Running the Divide 200: A Test of Strength and Spirit

I felt my feet slide out from under me, there was no stopping the movement, I was falling! I grabbed as I fell and managed to get hold of some grassy bushes and I screamed out as I hung over the edge of the cliff, my legs dangling into the dark midnight abyss below me as the rain continued to unleash hell upon me, with my face in the mud of the path I had slipped from. I screamed out hoping the two ahead of me would hear and turn back. Thankfully they did. ‘Hurry!’ I shouted, ‘I’m slipping!’ I wasn’t sure how long this grass would hold me and Jesse, the pacer of Rachel the runner he was with, scrambled his way back on the mountain side trying not to slip himself in the harrowing slippery conditions and wedged himself on the side where there was thankfully still some grass in all the mud. He yelled at me to grab his hand but I couldn’t let go, I had my Leki poles strapped on and was in quite a predicament. ‘I can’t!’ I yelled back through the lashing rain, ‘I’m stuck with poles, I can’t let go’. He swiftly grabbed my right elbow and literally threw me up on the side where he was sitting. I lay there for a moment, face down in the muddy grass with rain lashing me from all sides. ‘We have to keep going!’ he shouted and pulled me up on my feet.