The paddy Buckley Round & Failure

Fell running or mountain running is considered to be one of the great sporting traditions of the Lake District, its finest club is the Bob Graham club. Becoming a member is not easy; it involves climbing 42 peaks, with 27,000 feet of ascent covering 66 miles and all within 24 hours.

In 2012 i completed the Bob Graham Round in good time, so naturally my thoughts moved to other similar challenges. The Paddy Bucley Round is considered to be an hour harder, in that most people take an hour longer over the BGR, and the Charlie Ramsey Round is probably the harder of the three major rounds.

The Paddy Buckley Round is known as the Welsh Classical Round and is apparently the Snowdonia equivalent of the BGR, It is a circular route of 61 miles with 28,000 of ascent taking in 47 tops.

The PBR was to be the next challenge for me so in the spring of 2011 my partner Debbie and i spent alternate weekends in Snowdonia, while i reccied the various leg involved my partner took on the essential role of road side support. Anyone who has completed such challenges will no doubt agree that knowing someone is there for you when you have finished a hard days training is comforting.

Many of the days spent in the mountains of Snowdonia were less than successful and the almost constant covering of fog certainly made the job of navigating the mountainous terrain a significant challenge. I trained hard for many months and finally set a date for the end of July to take on the whole route nonstop. Support runners and navigators were press ganged into place; somehow i had managed to acquire the support of some true fell running legends.

Debbie had done a great job of looking after me but the job of looking after some dozen or so support runners and navigators required a support team, Debbie had taken care of this and the ball was rolling.

Come the big day i was super fit and ready to go, my running partner Ronnie and i set off from Llanberis at 6am and headed off through the quarries to the first summit, Elidir Fach, with a little persuasion i had managed to talk Ronnie into running the whole route with me. This was to be my undoing. Ronnie was so much stronger than me on the climbs that eventually i had to acknowledge defeat and persuaded him to continue without me. Ronnie went on to complete the round and i had managed to acquire my first running failure.

I was truly devastated and had to admit to myself that i had underestimated the size of the mental challenge, i was definitely physically fit enough but not physiologically. A month later i made my second attempt, after 15 hours the heavy rain and strong winds were too much and it became unsafe to continue. At least this is what i told myself; certainly conditions were not conducive to a 24 hour completion. Failure number 2 and this time i could blame the weather.

2012 and another season in the mountains, i have spent many weekend in the English Lake District, Snowdonia in Wales and the Scottish Highlands, trained harder than ever before and indeed feel physically fitter than i can ever remember.

The weekend of July 21^st and 22^nd arrived and i made my third and final attempt of the PBR, Ronnie and i set off from Capel Curig at 12 noon with a 7 hour leg ahead and another 17 hours of mountains to follow. The weather was ideal and i felt very confident, so i have to ask myself why i managed only 3 hours of running before the doubts started creeping in?

A head ache and a dark mood took over, i began to feel as if i had taken a beating and my head was banging. I felt disorientated and distant, couldn’t focus on the mountains around me and the prospect of running another step left me feeling sick. I told Ronnie how i felt and he assured me that i would be ok, it was just a bad patch. We pushed on and eventually finished the leg arriving in Nantmor at 7pm bang on schedule, i was not in good shape and had already decided it was not to be.

Chris did his job well and persuaded me to continue for just one more leg, 5 more hours. I agreed on the proviso that he joined us. This agreed we set off towards Bryn Banog, a horrible boggy climb through waist high bracken and crusty heather. I was still feeling ill but pushed on, my support runners, Chris and Ronnie had come a long way and i felt like i was letting them down. The mood on this leg was fantastic and i felt in good spirits but new the dizziness and sickness had defeated me.

We arrived in Pont Caer Gors a little down on schedule but in good spirits, i had missed several summits along the way so any thoughts of continuing were gone. This time the feeling of failure is very real, i am doing my best to put on a good front but inside the pain is tearing me apart. The more i think about it the darker the fog becomes, my head is hurting and i really need to sleep.


I think about the fog rolling over the hills as the light was fading last night, a truly epic cloud inversion, the feeling of being alive. I Have tears rolling down my face and i want to cry – again. I’m not sure if i can keep doing this, hell I’m damn sure i shouldn’t be doing this, if i don’t fall off a mountain or trip on a rock and bang my head the stress of failure is sure to get me. 

So what do i do next?

It is perhaps time to stop putting myself in a position where i can fail quite so dramatically and reduce my goals to a more realistic level. However, knowing myself as i do, i can't stay away from the mountains, so i will probably continue to push until something breaks or until i fall off.