Winter 2019: Running Through the Dark by Jen Scotney

Jen Scotney was a rising star of the UK’s ultrarunning scene, with podium places in the Spine Challenger and Northern Traverse and her eyes on the FKT for the Pennine Way, and she also had a successful career as a human rights lawyer. However, after career burnout and sudden chronic fatigue hit, she had to find a new way of living adventurously. In Running Through the Dark she explores her journey through multiple setbacks, leading to her having to reset her expectations in many aspects of her life.  

In the following extract, Jen returns to the Montane Winter Spine Race for a third time – not to place but to prove to herself that fatigue, bad weather, injury, lack of sleep and hallucinations couldn't hold her back, she was still the girl who could run through the night.

Two weeks later it was time to start my third 108-mile run along the Pennine Way. I arrived at registration on the Friday keeping a low profile. No one knew I was starting due to my late entry, but it was nice to see some welcoming faces. I felt apart though; I wasn’t going to be chasing at the front, I felt heavy, I felt like I would be judged. In truth it was me doing that, hiding myself and my illness away, never finding the words to explain to people what I was going through, or thinking I had and the words not landing, the cry for help not being understood.

I hid towards the back of the race. I had approached it as the previous two, getting my kit as light as possible, with some new additions from the marketing stores at the office, such as the new light sleeping bag. I decided to take my poles from the start, rather than pick them up at the halfway point, to help on the climbs in the first half. I felt they would be a boost at those times I would be comparing myself to previous years. I tried not to compare, but it was hard.

Two guys from Belgium recognised me as we left Edale towards Jacob’s Ladder; they had been watching my old vlogs on YouTube about the training and the race. I felt embarrassed. I’m no longer her, I wanted to say; I am ill and I lost her. I just put my headphones in and carried on. A few people seemed to hang on to me over Bleaklow, maybe as I knew the paths so well, but I was surprised when they had been left behind on my descent into Torside. The weather turned a bit wetter after Black Hill, with a side wind and rain coming in. Some Mountain Rescue team members and volunteers were in the car park before Standedge and helped me get some food out of my pack and recognised me from giving a talk at a running shop in Derby the week before. Another talk I had felt so unqualified for, but somehow got through. Someone took a photo of me, and I carried on. It started to go dark not long after, and I bemoaned how slow I was, how little ground I had covered before dusk. But this section of the Pennine Way is easily broken down into road crossings, and I could just focus on the next short section.

The wind and rain were getting worse as I approached the M62 crossing and I decided at the next spot I could shelter in, I would put on some extra layers. I could see car lights in the distance to my left, at the car park area before the crossing. I wondered if I could shelter behind a car to get changed, or if I should push on to the walls on the other side of the motorway. I was trying to make out if the cars were open, with people getting out, when BAM. The next thing I was lying on the floor. Shaken. It took me a few seconds to work out I had fallen over. There was a sudden pain in my forehead. I had fallen on to my face and hit my head torch. I felt OK though, so I carried on. Someone I knew from the safety team was in one of the cars. She let me change behind the car, along with another runner who was there. He wanted us to leave together but I didn’t want to hang around waiting for him. ‘I am just getting some layers on and swapping gloves,’ I said. He followed me as I moved off, heading on to the next section before the checkpoint. As we headed up towards Blackstone Edge it felt like my head torch wasn’t on full power. I stopped to check the setting by shining it on the back of my glove. I wiped away the rain running down my face and then shone the torch to check the brightness. In the dark I could see the shining spot on my glove wasn’t rainwater, it was blood. I waited for the other runner to catch up with me. ‘Am I bleeding?’ I asked.

He flashed his torch on my head. I knew the answer in the pause. It was exactly what I would have done, trying not to worry him on a dark moor with miles until the next checkpoint.

‘It’s not that bad,’ he said.

I shrugged and carried on; my head was hurting, but I had to keep moving, it was wet and cold and stopping wouldn’t help at all. I got into the checkpoint at Hebden. I didn’t compare my times to the last few years’; it would have depressed me. I should have got changed out of my wet tights, but instead I just put my waterproofs on over them. I saw a medic who cleaned up the cut between my eyes.

‘Do you feel dizzy?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said, thinking of the splitting headache though.

‘You are OK to continue, I’ll just close it up.’

I left patched up with dressings across the cut, out into the night. I always feel like once I leave Hebden the next stop is the finish – nothing between me and finishing. I set out alone, which was just how I wanted to be, although surprised I was in fourth place, as I wasn’t expecting to be anywhere close to the front. I got to Widdop Reservoir and felt tired though. Not just the type of tired after running over fifty miles, but fatigued tired. I leaned on the reservoir wall, never having stopped here before. I just wanted to rest; I could have curled up at the side and slept. I gave myself a minute and then forced myself on. I just had no power heading up the climb to Top Withins. It felt like I was crawling backwards at times, so slow, although there was no one around me or catching me up. I sat on the bench at the top of the hill. I ate some Party Rings biscuits, had a couple of paracetamol and switched on my phone. I had no messages from Marcus, nothing at all. My heart sank a little; I felt a small pang of loneliness. I messaged my friends on our running WhatsApp group – ‘I have no power, I can’t do this.’ I sat and looked out over the dark moor, fantasising about a helicopter coming and picking me up and taking me home, to bed. I got some messages back from friends – supportive, little sparks of light on that dark night. I also saw that someone in the running group I had done a talk for weeks earlier had posted some photos of me at Standedge. She said I looked good and was moving well. I thought of the people who had called me inspirational; I didn’t feel it now. Sat on a bench, only halfway into the race, wondering how I could pull out. But no helicopter was coming for me on the moors that night, and other than my headache, I wasn’t badly injured or in pain, just achingly tired. I peeled myself off the bench, switched off my phone and carried on. I started to run on the descents, thinking back to the first race when I had such bad blisters here. A few miles later I was running along, and I don’t know if it was the Party Rings, the painkillers or the messages from friends, but I was smiling, back out, doing what I loved, even if it was slower than I wanted.

