Wind, rain, cold, sleepless nights, access issues, costly insurance…Seth had it all and asks, so you still wanna be a race director?
Ramsay Round 1
Alvaro de la Camara
We catch up with Alvaro de la Camara on his Big 3 Project after a successful Paddy Buckley Round in Eryri, he heads north to the Highlands to take on the Charlie Ramsay Round.
I was running along a 1m wide ridge, a rock underneath me went, and I fell down the right of the narrow ridge. As I was going down, I landed 2-3m down on my left leg, twisted my knee and hit my right side hard on a boulder; I continued sliding down the hill, everything in slow motion. I remember thinking, as I slid “I need to stop this NOW!”. I kept trying to grab onto something with no luck, I was out of control. Then my body stopped. I looked around and realised that about 5-6m down from the ledge where I’d stopped was another cliff, one that I couldn’t see the bottom of. For a second, I couldn’t catch my breath, I started to panic. “Ok, I need to move and get the hell out of here, somewhere safe”. I checked my legs first, my left knee felt like there was a bonfire inside, and my right quad felt like someone stabbed me. I think it was the adrenaline pumping that got me to stand up, and with only one pole, I managed to start moving. I had to move carefully, it was a loose, rocky scramble. It would be very easy to slip, with the larger drop just below. I managed to get back up to the ridge and moved carefully forward until I found a bigger piece of flat ground to lie down, trying to compose myself.
The pain from my knee was becoming unbearable. I like to think I have quite a high pain threshold thanks to all the injuries suffered throughout years of competitive BMX riding, but this started to concern me as I wasn’t moving at all and the pain was way too much. I tried to stand up but couldn’t. That’s the moment when I sat again for about 10 minutes and came to the realisation that I was not going to be able to keep running. A wave of emotion flooded my head, I couldn’t fathom the fact that that was it. All these months of preparation, training, logistics. I couldn’t cope with my thoughts, so grabbed my phone, sent the message to my crew letting them know I was heading to the closest road, stood up (this took about 5 minutes) and started heading down the mountain. It was 3pm and I was alone.
My name is Alvaro de la Camara, father of two little girls and a pretty standard guy with a nine-to-five job. I’m also the co-founder of Cycling4soup, a collective using sport as a means to share inspiring stories, explore new challenges and bring together communities by raising awareness and support for different organisations in need. I’ve bounced back from some huge setbacks in my life and now, I’m making the most of it by taking on epic challenges.
I’d spent the last 5 or so hours covering 30+ of the Charlie Ramsay Round. I’d got lost a few times, tripped once or twice and thoroughly enjoyed the incredible landscape on offer, as I moved through it. The weather was the perfect definition of Scottish summer, it went from very sunny, to cloudy and rainy and even snow at the top of some peaks.
I’d decided to do the round clockwise, which means I went straight into climbing Ben Nevis. Which means hitting a wall and climbing over 1,300m from almost sea level. Although I was not really keen on the amount of people enjoying their leisurely walk up to the top (lesson learned for next time) it felt ok to slowly drift away from civilisation. I knew I’d be away from people for at least the next 24 hours (apart from the checkpoints where I’d see my crew).
As soon as I got to the top of Ben Nevis felt like it was the actual start of the round. Leaving everybody behind and hitting the East side where the path disappears, and lines are no longer there. Boulders and rock were the only thing I could see in front of me. I chuckled for a second and started to head down and continued running.
It had all started on 2nd of June 2024 when I had just finished the Paddy Buckley, a 106km run around the highest peaks of Wales, accumulating a whopping 8,400 m. Feeling on top of the world and positive about my next big runs.
My crew and I drove back to London after 30 hours no sleep, and already thinking about recovery times and reactivating my body for the Scottish leg.
2.5 weeks later, there we were again, driving 12 hours up to Scotland on a Friday to kickstart the second leg of our All the Peaks project the very next day. Early start for everyone, big brekkie for me and a drive to the bottom of Ben Nevis to start the run.
That morning, I was feeling good physically, however, I felt like my mind was not in tune with my body. I decided to play some music on my headphones as I changed my clothes and got all my kit together. I cannot stress enough how lucky I feel about my supporting crew, my friends and most importantly, my second family! We understand each other and, although sometimes we might not stop talking for hours, we need little words if the situation requires silence. This situation was one of those, and we could all read the room (well, carpark).
Music is a very important part of how I focus for things, and to me, metal/heavy music syncs my body and soul very well, as I feel it represents what endurance activities are to me, pure loud chaos!
I walked away from everyone for a minute, shed a few tears, not really knowing why, and then walked back to grab my vest and start running.
