My last blog described how I’d struggled through last year and from the end of 2024 in all honesty. (Read Here) I started 2025 ‘blocked’ and wondering what the hell was wrong with me. A last minute plan for Hogmanay 2024 saw me fleeing up the M74 to spend New Years Eve in Lower Largo in Fife followed by kick starting the year with Park Run in Kirkcaldy. This felt ROTTEN. It was bitter cold, windy, hilly and felt like 13 miles not 3. I suffered and still didn’t feel too great. Happy New Year, Micky! The following Sunday was an event that I really enjoy over on the North York Moors – the Commondale Clart Fell Race, promoted by Esk Valley Fell club. One of my best pals, Martin, recently moved to the village of Commondale and there’s a pub. No more needs said.
Twelve days into the new year and my abdominal aches, pains and blockages were not lifting. No amount of medical intervention or tests can really beat a good old, muddy fell race! The pre-event nerves worked their magic and lets say by the end of the day, I no longer had any ‘blockages’. This race is a perfect start to the year for Fell running for me as its a good distance of 5 miles and though its very tough and steep to start, once on the tops, it’s just all gently undulating and very runnable. Starting close to the fromt, I got amongst the thick of it and came in around 30th out of 100 or so.
How quickly I became inebriated with my heady whiffs of accomplishment and perceived ability! Top 30? Off next to no training? “Proppa fell runner, me!” A week later and its my local Penrith park run, which I ; 1 – Don’t want to miss and 2 – Am taking it super easy and steady today. Because I wasn’t going home. After Parkrun I was headed straight for Threlkeld to do the Cleugh Head fell race. Similar distance from the previous week, with the barely-worth-mentioning difference of a 719m fell to clamber up. HELLS TEETH!!! I was DYING. Reduced to walking pace on the way up (which is normal) and panting like an overloaded donkey on any runnable sections, I got kicked well and truly up the ass. 126th place. Welcome to Cumbria, where the men are men and the sheep are scared.
“Well Micky, I bet you deserved a nice lie in and a roast Sunday dinner the next day didn’t you?” I hear some of you say. Well, maybe that would be the NORMAL thing to do. And, you know – I did think this as I drove over to Tyneside to compete in the cross country race at Gateshead. One of six events in the North East Harrier League. Understandably tired and running three minutes slower than I’d ever done before over this course, I came in as the sixth and final counter for my club, Heaton Harriers.
By now, things were starting to ‘lift’ for me. Running pulled me out of my stupor. It gave me focus and intertwined within that came fitness and better health. The following week things started getting just a little bit silly….
After my first fell race across the North York Moors, I had returned home to Kirkby Thore and for the second consecutive year, became fascinated to the point of obsession over the Spine Race.
Ahhh… the Montane Winter Spine. “Dotwatching” as its often referred to, which is the fanatical, almost compulsive following of the GPS Tracking beacons of the athletes across three tough endrance events as they make their way along the Pennine way. Whilst that may sound incredibly dull and pointless at first, its all the micro-stories, the background tales, tussles at the front of the field and the dogged persistence of the suffering souls at the back end of it. Regardless if you’re interested in running, endurance events or anything at all like this, it captivates you, grabs you, pulls you in and won’t let go!
Many people I’ve spoken to about the spine race, have no clue what it is. Despite living so close to the Pennine Way, AND being a runner, neither had I. Until one fateful evening making pizzas….
It was January 2024, my usual Monday pizza evening in Dufton car park and it was cold, Bitterly cold!
“You’ll be busy tonight” I was told by a passer by. “There’s a race coming through here. All this week, there’ll be some hungry runners passing through here as they race up the Pennine Way”, they went on to explain.
“What? They are RUNNING the Pennine Way? in WINTER?” I couldn’t believe it. As a man who’s done some crazy stuff in his life, this sounded mad, even to me. I came the following evening, naturally selling zero pizzas, so I took some in boxes and some brownies to the village hall.
As a runner myself, I was hooked in. Dot watching in complete awe as the record breaking finale between Jack Scott and Damian Hall unfolded over the moors and fells of Northumberland.
Hooked, and inspired, I was infected with the Spine Race bug! There IS No cure! The following month I devised a “mini Spine” of my own. From my village – Kirkby Thore to Kirk Yetholm. I even gave it a name – ‘The Kirk 2 Kirk’ 104 miles, picking up the Pennine Way at Dufton, just four miles from my front door and finishing in Scotland. What a romantic idea. What you doing tomorrow, Micky? Oh nothing much. Just gonna run to Scotland!
