The Very Hungry Chatter-Killer

Billy Connolly tells a joke where a circus lion-tamer places his head in the lion’s mouth to gasps from the audience.
Showing even more derring-do, he places his.. (I’ll clean up the joke – so let’s say his arm…though you and I know different because, after all, this is Billy Connolly telling it, not me)… his arm in the lion’s mouth. “Oooh!” says the audience.
“Now is there anyone in the audience brave enough to have a go?” says the lion-tamer. Silence. “Anyone willing to have a go for £100?”
“I’ll do it!” says a drunken voice from the back row. Down he comes to the centre of the big top.
“Are you sure about this?” says the lion-tamer. “Absolutely!” replies the man.
“No doubts at all?” says the lion-tamer. “Well, only one niggly-naggly doubt,” says the man. “I don’t think I can open my mouth that wide.”
And that is my problem today. A third of the way through the Old County Tops Fell Race - 37 miles, 10,000 feet of climbing to the summits of Helvellyn (Westmorland), Scafell Pike (Cumberland) and Coniston Old Man (Furness) - and my mouth simply isn’t big enough to cram in all the food that I need to keep my body fuelled. There’s simply no time to talk – if talking means less eating time.
Making up a team of two with Ray, we’ve reached the summit of Helvellyn from Great Langdale in two hours, one minute. Already, I’ve had one chocolate bar while climbing Ray’s excellently-found short-cut around the left side of Seat Sandal (which gained us a few places up the leader board), but the feeding frenzy needs to begin soon if I don’t grind to a halt.
In truth, this is the bit of training that I’ve struggled with the most – knowing what to eat and how often. If I was The Very Hungry Caterpillar, this is how it would appear in print:
· At Wythburn Church (refreshment point) I ate one jam sandwich and four slices of malt loaf
· Near Green Coomb I ate one chocolate bar
· At Stake Pass I ate one banana and a piece of Kendal Mint Cake
· Approaching Rossett Pike, Ray gave me six jelly babies. I start at them sitting cutely in my hand for a minute. Then eat them.
· At Esk Hause I ate six (or perhaps seven) mini Jaffa Cakes
· At Scafell Pike (5 hours, 12 minutes from the start) I ate another bit of chocolate
· At the top of Mosedale Beck I ate the other banana. But didn’t eat the skin. Though I was tempted.
· At Cockley Beck (refreshment point), I ate three egg sandwiches and four bits of fruit cake.
· At Brim fell I fantasised about eating the rain-soaked egg sandwich Ray, rather inexplicably in my view, had been carrying all the way from Cockley Beck
· At Coniston Old Man (7 hours, 55 minutes), I ate four mini Jaffa Cakes and a piece of chocolate brownie handed out by a race marshal (this I believe was one of Sarah’s brownies – see below. Thanks Sarah). Ray’s egg sandwich fell apart due to structural subsidence caused by damp – what a waste!
· At Wrynose Pass, I ate what I think were five Jaffa Cakes. The sponge base had absorbed the rain, turning them into a soggy, disgusting-looking mess. I still ate them.
· At the finish at the New Dungeon Ghyll, I had two lentil soups, two egg sandwiches, and four bits of fruitcake.
After sitting cocooned in the finish area tent against the rain for 10 minutes, I then turned into a butterfly.
And if by butterfly you’re thinking something which feels delicate, has its face in the flowers and will expire by the end of the summer…. you’d be pretty damn right!
Thanks to Ray for coaxing me around the course, so we finished in nine hours and 25 minutes. Well done to the other Dallam teams, and to Helen, Dawn and Sarah who climbed to the top of Coniston Old Man (with brownies and beer) to meet us, sat in driving rain and gale force winds, and did the sensible thing – climbed back down before we got there.
Calories burned: 6,756. Words spoken to Ray during race: 23.