Interview: Robert Holding and Donnie Nicolson, endurance runners

Published on Sunday 18 April 2010 12:40

If you've visited the Old Man of Storr on the Isle of Skye recently or marvelled at the heights of Dun Caan on Raasay you might have spotted two distant figures traversing the ridge-line in Arctic temperatures.

You may even have seen some strange encampments dotted around and wondered who might be living rough in such primitive shelter.

For several months, two men have been been braving the full force of a Highland winter in preparation for a journey that will push them to their limits. It makes sense when you find out about their cause; a pioneering Skye-based charity dedicated to saving lives in Scotland's most remote communities.

Robert Holding and Donnie Nicolson shouldn't have much in common. Holding, 46, is a reformed heroin addict, originally from Neilston in Glasgow, who moved to Skye 20 years ago to escape the clutch of an addiction that has taken the lives of several of his boyhood acquaintances.

He has spent time behind bars and has rebuilt his life with the support of the island community. Nicolson is younger by a decade. He was brought up and schooled in Skye but left to join the Royal Marines at 19, serving at the tail end of the troubles in West Belfast, before returning to his homeland to re-lay his roots.

Despite any superficial differences, the desire to explore their personal limits has brought them together. In July, the pair will tackle the Gobi Challenge – a 140-mile run across the baked desert, preceded by a 350-mile off-road cycle.

For over a week, they will sleep side by side in sleeping bags, in tents that are used by the nomadic trackers of Outer Mongolia. They will live an entirely self-sufficient lifestyle, eating dried food, dates and nuts which they will carry on their backs over some of the highest sand dunes in Asia, in 90-degree heat. Bears, scorpions and vultures are found here.

Competitors have been known to suffer conditions that cause the hands and feet to develop balloon-like swelling. A surfeit of human spirit, melded by their friendship, will be required. And when their reserves are drained and they think they can't go on, where will they find the strength? The answer lies in the cause that has united them.

Lucky2Bhere is a visionary charity established by islander and friend Ross Cowie, a marathon runner and all-round sportsman, who suffered a near fatal heart attack in December 2006. Since its inception, Lucky2Bhere has co-ordinated fund-raising activities for defibrillators to be placed around the island, potentially saving lives. Skye lies 125 miles from specialist care in Inverness and, by dint of geography, cardiac patients suffering an arrest can have a greatly reduced chance of survival.

Islanders have been trained to use key heart equipment themselves and now the charity is supporting the Heartstart Skye programme, which will see every pupil at Portree High School trained in first aid. Soon the Portree lifeboat will be the first RNLI vessel in Britain registered to carry a defibrillator. Island police cars will follow suit.

Plans are underway to take Heartstart Skye beyond the island and into every secondary school in Scotland. Other remote communities, in places such as Islay and Jura, hope to copy the Lucky2Bhere blueprint and potentially save lives when specialist care is several hours away. For its creator Cowie, and for Nicolson and Holding, the charity is also about remote communities taking responsibility for themselves.

"When Robert asked me if I would do the Gobi Challenge for Ross's charity, that swung it for me," says Nicolson, casting his mind back to the precise moment when he decided to tackle the scorched wilderness of Asia. He knew if he was to do anything that meant getting back, painfully, into the training he was accustomed to in the forces, there had to be a powerful reason. The charity crystallised things in his mind. So, too, did the memory of a departed school friend.

Several years ago, Nicolson was playing football for Portree FC in the Highland Amateur Cup in Culloden when a team mate keeled over on the park. Davie Annan was young and athletic. Despite this, he died. This tragic event left a lasting impression on Nicolson, who has also raised funds for the British Heart Foundation.

"With Davie, I saw what happens at the sharp end. He was a fit guy, but he had this underlying heart problem. No-one knew it was there. When he fell over, I remember shouting, 'For god's sake, Davie, get up, man.' But when I went over it was obvious things were serious. I thought for a start that he was having a fit but he wasn't breathing.

"Myself and another guy tried to resuscitate him, but to no avail. By the time the ambulance arrived, it was too late. It brings the truth home to you when you see someone you know passing away like that."

Sports psychologists often make use of the truism that every journey starts with a single step. For Holding, the metaphor has particular resonance as, for many years, he has been on a quest to rediscover the person he was before heroin laid waste to his life.

In many ways, Gobi's hazards will be less than the barriers he has had to face to win back his future and the respect of those around him. As well as running for the charity, he sees the adventure as a way of giving something back to the community that has given him a second chance. "I came to Skye as a fool and a clown when I was 26. I had a raging heroin habit. Thankfully, over the last 12 years I have managed to get back to where I was before I lost the plot," he says.

