic, the target seemed attainable: roughly eight and a half minutes per kilometre, including four substantial climbs and descents (totalling 3,800 metres according to the organisers; 4,100 metres on my watch) – about six and a half minutes per kilometre once adjusted for grade.
I knew the caveats: grade-adjusted pace can’t capture the compounding fatigue of rough ground and carrying a heavy pack over 110 kilometres. But after finishing Race to the Stones with relative ease – deliberately holding back – I believed my body could endure. The 7 Valleys was never just about finishing; it was about finding my limits.
At the start line, the field was twice the size of previous years – nearly 400 runners, buzzing with nervous energy. I’d noticed in other races how the faster runners arrived late and slipped to the front, so, feeling like a pretender, I did the same, planting myself among several athletes decked out head-to-toe in the same brand – a subtle hint of sponsorship, or at least a fierce brand loyalty. It felt like a serious field. But I had done the work. All that remained was to run.
The race began. The pace surged too hot. I clung to the front pack for a couple of kilometres before backing off, knowing 110 kilometres demanded patience. Then the first small disaster: a longer-than-planned stop at the opening checkpoint. I surrendered twenty to thirty places but left feeling, in every sense, lighter. By the time I rejoined the trail, I was back in fortieth place.
What followed was a reprise of last year’s mistake. On the first descent, I let myself go – reckless, delighted, overtaking with ease – and wrecked my left knee. Every downhill after that became a negotiation between gravity and tendon. I leaned harder and harder on my right leg to brake, which soon brought on cramps. I ran through them, hoping they wouldn’t hit during a technical stretch, where a fall could have real consequences.
Still, a rhythm emerged. I climbed well, gained ground on flats, only to surrender places again on each descent. It was maddening to slow where I normally feel strongest. Some runners passed me despite seeming less at home on the hills, negotiating downhills with a cautious, almost clumsy approach. More than once I shouted ahead to those who had gone off course; in the end, I think two of them still beat me.
Maddening as it was, I began to accept the pattern: fast ups, moderate flats, slow downs. In the late stages, I checked my phone during a steep hike and saw I was around twenty-eighth. Despite the earlier setbacks, a thought began to take hold: if not top ten, perhaps top twenty. I had been running alongside a guy for a long stretch – me overtaking him on the climbs, him passing me on the descents. On a flat single-track section, I tucked in behind him, hot on his heels, when he courteously called back that I should let him know if I wanted to pass. “Thank you,” I said. And then something clicked. “Actually, I will, if that’s ok.” From that moment until the finish – about 30 kilometres – I ran as hard as I could, chasing those ahead while aware that those behind could be closing in.
In the end, I crossed the line in twentieth place. Not the top ten I had envisioned, but a finish that, by last year’s standards, would have been eighth – proof not only of my own progress (I ran both halves of the 110 kilometres faster than I had the 55 the year before), but of just how strong the field had become.
*
I write this a couple of days after the race, feeling utterly spent – worse than after any race I’ve ever done. Mental fatigue isn’t overwhelming yet; from experience, I know it can arrive belatedly. But in the body, the toll is unmistakable. My arms are sore from using poles – but at least that means the pain isn’t in my legs, which are completely shot. People joke about struggling on stairs after a road marathon; I was on the fourth floor of the B&B, trying to get my bags down. That alone could be a race report. My back aches from carrying the pack – probably around five kilograms with water – the bottoms of my feet are bruised, but at least the blisters have burst, and the left knee still complains.
And yet, I feel good. I don’t know why we do this strange sport, but there’s satisfaction in being in such a pitiful state. Reflecting now, I realise I haven’t written much about the race itself – perhaps that’s part of recovery. We block out some of the suffering, because remembering it in full might be enough to stop us ever signing up again. Or perhaps it’s the months of training, the hours and weeks leading up to that day, that stay with you. The race itself becomes a series of fragments: friendly volunteers, the well-defined lines of runners ahead carving their way up the mountains, long stretches of solitary running across 110 kilometres, just you and the might of nature, pressing on through pain, as the weather throws everything it has at you.
People often ask what I think about during a long run. Usually, I have no satisfying answer. But this time, I can at least recall it. Having been ill in the weeks before the race, I had binge-watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and for much of the 7 Valleys I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in those films myself. The dramatic music played constantly in my head. Some of the rockier sections felt like Mordor; the more rolling, green stretches felt like the Shire. When I drew my poles from their quiver, I felt like Legolas; when I overtook a hobbling runner, they became an orc.
This is not an admission that will make me look cool or heroic. It’s daft, really – but it carried me for most of the day as I suffered out on the hills. Fifteen hours and nine minutes, mostly of pain, driven on by a fantasy I’d half-mock myself for if I heard it from someone else.
And yet that’s the truth of it. The mind is a strange place: when the body is worn down to its limits, it grabs hold of whatever scraps of story it can find, however ridiculous. That’s what mine chose. And somehow, it worked – carrying me, like that quiet checkpoint on Blencathra, out of the storm and into something steadier, calmer, almost absurdly ordinary.
The male race was won by Tom Smith in 11.34.56. The female race was won by Leonie Ansems De Vries in 14.44.47.
Striders results:
