The other day, Smack and I were discussing exit strategies for the run. We’d previously discussed what would happen if one of us was injured and agreed that the rest of the group would ensure they received the help they needed to get to that nights stay and if necessary help them arrange travel home and such like. Unless the injury is very serious, the rest would continue and the injured party would fend for themselves from then on.
So far, so good.
But what if there was no injury? Just someone been very slow? What should we do there?
At first, I thought that one of us would just run (or walk) with them, however slow they went. But is that fair? If I had to walk for 3 days because someone else couldn’t run, I would be really annoyed.
It’s important to realise that we’re all doing this for individual reasons. It’s not a “group” task as such. We’ve all spent so much in terms of time, effort and money. We’ve made huge sacrifices, had to drop things we would normally do to find the time to run, my family have made sacrifices for me.
So, we’ve decided on the seemingly draconian procedure. If someone can’t make the run inside the allotted time (we’re leaving 6 hours available for each run although we hope to do it in less than that) then we ensure they get to the next evening’s stop. After that, they need to decide whether or not they can run faster the next day. If they choose to run on, they do so at their own risk. As in, if they fall behind again, there is no expectation on the others that they will drop back and run with them. The rest of the group are free to run on ahead and leave them behind.
Now, this sounds pretty harsh, I agree, but someone lagging behind will not be left in the middle of nowhere without any means of onward travel. The routes we’re running are only ever a few miles (probably 5 at most) away from a road. The Hadrian’s Wall route even has busses that run along the road pretty close to it.
So although it sounds harsh, I can’t think of another solution to this problem. After all, why should one person failing ruin it for the rest of the group? And they would ruin it… I’ve not put in all this effort only to walk across Hadrian’s Wall.
Obviously, this is a moot point as none of us are going to quit! Normal people walk Hadrian’s Wall, but this is a journey into the extraordinary!