So last weekend Mohammed (that’s me folks) went to the mountain, because despite much pleading, the mountain refused to come to me nor for that matter, would it entertain the suggestion of leveling its topography for the benefit of the weak of will and calf (yeah that’s me again). Giraffey J and I and I were up at the crack of dawn to line the stomachs in plenty of time ahead of the run to avoid being impaled by the stitch of death. Our prognosis for the weather had not been good the night before as the wind blew an ominous gale that projected images of my body tumbling ragdoll style down the side of Knocknarae. The morning confirmed our suspicions as I was woken by the same vicious gale and at one point even a brief flurry of snow. However with unpredictability so typical as to have almost been a caricature, the sun came out and the wind ceased twenty minutes before out departure leaving the way clear for a meteorologically sound day. I was somewhat jittery on the way over, mixed feelings about being faced with real runners, having to climb a real mountain and potentially having to be airlifted off the side of same. These nerves manifested themselves as an unfeasibly demanding bladder that was nagging at me as we arrived at the mountain car park. J and I attired in football shorts with a t-shirt depicting Socrates and a Dunnes stores carrot-orange hoodie with a pair of loose tracksuit bottoms respectively were the out and out interlopers among the lycra clad bunch ready to scale the mountain, our credibility was saved only by our asics clad feet, a far cry from the canvas and rubber plimsolls J had been sporting only a fortnight before.
We set off at a jog down the road for about a mile to where the proposed entrance to the new mountain route was. There was a moment of regrouping while everyone caught up so out Oracle could tell us where we were going. The gate was the entrance to what in my eyes looked like a wall of grass, which we were to scale. The grass was deep and thick and it felt like running on a step machine with pillows tied to your feet. We got to the top of that section and waited a moment while we were directed to follow a wall around to the right at which point we were to follow a sheep track until we got to a very steep part which we were to go directly to the top of. So off we went again with me keeping my eyes peeled for a sheep track which would ease the precarious nature of the terrain. I was beginning to feel the overwhelming urge to stop running at this stage, in fact I was beginning to feel the overwhelming urge to sit down and maybe have a cup of tea or perhaps a nap but the absence of a kettle drove me forwards. Still no sign of the promised sheep track I noticed, I was expecting something a few feet wide, perhaps with a spot of gravel or at the very least bare of grass from use by the track’s ruminant namesake. Something not unlike this perhaps:
The Ovine Derby. A much undercelebrated day out.
The reason I hadn’t seen it was because I was already on it. The sheep track was an indistinguishable four inch gap between random tufts of grass on the side of the mountain. It was more of a Jack Russell track or even a guinea pig track but it was certainly not a human track. As I pleaded with my ankle ligaments to remain intact as I stumbled from tuft to tuft, we suddenly turned and went straight up the mountain. My breath was now coming out in an anguished wail, I was grabbing on to bits of grass to stop me falling down. I slowed to a walk but the incline kept the fire in my muscles ablaze. My eyes were streaming but I could make out the top of the section where the others were waiting.I managed to claw my way to the top where thanks be to the lord we stopped to regroup for a minute. I sat with my head between my knees for a minute, so annihilated from the ascent that I that I didn’t notice the contents of my nose dribbling down onto the grass, god knows where on my face it had been on up to that point. I wiped my nose and stood up, the occasional lingering glance on my face from the real runners suggested to me that the colour of my kisser probably wasn’t a million miles from that of this unfortunately complexioned primate:
Which one of you sick b*stards filled my SPF bottle with mayonnaise?