I was cold when I got to Malham. I had all my clothes on apart from a spare base layer and tights at the bottom of my bag. Although I had tried not to compare with times from other races, it felt so late in the day, heading towards darkness. I still had thirty miles to go. I sat on a bench in the village, getting some food in and putting on the last jacket in my bag. I made a deal, that if I was still this cold at the Malham Tarn checkpoint I wouldn’t carry on; it wouldn’t be safe without more spare layers. I started off up to the Cove and soon met up with Matt and Jimmy out filming. I had a moan to them, I laughed. I didn’t even mind when a woman overtook me at the top; this wasn’t about placing, this was simply about being – being a runner, being my old self, being fit and healthy. Even finding one glimpse of that would be worth it. I got into Malham Tarn in the dark, but I was warm enough to carry on. I spoke to Steph in there. She was so positive; I don’t think she knew how ill I was, or had been, or what this meant to me. I left into the night, knowing it would take me most of the rest of the darkness to reach the end.

Marcus was taking his son back to Dumfries and then waiting for me at Hawes. I needed to text him: ‘I am going to finish but I’ll be slow, sorry.’ I didn’t quite realise how slow I would be though. Having never been this slow in the races before I had never been on the path to Fountains Fell in the dark, and coupled with the tiredness, it meant I could not find the path on to the hill after the farm. I knew I left the farm building to go up over a large stile, probably highly visible in the light, but I kept leaving the track too early, meeting the wall without a stile, and going around in circles. I knew the Pennine Way so well now I hadn’t expected to navigate at all on the race. I switched on my phone to see if I could get the map up on OS Maps, but there was no reception. I was carrying the maps of the route, but down at the bottom of my pack, with the GPS device that was also mandatory kit. I kept retracing my steps to the farm track, near the buildings, and eventually I found my way out through the darkness on to Fountains Fell. I felt slow. My running tights were wet and slipping down, and I had no way to keep them up. They were rubbing my legs, making each step painful. I was trying to adjust them when a couple of runners came past. They were cheerful, contrasting with my low mood. I put my head down and carried on up the winding path on Fountains Fell. I saw a light coming towards me as I was halfway down the descent. It was Marcus. Probably tired of waiting for me in Hawes. ‘I’m sorry I’m so slow,’ I said. He chatted and said he would try and get some sleep. ‘I will finish but I don’t know what time.’ I left him at the bottom of the descent; just Pen‑y‑ghent to go before the last stretch.

The hallucinations were getting bad now, going into the second night without sleep. On the last two races, I would have finished long ago by this time, and remembering that was making me even slower. I thought back to the times I was pinned to my bed with fatigue, when I was sobbing into my pillow at the thought of never being able to get outside the house and run again. I had told myself going into the race that this was never about placing or times, it was about simply not being where I had been all those months ago. I lifted my head, facing the hallucinations of goats and random posters for The Cure tribute band that my mind was serving for me to see on the scramble up Pen-y-ghent, and I carried on.

At the checkpoint in Horton, I put some sports tape on my legs where my tights had fallen down; it instantly took the pain away. I carried on into the night, for the last stretch, feeling renewed. I should have put the tape on twenty miles ago, I thought to myself, it would have saved me hours. I was the fifth woman, and certainly not last. But the sleep monsters caught me at the top of Cam End. I couldn’t find the path off to the descent in Hawes in the mist. Hallucinations were swirling around me; I was in the middle of junkyards, picnicking families and ice sculptures …My mind was playing with the light of my head torch bouncing off rocks and the mist in the air. I eventually found the path, no doubt wasting another chunk of time, and I think a woman came past me as I was trying to find my way. The light was creeping in now; I realised it was morning. We were supposed to be in Nottingham at lunchtime for my stepdaughter’s ice-skating competition. I switched on my phone and texted Marcus, ‘Just go, I’ll be fine,’ I said, thinking I could just sleep at Hawes and then find my own way back.

‘I’ll wait,’ he replied.

I caught up with a woman in the field before Hawes; she sprinted on as soon as she saw me. I had nothing left. I didn’t want to race. I had done what I set out to do, to find a glimpse of the old me, the girl who was out all night, who kept going when a voice told her she couldn’t, and who could look after herself no matter the weather. I got changed at the end, spoke to a few friends who were volunteering at the checkpoint, and then we headed to Nottingham. I pulled down the mirror in the passenger seat sunshade in the car. I had a cut on my face, and the start of two black eyes, from the fall all those hours ago. We had missed the ice-skating competition – I was too slow for that – but Marcus dashed inside and still got to his daughter at least.

I had only booked the Monday off work, as I had no leave days to take any more, although with the swollen feet and lack of sleep I asked to work from home on the Tuesday. The next day I had to face work. I looked awful. My black eyes were so prominent. Work colleagues congratulated me, but I didn’t want the attention. I had run so little of it; I was over ten hours slower than previous times. To me it was worth it though. My fatigue didn’t get worse after, although it didn’t get better either. The same struggle to face the day, to face the pain and fatigue, but maybe slightly easier knowing the girl who could run all night wasn’t quite as far under the surface as she feared. A little slower, and a little darker, but the light wasn’t completely gone.