Armed (and legged) I set off on a trial run with full pack from Dufton. Destination. Either Alston or the mountain bothy – Greg’s Hut I’d bivvy out/stop over and come back next morning. I walloped to the summit of Cross Fell in two hours. Mother of Mercy! I was destroyed!! (It was this venture that taught me – you don’t actually RUN at all, its a trot at best) Turning tail, I whimpered back down the Great Dun access road and straight into The Stag Inn, downed two pints of water and had my tea in a collapsed and hungry heap in the corner.
By last years edition (2025) I was fully wired in, expecting it, excited about it. Four days after my Commondale capers, I was atop Cross Fell in dusk and darkness, cheering on the middle and backmarkers who are out there for almost a week. Full moon and an inversion. Amazing.
But for me personally, the thought of actually ENTERING it was pure fantasy. Too far, don’t have all the kit and I’m simply NOT an Ultra runner. Never have been. Never will be. I mean fair play to the lads and lasses smashing themselves silly on a Bob Graham round, trying to beat 24 hours in the Lakeland 100 or battering themselves within an inch of their lives across the Dragons Back race in Wales. Top marks guys, but no. Not for me.
But the Winter Spine, well, that seemed a little bit different, intriguing, enticing me into her clutches with her cold, peaty little fingers. The very idea of pushing against the bitter weather that January can hit you with, the element of danger and high levels of challenge involved….. Hmmmm… maybe??? Nooooo! Micky snapped himself out of such nonsensical notions and got back to the story.
The following week after the cross country, my running pal, Sally invited me to join her on a ten mile training run. Part of her London Marathon training. Living just a couple of villages away and having some midweek daytimes free, she has made for a great running buddy to hook up with. Namely, because pretty much everyone is working during the times of day when I’m free and at leisure when I’m working. Ten miles though? On the roads? I grimaced at the thought. We’d recently done a 7 mile road run which I’d struggled with. My last attempts at road running with any amount of effort had been in 2023 in my attempt to train for Loch Ness Marathon. A nasty calf injury occurred which then became persistent calf INJURIES (plural) – to BOTH calves over the next 18 months. I’d rest, I’d get massages, rest even longer, let It heal. I’d run again, it would pull again. Total frustration. It eventually got fixed by an hour long session by a French physio, whilst I sat on the grass at my favourite Alpine campsite. She also showed me some deeper stretches which have subsequently made calf issues a thing of the past for me, hallelujah!
So – a ten mile run. On road. With a lass who is incredibly fit, trained and knocking out some tremendous times over half marathons and 10K’s. As you could imagine, I was slightly apprehensive. Not only did the ten miles go pretty well, but I even felt a little fitter than she was that day. Admittedly her final two, 1 mile loops at her Marathon pace, saw me watch her speedy legs accelerate down the road into the distance. On both laps! Undeterred, as I ran past her house I shouted – “Don’t stop NOW!” – Why? She asked. It was 12.5 miles and there was no way was I NOT gonna record the full half marathon distance. Which we did. One hour forty three minutes. On hilly roads, off next to no fitness for this kind of thing. I could barely believe it.
But then, Micky’s brain starts working doesn’t it. Oh no! Here we bloody go! MY brain!! People that know me will go ‘Oh what NOW?’ This was Thursday morning and I’m at home thinking – bloody hell. 13 miles. Just like that. And then I remembered that great advert for the Royal Navy Engineers.
“If you can fix a bike, then you can fix a Lynx MK8 Helicopter”
“If you can run 13 miles. Then you can run 30!”
4 days later.
Sunday, 9am. Alston. Full backpack. Spine race kit. You know – just to see if I can do it. My plan was to run/walk along the Pennine Way to Greenhead, then come back via the flatter South Tyne Railway path, to make a circular loop.
After many boggy miles and utter muddy, watery nonsense, I stumbled into the Greenhead Hotel at
dinnertime. Legs covered in clarts and hair matted to my forehead with sweat, I looked somewhat out of place on the plush carpeted floor of the bar. Looking around, retired couples, wearing their best shirt and ties and sipping fluted glasses of fine white wine with their Sunday lunches, I quietly whispered to the barmaid “Is that the bar area up there at the back?” No. She said. THIS is the bar, that’s the restaurant. Would it just be something to drink for you, sir?
I timidly shrank away to a small corner table and drank my pint of Guinness as quickly as I could before trapsing yet more mud across the carpet upon my exit. After crossing the A69 I made my way past Featherstone Castle, home to 7000 German Prisoners of War during the Second World War. The flat and very runnable railway path saw me make light work of mile after mile but by Slaggyford, I could almost hear the laughter of the spirits of several thousand POW’s as they cried “Hahaha Das stoopiden English – thinks if can run 13 miles its uber easy to run 30. Hahaha” Yeah – what exactly WAS I thinking? Darkness had fell by now and the last 3 miles were torture. Just praying for it to end and get back to the sanctuary of my car. Up and past Alston station, I staggered up the hill to my car with all the grace of a drunken pantomime horse. Occasionally crying out with the pain in my poor, aching legs.