And now I was 1,000m up a mountain with unknown injuries and a pain in my knee and quad unlike anything I’d experienced, this was when the real challenge started. There is no straight line down and I had to thoroughly check on the map to see which way I could head. Walking was extremely painful, I had to use my poles as crutches, though I had to be careful as I could snap them if put all my weight on them. I have been in hairy situations in the past, but this was by far the hardest thing I’ve had to face in my life. I considered calling mountain rescue, but felt that if I could still move, even under such a strenuous pain, it would be a waste of resources to deploy a team or even a helicopter to get me out of there, plus the whole idea made me feel very guilty, so I kept shuffling my way down.
My approach to this project had been to run solo. Normally people use pacers, which tends to be local runners, to help with pace and guide you through the correct lines and make the most out of your attempt, increasing the chances of completing it.
During the Paddy Buckley, I realised how much of an impact this has as I got lost a few times and chose wrong lines where I found myself in a few hairy situations.
The Highlands are a completely different playground compared to Wales. It’s more technical, feels more remote and felt (to me) less trafficked. I already started to feel not in control long before the accident.
The aim had been to hit the three big UK rounds, the Paddy Buckley, Charlie Ramsay and Bob Graham in the space of 2 months. To put the Big Rounds into context, these classic mountain running challenges are steeped in history, and each is a monumental challenge when taken individually, let alone together in one summer. The routes are between 58 and 66 miles (93 and 106 km) in length, and each entails a whopping elevation gain of between 26,900 and 28,500 feet (8,200 and 8,700 m). That’s almost equivalent to ascending Mount Everest from sea level during each round.
As well as the obvious endurance challenge, the Rounds are unmarked, calling for skilled and, at times, tricky navigation. The routes include Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon), Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis, the highest points in the respective countries, as part of a total haul of 113 summits. Most people attempt this challenge over the course of many years. I had planned to complete them all in 2024, leaving two-and-a-half weeks between each attempt in order to recover properly.
But for now, I’d agreed with my crew that I would start walking their way and they would start heading mine, to meet somewhere in the middle; easier said than done when there is no marked path. It took us 5 hours to find each other. I was moving extremely slowly, and they had to find their way up without knowing the area. During those 5 hours, I had to battle my worst demons and the most excruciating pain I’ve ever known. I reckon that 3 out of those 5 hours I spent crying. Crying because of the pain, crying because I felt guilty for bringing 3 friends who I consider my family up and down the country for me to achieve a goal and not being able to finish it, crying because of all the effort and time I’ve put into the project, crying because I could have easily kept going down that cliff and fallen off the next one and ended up in a completely different situation. But most importantly, crying because I could have not seen my kids and wife ever again if something worse would have happened.
That left me with roughly another 2 hours. Where I managed to compose myself, deal with all that whirlwind of emotions, and understand that I planned this project in a way that I shouldn’t have. I thought about pacers, about how I was going to recover (thanks Dixon Chiropractors for always supporting me!) and what was ahead of me instead of what just happened.
Even when I reached my crew, it wasn’t over. We still had to drive back to London, 12 hours straight in a car, which is not the most comfortable place when you are injured, and your body feels battered.
We quickly headed via Fort Williams A&E to assess the damage but without access to an MRI machine, they could only check for bone damage (but at this point I was pretty certain it was more ligament and muscle).
I am lucky enough to be one of the sponsor athletes at Dixon Chiropractors. They are not just amazing at what they do, but they are great supporters and followers of my exploits. Josh Dixon was following the progress of my run and messaged me when he saw my tracker moving away from the route. This meant that as soon as I called, he quickly picked up and assessed me over the phone, asking me different things and making me move my leg and body in different ways so he could tell me what to do next.
Since then, we have been working very hard to recover a damaged lateral and anterior ligament on my left knee, muscle tear from my right quad, torsion to a ligament on my right ankle and damage to a disc, which was pretty beat up already, but has made it a bit worse, affecting my lower back and the whole of the right side of my lower body.
The funniest thing about all this (if there is a funny side!) having to go back to work on Monday as if nothing had happened. My co-workers only think I tripped over a rock and crashed out a bit. Clueless that I nearly lost my life just 24 hours prior.
I cannot thank enough my support crew, my second family, Craig, Robert and Marcal, for climbing mountains without hesitation, for taking care of everything and taking care of me when doing these things, for always knowing what I need and how to push me when I feel in the wrong headspace. You guys do MUCH more than you think you do and I will be forever grateful.
All The Peaks project is still going ahead and will be picked up in 2025. I will start again from zero and will attempt to complete the three rounds in 2 months (including the Paddy Buckley…again).
We catch up with Alvaro de la Camara on his Big 3 Project after a successful Paddy Buckley Round in Eryri, he heads north to the Highlands to take on the Charlie Ramsay Round.
