Last month, Nigel Topping competed in the Endurance Life Coast 2 Coast multi-sport marathon, cycling, running and kayaking all the way from the North to the South coast of Devon. Nigel underwent this impressive 140-mile marathon to raise money to support grassroots leaders in marginalised communities through our Quest Fellowship Programme. If you would like to sponsor Nigel you can do so on his JustGiving page. Here is his story…
“I arrived back from USA at 6 on Friday morning after grabbing about 3 hours sleep on the plane, made my way home, packed and made final preparations before loading up the car with Glyn, my running-mate to head up to North Devon for the evening briefing. We arrived in time to put our tent up in the light and organise our transition bags for Saturday, nerves jangling by now.
The night was awful – torrential rain sweeping across the campsite in stormy squalls at about half-hour intervals caused somewhat interrupted sleep before having to rise at 5 for a quick breakfast, final briefing, pack up tents and ready to go.
We then had to walk 2 miles in pouring rain just to get to the start! This was at Foreland Point, the northernmost point in the county of Devon. Soon after 7am we were off on the first stage, a 7 mile run back to a village on the edge of Exmoor. Cold and wet, and having walked up some of the steeper bits, we set off on the 54 mile bike stage across Exmoor. The first hill was 20% gradient – everyone heroically stood up on their pedals to make it to a flatter bit only to turn the corner and see the sign saying 25%!!! The race organisers are complete sadists and not a few of us cursed them out loud as we resigned to walking up that bit. No more walking required though as we pushed on across the moor to the next checkpoint. As we road into the wind and rain, I realised that Glyn’s bike wasn’t exactly a top model – he told me he got it for free with a credit card. This was nearly to prove our downfall.
Nearly 7 hours in to the event we arrived at the second transition point with just 24 minutes to spare to avoid the cut-off. My wife Ann was supposed to have met us there but there was no sign so we jumped off our bikes, put on our running shoes and started the gruelling assent of High Willhays, the highest point in south England. Fortunately that doesn’t mean much but still, 1000 feet of ascent, the last half of it with no path over the boggy, tussocky landscape before arriving at the rocky tor on the peak. Running down was like playing Russian roulette with your ankles but we needed to make up time if we were to beat the final 11 hour cut off that day. We were down in less than half an hour, still no sign of Ann so back on our bikes for the final 25 miles.
We started well but I knew the last 6 miles would be brutal – all uphill to the mid-event campsite at Princetown, home of Dartmoor’s maximum security prison. Half-way there, Glyn ‘crashed’. One minute he was there right behind me, the next he was gone. I waited for him to catch up, asked him if he was OK but he just looked at me with vacant eyes and shook his head. This was looking bad. Ten minutes sitting down, eating, drinking, getting a motivational chat from me and we were off again, every hill a major test of willpower for Glyn. Those last 6 miles were a real test – I don’t know where Glyn found the strength to carry on and we finally arrived with just 13 minutes to spare, exhausted but still on course to complete.
After changing our tyres for the much rougher off-road biking section on Sunday we crashed into our sleeping bags for another rainy sleep-interrupted night. At least we had a lie-in, Sunday morning wake-up call was 5.30! Off at 7.30 in reverse order of finishing so we were one of the first to go. 2 seconds after leaving, I heard Glyn shout ‘STOP’ and looked round to see him turning his bike upside down to look at a mechanical problem – in his exhaustion the night before he had failed to tighten the wheelnuts adequately and his rear wheel was now looking very wonky! We managed to correct the problem pretty quickly with judicious application of the leatherman but this was not a good start.
The next stage was a real mixed bag – first of all a ridiculous squelchy ‘ride’ over soggy moorland, followed by a very rocky ride down a path which had turned into a river, then some fast road riding off the moor before the muddiest bike riding I have ever seen over the hills to my home town of Totnes. Glyn was struggling still and we were really chasing the clock. I found myself waiting at the top of every hill, trying to figure out the best way to encourage Glyn – was it with positive words like ‘you are doing great, mate, well done’ or a kick up the backside ‘come on Glyn, we’re running out of time, for God’s sake try harder’? I don’t know but it was just enough as we arrived at the Kayak transition with 1 minute to spare. Glyn’s cheap bike had finally let him down – the brakes refusing to deal with the massive amount of mud and failing completely on the last very bumpy off-road downhill section.
We arrived in a rush at the transition area to be met with Ann’s smiling face and cheers at last. I went in first, dumped my bike and started preparing the kayak. Glyn came in a bit later and Ann tells me the first thing he said to her was ‘I hate him!!’.
The kayak was a dream – we had reckoned on a good time of 2 hours 30 minutes but with tide and wind behind us and the river swollen from all the rain, we reached Dartmouth in under 2 hours.
The final section of 19 miles running to the southern-most point of Devon, Prawle Point, was all about hanging in there. We made the final cut off at Torcross, 10 miles in, with 25 minutes to spare and finally started to relax, we could walk to the finish now if need be. The final 5 miles after Start Point were glorious, the worst of the uphill sections now behind us, the sea close on our left hand side, wild as the wind and the sun starting to go down to the west in front of us amid dramatic clouds. 21 hours of elapsed time since the start on Saturday morning, we finally made the finish line and hugged each other with relief and joy. We had made it.
Glyn tells me that he didn’t actually swear about me at that Totnes transition and that ‘my hate was of the impermanent kind such as one might have for a parent who had administered a beating that you later realised you deserved’ and we are both laughing about our absurd adventures now that the chaffing and aching is subsiding. Still, little chance of us opting for the ‘extreme’ version next year, where competitors don’t get to sleep at all!
The kindness of those people who generously supported my fundraising efforts was often on my mind when pushing to keep ahead of the clock. Thank you for this motivation. The money will be very well spent by Leaders’ Quest Foundation and I shall be resting for a while before coming up with the next crazy idea.
Best wishes
Nigel”