I reached the car, gulped down my recovery drink and did what most sensible folk would do in such circumstances after a punishing 33 mile run. I drove up the hill and went to the pub. The Turks Head in Alston is easily one of my favourite pubs in the whole world and a Black Sheep by the fire sorted me out. A Pint of. Not an ACTUAL, black sheep…although I’d have believed ANYTHING by this point.
Then it gets even sillier.
“If I can fix me bike, I can fix a tank, like!”
If I can run 30 miles, I can run ONE HUNDRED. The ‘Kirk 2 Kirk’ was ON… the very next week. Thursday. Just 4 days later. Common sense kicked in and I put this silly notion off. Until Friday. And so, I set off on a crazy 104 mile adventure just 5 days after having ran my longest ever distance of 33 miles. Whilst this sounds crazy to most people, myself included! I did have three highly competent and trusted friends monitoring my progress, who could pull me out if I became unstuck. Asides from that, it was completely self-sufficient, unsupported and very very lonely.
I’d barely done ten miles before I was forced to plough through deep, untrodden snow over Cross Fell. Strength sapping, mightily cold but extremely soul affirming. My bottles all froze as temperatures registered at minus five.
By Greenhead I was done. 43 miles and not even halfway. I bivvied out under the canopy of an outside toilet block and was there almost 12 hours. The next morning I was ready to walk to Haltwhistle, get the train and go home. But something unexpected happened. My very own ‘dotwatchers’ and supporters, had grown to over a dozen people as I’d bandied my tracking beacon around in the forlorn hope that these lovely people had nothing better to do than watch my sluggish progress north in sub zero temperatures. Well didn’t I wake to a load of supportive texts ‘Where you getting to today?’ ‘So impressed’ ‘Are you alive?’ etc. Pride and new found determination forced me into not letting all these fantastic friends down in their expectations. I pushed another 22 miles that day and stopped at Bellingham. Sixty-three miles from the comfort of my own home. “Bloody hell! I’ve just ran to bloody BELLINGHAM!!” I thought.
I entered the Winter Spine Challenger North 2026.
Challenger North is 160 Miles from Hardraw (Hawes) to the finish at Kirk Yetholm. Yes – I’m mad, but I’m not stupid! I know that the full Spine distance of 268 miles is a little bit TOO big of a jump, even for a lunatic like me!
Lucky enough to beat the queues, but not fast enough to get in directly, I hit position No.66 on the waiting list. “You’ll get in on that” I was told. Rightly enough, by autumn my position was getting into the low 20’s.
Even at that though, my lack of Ultra experience was going to point towards a rejection at the vetting process. I fought my case and provided, what I thought would be enough supporting argument to justify my entry.
Nothing. And I mean NOTHING, has come anywhere near as close to the insanely hard challenge of
walking the west coast of the Isle of Jura. Two trips, two years running because It broke me the first time, I needed to go back and complete it. A solo trip, fully self sufficient, no phone with me, no contact with the outside world. Never seeing or speaking to another human for over three whole days. Fully loaded 25kg pack across tough, unforgiving, pathless ground.
The second trip was horrendously hard and made the first trip seem a comparative doddle. Tide was in/high and so, faced with no paths, I often had to scramble up sea cliffs. One slip and….
My feet were in agony, my back and shoulders always in pain, constantly hungry. It was wet, rugged and it came close to cracking me. I found a bothy and was so far gone that I was almost going into shock.
One day, I could barely travel 5 miles for the pain and suffering. But got a fire going amidst the rocks and watched the sea spiral around the Corryvechan Whirlpool. Beautiful. But brutal.
My next big challenge after Jura was Lands End to John O’Groats in 2023. On a heavy 1980’s bike with large ratioed, unforgiving 1980’s gearing too!
Setting off Monday morning, no plan. Just ride north. Sleeping in farmers fields with my tent. I gave myself a 7 day deadline. Again, it wasn’t easy. I’d done less than 400 miles training leading up to it and just cracked on. Day 4 was a 177 mile epic from Shrewsbury to my house. By Sunday I was at John O’Groats, almost 1000 miles in the legs. Most people that know me, know that if anyone could do something like the Spine, I’d get that vote.
I threw all of this info into the ring and attached some Strava files of my Greenhead jaunt and my Kirk 2 Kirk attempt to Bellingham. My friend, who is well known on the event due to their tireless work in the Northumberland Checkpoints, knows me very well and put in a supportive email in my favour. Even then, I had one final hurdle to clear and it took the original Spine Race creator and Race Director, Phil Hayday-Brown to accept me. I was No. 12 on the waiting list.