I was running along a 1m wide ridge, a rock underneath me went, and I fell down the right of the narrow ridge. As I was going down, I landed 2-3m down on my left leg, twisted my knee and hit my right side hard on a boulder; I continued sliding down the hill, everything in slow motion. I remember thinking, as I slid “I need to stop this NOW!”. I kept trying to grab onto something with no luck, I was out of control. Then my body stopped. I looked around and realised that about 5-6m down from the ledge where I’d stopped was another cliff, one that I couldn’t see the bottom of. For a second, I couldn’t catch my breath, I started to panic. “Ok, I need to move and get the hell out of here, somewhere safe”. I checked my legs first, my left knee felt like there was a bonfire inside, and my right quad felt like someone stabbed me. I think it was the adrenaline pumping that got me to stand up, and with only one pole, I managed to start moving. I had to move carefully, it was a loose, rocky scramble. It would be very easy to slip, with the larger drop just below. I managed to get back up to the ridge and moved carefully forward until I found a bigger piece of flat ground to lie down, trying to compose myself.
The pain from my knee was becoming unbearable. I like to think I have quite a high pain threshold thanks to all the injuries suffered throughout years of competitive BMX riding, but this started to concern me as I wasn’t moving at all and the pain was way too much. I tried to stand up but couldn’t. That’s the moment when I sat again for about 10 minutes and came to the realisation that I was not going to be able to keep running. A wave of emotion flooded my head, I couldn’t fathom the fact that that was it. All these months of preparation, training, logistics. I couldn’t cope with my thoughts, so grabbed my phone, sent the message to my crew letting them know I was heading to the closest road, stood up (this took about 5 minutes) and started heading down the mountain. It was 3pm and I was alone.
My name is Alvaro de la Camara, father of two little girls and a pretty standard guy with a nine-to-five job. I’m also the co-founder of Cycling4soup, a collective using sport as a means to share inspiring stories, explore new challenges and bring together communities by raising awareness and support for different organisations in need. I’ve bounced back from some huge setbacks in my life and now, I’m making the most of it by taking on epic challenges.
I’d spent the last 5 or so hours covering 30+ of the Charlie Ramsay Round. I’d got lost a few times, tripped once or twice and thoroughly enjoyed the incredible landscape on offer, as I moved through it. The weather was the perfect definition of Scottish summer, it went from very sunny, to cloudy and rainy and even snow at the top of some peaks.
I’d decided to do the round clockwise, which means I went straight into climbing Ben Nevis. Which means hitting a wall and climbing over 1,300m from almost sea level. Although I was not really keen on the amount of people enjoying their leisurely walk up to the top (lesson learned for next time) it felt ok to slowly drift away from civilisation. I knew I’d be away from people for at least the next 24 hours (apart from the checkpoints where I’d see my crew).
As soon as I got to the top of Ben Nevis felt like it was the actual start of the round. Leaving everybody behind and hitting the East side where the path disappears, and lines are no longer there. Boulders and rock were the only thing I could see in front of me. I chuckled for a second and started to head down and continued running.
It had all started on 2nd of June 2024 when I had just finished the Paddy Buckley, a 106km run around the highest peaks of Wales, accumulating a whopping 8,400 m. Feeling on top of the world and positive about my next big runs.
My crew and I drove back to London after 30 hours no sleep, and already thinking about recovery times and reactivating my body for the Scottish leg.
2.5 weeks later, there we were again, driving 12 hours up to Scotland on a Friday to kickstart the second leg of our All the Peaks project the very next day. Early start for everyone, big brekkie for me and a drive to the bottom of Ben Nevis to start the run.
That morning, I was feeling good physically, however, I felt like my mind was not in tune with my body. I decided to play some music on my headphones as I changed my clothes and got all my kit together. I cannot stress enough how lucky I feel about my supporting crew, my friends and most importantly, my second family! We understand each other and, although sometimes we might not stop talking for hours, we need little words if the situation requires silence. This situation was one of those, and we could all read the room (well, carpark).
Music is a very important part of how I focus for things, and to me, metal/heavy music syncs my body and soul very well, as I feel it represents what endurance activities are to me, pure loud chaos!
I walked away from everyone for a minute, shed a few tears, not really knowing why, and then walked back to grab my vest and start running.
And now I was 1,000m up a mountain with unknown injuries and a pain in my knee and quad unlike anything I’d experienced, this was when the real challenge started. There is no straight line down and I had to thoroughly check on the map to see which way I could head. Walking was extremely painful, I had to use my poles as crutches, though I had to be careful as I could snap them if put all my weight on them. I have been in hairy situations in the past, but this was by far the hardest thing I’ve had to face in my life. I considered calling mountain rescue, but felt that if I could still move, even under such a strenuous pain, it would be a waste of resources to deploy a team or even a helicopter to get me out of there, plus the whole idea made me feel very guilty, so I kept shuffling my way down.
