Time marches us on. An event I booked back in the early spring for September once seemed a lifetime away; now it sits beckoning from just across the threshold of next weekend.
The training volume drops, but the internal volume turns all the way up.
In this final week before a massive physical ordeal, my body is forced into stillness. The long, exhausting miles are replaced by the quiet of the taper. For a restless mind, this stillness is not a relief - it is a crucible. Without the numbing physical fatigue of heavy training, the doubts creep in, the energy pools and my focus narrows down to the sharp edge of the upcoming task.
Even as I prepare to turn my face toward the north - toward the cold waters of Ullswater and the brutal ridges of Askham Fell - the heaviest weight I am carrying isn't the physical preparation.
It is the quiet guilt of departure.
The Trigger of Recalibration
Entering my 49th year on this earth last October, I forced myself to sit down and audit what this year ought to represent.
The assessment was sobering. First, I recognized that my most loved creative outlets - drawing, painting, writing - had fallen quietly to the wayside. Second, I had allowed some of my physical prowess to erode. This culminated in a hard decision: to reshape and rebuild across the turning year, presenting the next half of my century with a sharper, more capable tool with which to navigate the world.
The return to art and writing triggered the birth of Bones & the Bull as a shop - not to chase empty wealth, but to serve as a lynchpin that kept my hands moving and accountable. The physical side demanded a commitment to achieving landmarks outside my current radius of comfort. There is no better method to keep drive alive than putting your name down for something that scares you.
That decision was the engine behind conquering the Fan Dance in Wales, returning to hike the Skyline route in the Peak District and finally braving the open water swim of Buttermere after promising to do so fifteen years prior. Now comes the SBR.
The Architecture of the Gear
Next weekend, I will step out of our daily rhythm once more. My wife will be left solo, holding down the fort, managing our two sons alone. It weighs heavily on me that this has also been the case for those other hard-won miles throughout the year.
Let’s be entirely honest, stripped of any comfortable gloss: this is (and has been) a selfish journey. It is an exclusion, but not one born of malice or a desire to escape. I adore my family, but I also know they have no desire to stand on a windswept ridge or watch the rain ripple across a grey lake. Forcing them into that space would be a false compromise. Yet, my need to be there remains absolute.
The guilt is real and is mine to bear. But there is an unspoken paradox that exists within a true partnership. From the day we met twenty-six years, my wife and I have operated as a unified machine, pulling the same heavy load.
Think of a partnership like two cogs locked together on a chassis. It is the sharp, distinct teeth of those different-sized gears that catch, bite and turn the axle of our progression forward.
The temptation in modern relationships is to always choose the path of least resistance - to slowly grind down our own wild, difficult edges so we fit more neatly into the domestic routine. We think that by smoothing ourselves out, we make life easier for the team.
But that is a mechanical failure in the making. If you forever smooth out your edges, you eventually reach a point where the teeth no longer bite. The gears slip. No power is generated. The smoothing out of ourselves removes the immediate friction, but without friction, we have no drive.
Returning to the Line
Embracing this necessary selfishness might seem harsh from the outside. But seasoned partnerships know the truth: to hold the line for each other's individual soul - to allow those sharp cog teeth to stay sharp - is the highest form of support.
I am not going north to flee my responsibilities; I am going north to maintain the integrity of my gear. I am going to test myself against the water and the rock because that exposure strips away the rust and leaves the functional metal beneath.
By allowing each other the freedom to simply be - to chase the difficult, lonely spaces that keep our edges intact - we do not pull apart. We build the capacity to return to the unit stronger, anchored and ready to lock back into the machinery of our shared life with maximum torque.
Our paths crossed as individuals. We later swore oaths to hold that line together. We did not agree to mute our differences. If we did, we would be silencing the very spikes and edges that drew us together in the first place.
Such are the thoughts of a man forced to sit still while the clouds gather. The bags are packed. The debt to the home front is acknowledged and it will be repaid in full, with interest, upon my return.
But for now, the north is calling, and the only way back to the team is straight through the mountain.
Bones
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