From that point we went left around the mountain with the ground sloping severely upwards on the left, this brought us to a wall which led directly up to the top. I wanted to close my eyes tight to intensify the concentration and effort required to continue to the top but the fallen wall stones littering the track warranted open eyes and concentration on all cylinders to prevent a snapped limb or at best a nasty fall. And then I could see it, the cairn was within reach, the crippling ascent was almost over. I became filled with elation, the sky was blue, the air was clear and soon i would be going DOWNHILL AGAIN!!!! I rounded the cairn and the gravity that had been pushing on my shoulders trying to stop me getting to the top was all of a sudden escorting me down on a gust of wind. I was filled with adrenaline, despite being physically wasted my legs couldn’t keep up with themselves and felt great. I gambolled down the side of the mountain like a Hibernian Heidi, without the herd of goats, or the kindly grandfather, or for that matter anything else that would have likened me to the swiss goat-loving orphan.
Getting to the end of the mountain injected me with a sense of athletic virtue and self importance akin to winning an olympic medal while high on cocaine. Despite having come close to death a number of times, I had made it up and down and not a million miles behind the real runners. Impressively, J stayed with them the entire time his face having irritatingly stayed the same colour the all day. Genetics are cruel.
The week before I went to Sligo my physio had mentioned to me about the nature of coming down the mountain and the effect it would have on my quads. Eccentric action she called it. I chortled to myself that the eccentric action was going up the mountain in the first place, or in fact to have considered running anywhere near it at all. However my childish wit diluted clarity of the wisdom she was trying to impart. Eccentric action I’m told (and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong here) describes the muscle trying to contract while is is being elongated. It is dissension among muscular fibres. They form a contracting and elongating factions call themselves The Real Quadriceps and The Continuity Quadriceps and though part of the same muscle in the same leg, take responsibility for different actions. She sagely advised me that this muscular conflict would lead to pain but like the fool that I am I disregarded the warning of my wise physio. How bad could it be? I stretched plenty, my days of muscle soreness where behind me, how hard could it be running down a hill, sure isn’t that what sixty percent of childhood memories are made of, running down hills so fast your lips are pulled back from your teeth and the wind goes past your ears in a roar of white noise – See below (good times!!!)
Get out of the WAAAAAAAAAYYYY!!!!
The rest of the day was spent walking a beach on the other side of Sligo and being treated to some old school Irish hospitality courtesy of J’s uncle, whose chest freezer of locally caught shellfish was somewhat depleted on our departure the next day.
Sunday morning I felt fine, no soreness or stiffness not even in the highly strung hips. I sat into the car for the journey home congratulating my muscles and ligaments for having transformed themselves into vulcanized rubber thus sparing me any pain. I suspended this judgement on my exit from the car as I had begun to stiffen up. “Only natural” I thought and sat down to watch the television and relax for the evening. A number of hours later I stood up to retrieve something from the kitchen as I leaned forward and pulled myself from the couch I became frozen in a bent position and released an involuntary yelp like a dog whose paw has just been stood on. My quads were like foreign bodies in my legs. Useless blocks of calcified muscle that inhibited my every movement. I walked in genuine slow motion at first and then in tiny laborious steps. The only way they would not send darts of anguish to my brain was if I held them poker straight and walked like a toy soldier. I practiced this a bit but didn’t think that I could pull it off in the long term. And that’s how I was thinking, because I was in no doubt that my quads had turned to granite, rendering me debilitated for the rest of my days. Getting up the stairs was an effort that involved using my hands on the steps but it was the descent back down that had me praying for mercy through gritted teeth. I learnt the hard way after a nights sleep having thought on Monday that they were cured. I went to walk down the stairs in the normal fashion placing one foot on a step and the other on the next step down. That was a step too far for the quads who were flooded with memories of hurtling down Knocknarae and threatened a suspension of all function. I grabbed the bannister before I fell and took the rest of the flight like a 4 year old putting both feet on each step. Very slowly. I spent the rest of the day downstairs applying Deep Heat to my legs and making up excuses to avoid going back upstairs.
Thankfully despite my dramatic certainty of permanent injury I had begun to recover by Wednesday, just in time to cancel the Stairlift before it arrived. So you have been warned; mountains should only be descended at speed by those living in bungalows.