"When I came here, people were lovely with me. They were kind and folk helped me out until I found my feet. That is why I am here. They gave me a chance.

"Basically, I had to get out. I got in too deep with the heroin and became a thieving, lying rat. That is what happens to people with addictions. But slowly I have managed to repair things. For me, this is about helping the island – Skye has been good to me."

It would be misleading to suggest travelling over the Minch from Glasgow was enough in itself to "cure" Holding of his problems. In his first few years, he tested the patience and trust of many. Through learning the hard way, he has since managed to heal old schisms.

"It wasn't plain sailing when I came to Skye for a new start and I had a few hiccups," he admits. "I broke into a chemist in 1996 and stole drugs and was put in prison for 13 months."

When he came out of Porterfield Prison, Holding decided he had to change his life. "On an island, everyone knows who you are. When I came out, I could see people walking over the other side of the street when they saw me and I knew I had to straighten myself out.

"Slowly I managed to pull things back. I got a job (as a builder) and kept it and soon the police saw I was making a go of things. I apologised to everyone I had hurt, even the people in the chemist, and things started to change for me then."

One of the most affirmative things Holding found on his journey back to health was running. Today, he calls himself a "square bear". Since 2005, he has been involved in ultra-running. He works, drinks water, eats, trains and sleeps. There are very few mountain tracks or Corbetts that Holding's trainers haven't trampled over on Skye. For him, running isn't just one foot after another or something you do to get in shape.

"I find running to be like a kind of meditation, everything just dissolves away," he says. "It's what I do. It has completed me. It's like a vocation, really."

In order to prepare and train for Gobi, Nicolson and Holding have drawn on the latter's experience. The pair originally became friends when training together five years ago in the Royal Hotel gym in Portree. Shortly afterwards, they went different ways; Holding exploring the punishing world of ultra-running while Nicolson continued with gym work and shorter events.

In 2007, Holding completed the gruelling Marathon des Sables, a six-day push across the Sahara in Morocco. Last year, he did the Gobi, but without the 350-mile cycle ride as a "warm up".

July's race, therefore, is a first for both men, although Holding's knowledge of the Mongolian tundra could prove crucial.

"Robert's been leading the way. His input has been great," says Nicolson. "The stuff we are doing now, you would have thought insane at this time last year. This is the biggest single challenge of my life and there's not much of Skye we haven't covered so far. We have done Storr, Glamaig (2,500ft), Dun Caan on Raasay (1,450 ft), Braes, Glenbrittle and the Trotternish Ridge. We hope to get another few 30-milers in shortly."

One of the difficulties has been trying to replicate desert-style heat while Scotland emerges uncertainly from its fiercest winter in three decades. The boys have a "discomfort test" which is yet to come. This will involve going out in the hottest summer temperatures in Skye with far too many layers on.

"Dealing with the heat is really getting over it, mentally. The weather here has been pretty atrocious but we just see it as character-building and get on with it," shrugs Nicolson. "You can be as fit as you like, but, if your mind is not in the right place, you are not going to do it. We know we are going to hit bad times in the desert.

"Recently, when we did Glamaig, we were almost on all-fours heading towards the top. There were times both of us thought we should maybe just skirt around it but we didn't. We kept going, got to the top, got down and the job was done."

Despite differing life experiences, Holding's training discipline and Nicolson's forces background make them an effective and well-balanced partnership. One-third of the Gobi competitors won't make it, either through suffering from dehydration, foot trauma, heat exhaustion or blisters. But the duo haven't even contemplated the possibility of failure.

"I have a 'job and finish' attitude which Donnie has as well from his time in the Marines," says Holding. "We want to test ourselves to the maximum, which is why we have decided to do the cycle as well as the run. It will be difficult but it is do-able."

When they set off on their bikes at Ulan Bator bound for Dalandzadgad, their focus will be solely on the challenge ahead. At night, though, when the temperature dips, their thoughts will return to the people they have left behind – and what Lucky2Bhere could do with the funds they generate.

"If there was a defibrillator close by when my pal Davie died, would he have survived? The answer is: I don't know," says Nicolson. "However, the things the charity is doing have never been done before. It is making a real difference."

Holding agrees: "The government seems to look at Inverness then Stornoway and thinks we are OK in Skye, but we are two and a half hours from specialist care. This is bringing medical equipment to the island. It is also about being a real community."

For more information visit www.lucky2bhere.ning.com

www.justgiving.com/gobi-challenge

&#149 This article was first published in The Scotsman Magazine, April 17, 2010