My approach to this project had been to run solo. Normally people use pacers, which tends to be local runners, to help with pace and guide you through the correct lines and make the most out of your attempt, increasing the chances of completing it.
During the Paddy Buckley, I realised how much of an impact this has as I got lost a few times and chose wrong lines where I found myself in a few hairy situations.
The Highlands are a completely different playground compared to Wales. It’s more technical, feels more remote and felt (to me) less trafficked. I already started to feel not in control long before the accident.
The aim had been to hit the three big UK rounds, the Paddy Buckley, Charlie Ramsay and Bob Graham in the space of 2 months. To put the Big Rounds into context, these classic mountain running challenges are steeped in history, and each is a monumental challenge when taken individually, let alone together in one summer. The routes are between 58 and 66 miles (93 and 106 km) in length, and each entails a whopping elevation gain of between 26,900 and 28,500 feet (8,200 and 8,700 m). That’s almost equivalent to ascending Mount Everest from sea level during each round.
As well as the obvious endurance challenge, the Rounds are unmarked, calling for skilled and, at times, tricky navigation. The routes include Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon), Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis, the highest points in the respective countries, as part of a total haul of 113 summits. Most people attempt this challenge over the course of many years. I had planned to complete them all in 2024, leaving two-and-a-half weeks between each attempt in order to recover properly.
But for now, I’d agreed with my crew that I would start walking their way and they would start heading mine, to meet somewhere in the middle; easier said than done when there is no marked path. It took us 5 hours to find each other. I was moving extremely slowly, and they had to find their way up without knowing the area. During those 5 hours, I had to battle my worst demons and the most excruciating pain I’ve ever known. I reckon that 3 out of those 5 hours I spent crying. Crying because of the pain, crying because I felt guilty for bringing 3 friends who I consider my family up and down the country for me to achieve a goal and not being able to finish it, crying because of all the effort and time I’ve put into the project, crying because I could have easily kept going down that cliff and fallen off the next one and ended up in a completely different situation. But most importantly, crying because I could have not seen my kids and wife ever again if something worse would have happened.
That left me with roughly another 2 hours. Where I managed to compose myself, deal with all that whirlwind of emotions, and understand that I planned this project in a way that I shouldn’t have. I thought about pacers, about how I was going to recover (thanks Dixon Chiropractors for always supporting me!) and what was ahead of me instead of what just happened.
Even when I reached my crew, it wasn’t over. We still had to drive back to London, 12 hours straight in a car, which is not the most comfortable place when you are injured, and your body feels battered.
We quickly headed via Fort Williams A&E to assess the damage but without access to an MRI machine, they could only check for bone damage (but at this point I was pretty certain it was more ligament and muscle).
I am lucky enough to be one of the sponsor athletes at Dixon Chiropractors. They are not just amazing at what they do, but they are great supporters and followers of my exploits. Josh Dixon was following the progress of my run and messaged me when he saw my tracker moving away from the route. This meant that as soon as I called, he quickly picked up and assessed me over the phone, asking me different things and making me move my leg and body in different ways so he could tell me what to do next.
Since then, we have been working very hard to recover a damaged lateral and anterior ligament on my left knee, muscle tear from my right quad, torsion to a ligament on my right ankle and damage to a disc, which was pretty beat up already, but has made it a bit worse, affecting my lower back and the whole of the right side of my lower body.
The funniest thing about all this (if there is a funny side!) having to go back to work on Monday as if nothing had happened. My co-workers only think I tripped over a rock and crashed out a bit. Clueless that I nearly lost my life just 24 hours prior.
I cannot thank enough my support crew, my second family, Craig, Robert and Marcal, for climbing mountains without hesitation, for taking care of everything and taking care of me when doing these things, for always knowing what I need and how to push me when I feel in the wrong headspace. You guys do MUCH more than you think you do and I will be forever grateful.
All The Peaks project is still going ahead and will be picked up in 2025. I will start again from zero and will attempt to complete the three rounds in 2 months (including the Paddy Buckley…again).
Alvaro de la Camara is an endurance fanatic, needing sports and being outdoors as a way of meditation. Co-founder of the platform Cycling4soup which uses sports as means to raise awareness of different organisations and causes that needs more attention, as well as support by fundraising on each of the projects.
Alvaro de la Camara is an endurance fanatic, needing sports and being outdoors as a way of meditation. Co-founder of the platform Cycling4soup which uses sports as means to raise awareness of different organisations and causes that needs more attention, as well as support by fundraising on each of the projects.
If you have a story to tell, whether it’s from the OMM, another race or challenge or just how you use our kit, get in touch! Just pop an email to james@team-ark.com and who knows, you might just earn yourself some free kit!
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