Francesca Goodwin explores how we confront our edges in the wilds of Scotland.

‘This is going to hurt’,
I mutter to myself as I adjust my hydration belt, slip off my heaviest outer layers and check the lacing of my trail shoes. Across the valley, a single shaft of afternoon sun pierces the gathering banks of clouds. Their deepening grey feels like an ominous validation of what I am about to do. As the gleaming light gives a final salute to the hill tops before withdrawing into the darkening sky, I cast a glance back to my companions before turning to face the trail ahead. I take a step forwards and wince as pain sears from ankle to knee. I take more steps.
The pain remains but I have a purpose.
I begin to run.

***

For a few hours, the pain in my shin has been tightening, vice-like, with every step. I would discover later that this is the cellulitis that would confine me to the sofa for a week or so, announcing itself like an unwelcome party guest. Right now, however, it’s a case of addressing the situation as it presents itself in the moment: muscular, skeletal, inflammatory…whatever it is hurts – whatever it is hurts a lot. Having stopped earlier than anticipated the night before due to a storm, we had added another 8 miles onto an already 20 mile day and, on weary feet, hauling heavy bags across wild terrain, we are making slow progress. I know from my GPS that the promise of ‘just five more miles’ is more like ten, and each tentative step is a reminder of the hours of pain that lay ahead; the lack of civilisation around us, and the other people who are dependent on me not stopping. My brain is doing as much harm as the infection to my ability to press on.

My notion of pace and distance is grounded in running. Frantically attempting to translate this into hiking hours is making time expand and the destination shift further and further from my grasp. Mind games are rendered useless as I surrender: how can you eat the elephant bit by bit when you don’t know how big the elephant is?

I’m wasting energy on riddles, diverting it from the necessary task of keeping moving. ‘Shut up’, I snap at my whirring inner dialogue. The longer I keep returning to the time and distance left, the more the pain threatens to overwhelm. I need to stop thinking. I need to do something. I need to…run. It comes to me at the moment the sun rips through the clouds and, just as with the pain that preceded, the second the thought arrives, it cannot be stifled. No matter the fact that I haven’t run properly since I broke my foot, nearly nine months previously. No matter that the miles ahead are not just any miles but mountainous ones across rivers, bogs and rocky single-track. No matter, in fact, all the evidence stacked conclusively against it, running miles are something I can quantify. Running pain is something I can rationalise. Running is something I can do.

Detached and distracted from the pain by these thoughts, it is as if I am watching myself turning the choices over before, all of a sudden, time speeds up. The decision is made: I don’t need anything other than myself, right now. I am gone.

***

The trail is long. Loose shale and boulders flash past and the marshier ground frequently gives way to wide streams and pools that take longer than expected to navigate. But being out, the wind licking my face with the promise of rain, feeling in constant negotiation with the landscape where every foot placement is a potential hazard, being out and experiencing the world through the lens of pushing hard, sends energy fizzing through my veins instructing my legs to move and keep moving. Even as I hurt, I can admire the towering hills and sheer expanse of space; they are an affirmative, a declaration of life.

I allow myself short breaks to take it all in: the sky breaking away from the peaks that stretch away on all sides – sleeping giants in the dusk. Thirst scratches my throat and my stomach tightens; I only have a single soft flask left and my water filter and snacks are somewhere behind me, rolled up with my, also useful, waterproofs in a side saddle. It’s in these moments of stillness that I’m aware of the doubts starting to crowd in again: –

What made you think you could do this? You haven’t run for so long; you’re not a runner.

– There’s no signal, the others are miles back, nobody knows you’re here. You can’t do this alone.
– You shouldn’t be out here in any case: you’re a woman, by herself, in the middle of the Highlands. You don’t belong here.
– You’re nearly out of water and you’ve got no food, no warm clothes
– you’re an idiot.
– The pain is too much; you can’t take it.

On and on: stacking.

Leaning into the hurt is not something that is new to me. There are many stories of people attempting extreme challenges as a way of exploring their limits: of confronting the dark places within themselves – the places that are only exposed when you are pushing yourself hard, perhaps too hard. It’s in that place, where pain and persistence dance together, that we meet ourselves in our, arguably, truest, most vulnerable state. Everything we love (our strength) and everything we hate (our perceived weaknesses) about ourselves is laid out before us. There’s nowhere to hide; the edge lures us in, just as it makes us want to cower and retreat. Perhaps that’s what draws us back, those of us that follow the siren’s song: we see the edge and then we return to assess whether we’ve succeeded in pushing it a little further, dug it a little deeper, than before.

For me, however, the ‘hard things’ are not the test. The tests have come before and in different forms. Nobody chooses disabling pain disorders or mental illness, but these are the tests that have shown me what my mind and body are capable of when nudged beyond the edge, physically and psychologically. I don’t run to explore my limits; I run to explore how far that ability to endure can take me when channeled towards a more positive goal. So, yes, I’m running away, but I’m also running towards.

“This is who you are, this is what you’re made for, just here, just now – you’ve got this”.

On and on: stacking.

***

This is not the challenge that I had been expecting when I’d embarked on a fast-packing adventure 6 days before. I’d seen the trip as a softer entry back into the endurance arena, having been plagued by the legacy of the broken foot for much of 2022, it being over a comfortable time frame of a few weeks and in the company of walkers and horse riders: a far cry from the starting lines of hundred mile ultras. We cannot anticipate our environment and the adversities that the world and our bodies throw up, however, and, as with when I have voluntarily tested my mind and my legs, this present chapter was once again pitching them into battle and seeing just how far that edge had been pushed over the years.

I have found the time-worn adage to hold true: the more times you fall, the better you get at picking yourself up. I expect more of myself now: the further you push and the deeper you dig, the more bricks you stack. Every time you come back, you build a little more trust that the house is one you can live in.

***

The miles tick down. It takes an hour of negotiating the descent but finally the earth levels out, the ridges spooling out into the basin of the valley. The velvety darkness of the loch is a bewitching sight below me. Lights pepper its shore with the welcoming glow of habitation. I finally let out the breath that I’d scarcely been aware of holding and start to allow the world to roll back over me, settling into the organisational mindset of what must be done for the rest of the team that evening. The fatigue and pain don’t factor as I drag tents and bags from the barn at the site where we are camping.

Like with so many finish lines, nobody really knows what I’ve just done; there are people all around organising a triathlon event at the loch for the next day, and they scarcely register my sweaty, depleted appearance. So you ran a bit, you hurt a bit; life carries on and none of it matters. It’s something I made peace with the first time I tried to get into the nitty gritty of my split times with someone over the kettle at work, “That’s so great; can you pass the milk?”

None of it matters but, inside, I thank my body quietly. It did what I needed it to do: it got me here.

“This is who you are, this is what you’re made for, just here, just now – you’ve got this”.

On and on: stacking.

With thanks to Active Root for keeping me fuelled on all my adventures. You can follow Francesca on Instagram.

You can also listen to her conversations with other individuals putting ‘one foot in front of the other’ on her podcast Running on Joy.

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