70 Wild Miles; A charity triathlon in aid of CLIC Sargent

Caring for Children with Cancer.

My first 70 Wild Miles was in 1992 as a 17 year old Venture Scout I took part, along with two others, in one of the first 'tag' teams, too wimpy to do the whole thing. With the event being in its relatively early stages, we were also short on marshals in those days too. As the cycling did not kill me completely (I was a bit fitter back then - this was before I got a car) I opted to help out with the afternoon marshalling. I was placed on one of the running bases away from the midges in a clearing near a cattle grid - about midway in the run. Phil McGuinness and I were dropped off with a box of Mars Bars, a box of Snickers (were they still Marathons then?) a 5 gallon drum of water and a 2 gallon bottle of a thick glucose drink which looked like concentrated Irn-Bru (I wasn't brave enough to taste it!). All was going well, despite the searing heat.

Anyone involved back then will remember the cases of sunburn and heat exhaustion as we basked in the high 80's. Most of the runners had passed, all opting for water and some for a Mars bar - noticeably few, well none actually, choosing the syrup! We had the cups nicely laid out in the shade so we could easily pass them to the runners when Phil managed to knock one over, spilling the syrup on to the grass. This incidentally was the only syrup used up all day! Fair enough, you ask, but the syrup had stained the grass a tangy looking orange colour. The day passed and when the final runner had passed we began to tidy up all the spare cups when we noticed that the area affected by the syrup spillage was now bare! Yes, the syrup had killed the grass in only 2 hours and left a bare patch of earth open to the world. No wonder nobody was drinking the stuff - we'd have had a pile of bodies half a mile up the glen! Interestingly enough, Phil and I passed the location in 1998 and there was still a perfectly round bare patch next to the fence there! 

Craig Brackenridge.