It crept up quite innocently. That sneaking urge to hop a stile and disappear into the hills, leaving the pavement behind. I was ripe for it: my marathon was a month in the past, maintenance runs were turning into repetitive blurs of street lights and drizzle, a half-read copy of Feet in the Clouds was glaring at me from my bookshelf, and there was the persistent thought of: “What’s next?”. The final, undeniable nudge was an email from my younger brother: “December 30th. Yorkshire Three Peaks. 6 hour target. Josh and Tom confirmed. You are invited.” There was no getting around it – my ill-advised foray into fell running was about to begin.

The Yorkshire Three Peaks comprise Pen-y-Ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough, covering 24.5 miles and 5,200ft of ascent. Perhaps our biggest problem, though, was that we chose to run it in winter. When we set off, it was cold, dark and raining. When you’re running, rain presents you with a choice: you can be drenched by the torrents coming through your ultra-light, breathable jacket, or you can be drenched in your own sweat thanks to your seriously waterproof, not-very-breathable jacket. We all opted for the latter.

At the top of Pen-y-Ghent we found our second stumbling block, or rather, many tiny stumbling blocks blowing out of the sky, made of frozen water. Running tights, it turns out, do not offer very good protection against hail. Still, it turned to snow after a while, so that was some relief.

On the way down came the acceptance that any off-road runner must come to in winter: our feet weren’t staying dry. We were running downhill across a surface that was basically a stream posing as grassy hillside. It was OK, though, the one part of the run that I can say, without qualification, was fun.

What followed was the most dreary part of the trek, an eight-mile section of bog. Running through a bog is soul-crushing, demoralising and energy-sapping work. Losing one of my trail shoes and its funky elastic lacing “system” to it (three times) is about as miserable a waste of time as I can imagine. Worse than the time loss, however, was the feeling that I couldn’t trust my footwear over the tough terrain.

The peak of Whernside presented another fresh challenge. By the time we reached the top the wind had really picked up, to the point where even my 200lb of meat were under threat of being whipped away, the cold just a point of painful acceptance. I was dying to pass out in our support vehicle by the time we got to the last peak, but (un)fortunately the fuel of choice for this run was bravado, and quitting wasn’t an option.

And so, like sad Hobbits we trudged along the murky path up and over Ingleborough, finally stumbling back to the car to change into our dry clothes by the roadside. All in just under six-and-a-half hours.

I don’t honestly think that I was physically more beaten up than I had been at the end of my marathon, when I could barely form words, but the pounding that the fells gave my frail human psyche was on another level. Fell-running is tough, of course, but there’s understanding that fact with your head, and there’s understanding it in a way that puts the knowledge in your bones.

Mark E Johnson is a runner, a nerd and a writer. He tweets @Spinface.

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