A DRAGON DIES
Day Three, Dragons Back Race. I am pushing through the crowded streets of Machynlleth in a rare moment out of the mountains. The fans are not there to see me. The Tour of Britain is passing through and everyone is cheering the peloton.
It struck me as funny, unfair, how these guys on bikes were getting all the applause, while I was having to fight my way through the throng, with no acknowledgement at all.
Bike races are a gargantua of contrivance. Before you even get to the bikes, team coaches and police escorts. The very tarmac requires constant and expensive attention to maintain. If the roads were left alone for 100 years, they would be entirely reclaimed by nature.
The mountains have been here for 400million years. And when you run in them, you feel part of that vast gravitas.
If/ when the human world comes to ruination by our own hands, the roads and bikes will disappear with short shrift. The whole, convoluted charade disposed of. A fly, crushed on a window. The mountains will remain. And mammals will move over them.
Very sad news yesterday that Ourea Events has ceased (I don’t know where the name Ourea came from, it was a poor choice. Hard to pronounce, even harder to Google).
But Ourea hosted the Dragons Back Race. So it’s dead.
Tour of Britain still going strong. A vastly inferior sporting spectacle.
I’m sorry for everyone who has lost money, and sorry for everyone who will never get the incredible experience I had. I’m sure this was the last thing the company wanted.
This was a good company, trying to do good things. Connecting runners, and those around them, to the mountains, and each other. It made for good communities, friendships and competitors. It gave a unique adventure to everyone that touched it. And there is so much hope in all of that.
While billionaires lord power over everyone, sapping it at source from the planet they choke, small companies that give humans and sport and landscape a chance, get overthrown by financial bottom lines. It should be ethics that decide the winners and losers in the business of sport.
Yes, it’s niche as fuck (see my post: Niche as Fuck Games). But Shane Ohly was doing everything he could to make this race more accessible and more sustainable, reducing it’s carbon footprint as opposed to clawing out profit. It was a step in the right direction and full of decent people. In our own backyard, a race in the calendar that I was really proud of. Meanwhile UTS and UTMB accept sponsorship from fossil fuels and extract everything they can. Business as usual.
I wish I had done more to help. But it’s over now. And I love to be hopeful and take the positives.
Every competitor should be an ambassador for events like Dragon’s Back.
So I am making sure I learn the lessons.
The next big thing in my little running life is The Welsh Castle Relays.
An awesome event that is clearly more interested in the human experience than maximising profits.
I am going to do more to promote it. You will hear all about our little team Meirionnydd as we take it on.
I ran 113 miles last week. One session, one long run, one flat car battery.
I have pulled myself out of the fug of fatigue, finally. HR has returned to the thirties. Sleeping and recovering much better. It didn’t happen by accident. I changed one thing, and it massively improved my whole life.
I’ll tell you about it next Friday.
Subscribe, because you need me.
You want more of me? Well here I am, starring in the Dragon’s Back Documentary. Watched by over 1 million people. Maybe, if I was more casually funny, it would have saved the day.