I got the thumbs up by the man himself and the very next day, a place became available.
Regardless of my entry or not, I’d started the training already. Recce-ing the route so I know it inside out. Every gate, stile, slippy bit and pothole. I even have a notebook of about two dozen friendly sheep that I’m on first name terms with now. About 400 miles of Pennine Way have been covered. Most sections, multiple times, in both directions. In all weathers, in darkness and daylight. Nearly always alone, battling the demons and doubts. Never, ever with full Spine race kit. But always, always with EXCESSIVE kit – prepared and ready, for absolutely ANY eventuality.
In summary though, its been a strange year. I spoke more on that in my last blog post. I’ve had some tough moments, the death of my father’s wife, Liz at the young age of 62. Someone who has been a motherly-like presence in my life for 25 years. The tenth anniversary of my brother’s death in the French Alps, revisiting that spot, reliving what I witnessed that heartbreaking day, scenes that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone. Turning the big 5-0 in June, which to me, doesn’t seem that much of a big deal, I’m strong, fit and healthy and its JUST a number, but it does bring into question, your own mortality and an element of poignancy.
But this journey to getting to the start line in Hardraw this coming Sunday has given me a very strong and real, focal point. Some may say, I’ve used it as a distraction from dealing with some tougher emotions that I seek to suppress. It’s lifted me out of myself and placed me into a parallel Micky Mallen, that is Micky the endurance athlete. It’s been a year of pushing my boundaries, preparation, planning and a fortification of my mental and physical abilities.
But alas, it hasn’t come without cost. The financial aspect notwithstanding, this year has took it’s toll somewhat. I’ve not worked hard enough in relationships and friendships and let my new business dreams be backburnered. Distracted and focused on everything Spiney! You can’t have your cake and eat it. This past year has been a journey. From inexperienced novice to moulding myself into a hardened, determined and confident long distance endurance athlete. Learning to remain calm whilst wandering across a barren moorland, in darkness, alone as icy sleet hammers down, trying to break you. So whilst on the one hand, this journey has took a lot away from me, what its brought to me has revealed just what I was capable of. Things I never even contemplated before. The very idea of running (or walking for that matter) thirty miles, was ludicrous! Now I think “Well that section is ONLY 40 miles, yes, no problem. And AFTER that section, I’ll…” Crazy times.
You don’t have to smash yourself up the Pennine Way in winter though. Hell, you don’t even have to run or walk a single mile – but believe in yourself and in what you can achieve. I have always firmly believed that we can achieve ANYTHING we want in life, if we are determined enough to succeed.
This year I’ve seen friends run their very first 5K after trying to do so for years. Join me on 20 mile walks during my training, and pushed them to distances they had forgot they could do. I’ve seen loved ones change careers, move to foreign countries, start businesses and battling and conquering their addictions and the negative traits that had previously held them back.
We are all remarkable people, capable of achieving great, great things. Believe in yourself, trust that God will always look out for you and that positivity will always conquer negativity and go forth, and be Totally Mint!! 2026 will be a great year. But only if you choose it to be.
Thanks for listening to my story.
Micky
You can track my progress on the Challenger North – Live from 18:00 on Sunday 11th January – Bib No. 560
https://live.opentracking.co.uk/spinechallnorth26/
For this event I thought – “Lets do this for a good cause, a local charity and something relevant”
Penrith Mountain Rescue Team is the local group of 42 volunteers who look after the fells and surrounding areas around my home patch of Eden Valley. Its those hardy souls who are dispatched to the summits of the North Pennines in all weathers. With Cross Fell being the highest summit in England outside of the Lake District.
Mountain rescue teams are not government funded – they rely entirely on charitable donations from the public and all the volunteers in the teams are unpaid and give up their time all year round. The continuing rise in numbers on the fells in Cumbria, coupled with large numbers of inexperienced and unprepared adventurers has resulted in a sharp rise in call outs. I spoke to the team and asked if there was any one thing that my fundraising could help with and they answered :
“There’s a set of steep ground anchors known as Talons. Very useful when there are no obvious/viable rocks or similar to use as a belay anchor for setting up a rope system to lower a stretcher and/or personnel to a casualty. Known as Talons. We’ve trialled a set on loan from another (better resourced) Team and were impressed. At present we lug a set of heavy forged steel pins up the fell to do the job”
A set of these costs over £500 to purchase and would be an invaluable help for future call outs.
It just so happens that the trail shoes I am using for my event are called Inov8 “TrailTalons” – and so – Talons for Talons!
Thank you for your support and for any donations to a worthy and quite often, life saving cause.
https://www.justgiving.com/page/mickymallen-spinechallenger/