Spine Race Dot Watching
The below post was originally written while the 2023 Spine race was in progress. Although two years on, with references to that years race, it is still relevant and relateble to many regular “Spine Race Dot Watchers”. I am currently abroad on a short break so will not be logging in regualry to dot watch, but it seems the main spine race is developing well.
Robyn Cassidy, 2024 Lakeland 100 winner and Dragons Back Champion from 2023 is leading the women’s race at the start of day 3, with Lucy Gossage, 3rd in the 2024 Winter Spine race and runner up to Robyn in the 2024 Lakeland 100, in close contention.
In the mens’s race Kim Collison, who DNF’d at the Winter Spine in 2023 and 2024 is currently leading, hoping to make it 3rd time lucky. The equally experienced multi day tail legend, John Kelly is not out of reach in second place. Many miles still to go!,
Kim Collison, Leader of the 2025 Winter Spine race as of Tuesday morning 14th January,
You can track and dot watch the 2025 event HERE
or find Winter Spine race on social media for video news updates .
You can aslo read my interview with 2024 Winter Spine race Champion, Jack Scott, HERE
2023 Spine Race Dot Watching
It is a little after 6 pm on Sunday as write this. I am looking at a trail of green and orange dots on a screen. I am Spine Race dot-watching.
The Montane Spine race started at 8 am this morning, Sunday 15th January, some 8 hours ago. With adamantine willpower, I have avoided checking in to see how things are going. History shows in the modern era, dot-watching can be very addictive and a total distraction to your life! Some would say it portrays a warped sense of reality.
Dot-watching is a thing!
What cannot be denied is that dot-watching is a thing these days! In times gone past, when people spoke of the future and possible new trends, space travel was foreseen. Contactless payments and banking apps, leading to a cashless world were feasible. Electric cars were seen as the future to replace petrol models. Solar and wind-power were talked up in glowing terms. Mobile phones would certainly make speaking to each other easier from anywhere.
No One, NOT any smart, sensible brain, could foresee that the dream of a mobile phone would become a mini-computer in your hand and people would spend hours looking at screens, just watching our lives go by or even worse taking part in the pastime of Dot Watching.
Are you a first-time dot-watcher?
In the highly likely event you have never dot-watched, each green or orange dot represents a runner in a race. On this occasion, the guys are green and the girls are Orange.
The extreme nature of the spine race dictates the organisers insist, for safety reasons, every runner carries a tracking device so their progress and location can be monitored. Although essential to the safe organisation of the event, this is almost secondary for dot watchers though, as the trackers can also serve the purpose of allowing the event to unfold on the screen in front of them.
Why dot watch you ask?
Some would say if you have never dot watched, life has passed you by and you are missing an amazing life-enhancing experience. The capacity to see how friends and rivals are progressing or marvel at just how far and how fast the leaders are moving in a race.
Others will shrug their shoulders and wonder what the fuss is all about, telling you your life is better for not having had the experience. If they have, they profess to be strong enough to log in for 5/10 minutes before returning to normal life and what they are seeing before them! Some people are, as the saying goes, “totally economical with the truth”
One has to accept a generation has now grown up accepting that this is quite a normal way of seeing an event in real-time. The concept of watching coloured dots jumping up and down on a screen as they slowly progress along a race line has captivated people and especially the ultra-running community.
Life before dot watching
Older readers will hark back to the days when you had to wait for reports in your local daily paper on Monday morning or even wait until Wednesday or Thursday to trundle down to your local newsagent to collect your copy of Athletics Weekly to find out the result of the weekend events. Alternatively, you could always phone your friends up on your landline (remember them!) to see how they got on.
Now we can have results personally messaged, as soon as you cross a finish line. Watching pretty much in real-time, an event taking place hundreds of miles away in your own country or even thousands of miles away in another continent is now commonplace. These results are relayed to a screen in your hand wherever you have reception, in seconds.
Top ten of dot watching?
If a top ten of dot-watching events has ever been compiled, I have no doubts that the Montane Spine Race would be at, or close to, the top of the GB list! It has certainly become one of the major dot-watching events of the year. A veritable dot-watching festival that you can dip in and out of as you feel and lasts a whole week! It may be slow moving but it is also a meaningful pastime for hundreds to see what they can dot watch this weekend!
See our post for the background to the race if you haven’t read it yet.
The sheer novelty of an event lasting 7 days, in an extreme go-as-you-please way, just seems to suck people in. A live stream would be “slow video” for sure but regular short Video clips of runners, smiling or suffering, posted regularly to various social networks, helps to create a vibe too.
The more inclement the weather, or the muddier the terrain, the greater number of hits the video reaches! Clips of exhausted runners supping soup in a remote village hall have been known to go viral!
Hebden checkpoint tea party
6.15 pm on Sunday and the cluster of green and orange dots around the Hebden checkpoint tells a story. A checkpoint tea party is possibly in progress. Runners will have a wary eye cast over them by the experienced race medics for early signs of distress. Some arrive and log in and log out timeously, barely stopping to grab some food Some will linger and have as proper a meal as one can in the circumstances.
How is it going?
History seems to be repeating itself. Last year Damian Hall and Kim Collison blazed a trail in the first 24 hours.. Neither of them finished. At Hebden, these two intrepid and experienced explorers are again battling it out at the front with Jack Scott not far behind for company.
The Spaniard, Eugeni Rosello Sole, a previous Spine race winner, was in touching distance for these first eight hours but is one of the early retirals at Hebden.
In the women’s race, 2022 2nd place finisher Elaine Bisson, an early leader, is to retire at Hebden, leaving French runner Caroline Bannworth in first place. Current and former GB 24 hr internationals Eloise Eccles and Sharon Gaytor also retire here.
24 hours later!
It is now 24 hrs later at 6 pm Monday. Maybe history is continuing to repeat itself for the dots show Kim Collison after continuing to travel overnight and through Monday morning with Damian, has retired at the Tan hill inn. earlier this afternoon.
Damian as I look at his bouncing green dot, No 163, is within about three km of the half-way point of the Pennine Way at Grassholme Reservoir, less than 35 hours into his adventure. He is still setting a good pace, with trackers showing Jack Scott is still travelling well although now almost 2 hours behind Damian at the Tan Hill Inn checkpoint.
I have a quick look to see how others are faring. Eoin Keith the three time winner, who certainly knows how to pace the Spine has made his usual steady start. From around 30th at Hebden last night, he was the 14th runner to reach Hawes checkpoint earlier today.
My old friend Marco Consani, husband of last year’s winner Debbie Consani is making steady progress. No pressure at all on Marco to reach Kirk Yetholm and, like Debbie, tame the spine.
Other tasks now await me, but I am now hooked and am sure I will be checking back in later this evening, from the comfort of my home while Spine runners settle into their second night on the trails.
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Adrian Tarit Stott.
The author is a former GB 24-hour ultra international with over 100 ultra race completions. He has also been involved in organising ultra-distance races for over 30 years. Still an active recreational runner, he is currently a member of UKA’s Ultra Running Advisory Group (URAG) and the Mountain and Trail Advisory Group. He also contributes as part of the selection and team management for both Scottish and GB ultra teams. A freelance writer in his spare time, he contributes articles and reports to several websites and magazines including Athletics Weekly and Irunfar.
