E94. Redefining Possible @ The Summer Spine Race with Chris Cope and Mel Sykes

Everything Endurance

It's time to talk about the Montane Summer Spine Race 2024!

Those who attended this year's race will know it looked a lot like a winter one. Conditions were extremely difficult and the athletes who did well this June can quite rightly say they completed a race as tough in its own way as any January edition. Among those brave runners were Chris Cope and Mel Sykes.

Chris and Mel arrived at the start line of this year's Summer Spine Race and Summer Spine Challenger South respectively, with a slightly higher mountain to climb than most people around them. Chris has type 1 diabetes which he has managed, to great success, since his teens. Mel was returning to the Pennine Way for the second year in a row having experienced a very serious incident between races, an incident described by Mel herself as finding out 'her brain was falling out'.

In this episode both Chris and Mel chat with Will about their experiences out on the Pennine Way and about the conditions they overcame in order to achieve Spine Race success.