Thank god for that titanium spoon

I did Saunders Mountain Marathon last year. It would not have been possible had I been carrying a regular spoon.

Sure, a titanium spoon may cost 10 times the price of a regular spoon, but it only weighs 12 grams. All those chumps with regular cutlery were carrying 40 whole grams of spoon. I’m surprised they made it round the course.

Want to be a winner? Fancy yourself an athlete? Maybe you just want to go outside for a bit… Then you need a titanium spoon.

---

Okay so I’m being facetious. But let’s be honest, we all get way too into gear.

I have two pairs of climbing-specific trousers, even though bog standard Umbro jogging bottoms would do. I also have an ultralight titanium spoon that I used for a mountain marathon.

Is ultralight cutlery overkill? For a bit of context, the average person weighing 70 kilos produces about 360 grams of poo per day, so taking a pre-run poo would have shed me about 9 regular spoons of weight and saved me £7. I could even have used my sunglasses as a spoon (it worked for Honnold and Caldwell on the Fitzroy Traverse). But I didn’t, because it’s not really about saving weight; it’s about having the gadgets.

Working in outdoor shops, you get a lot of people coming in to buy every single piece of gear going for their coast-to-coast or their first and only camping trip. People frequently bring things up to the till, pay for them, then promptly ask what they’re actually for. We’re a gadget society and, for many, the pull of the outdoors is stuff.

If that’s what you’re into, fair enough it’s an easy trap to fall into. What’s not fair enough is the idea that you actually need all that gear to go outdoors. There’s a difference between having appropriate kit and having the lightest spoon on the market, for most of us anyway.

The best way to prepare for challenges outdoors is to equip yourself with knowledge (plug: read my post on how to poo outdoors for some basics). Gear is important, but what’s more important is knowing what to do when you don’t have all that gear at your disposal. Knowledge isn’t always free, but it’s a much better investment than an ultralightweight bivvy bag that you don’t know how to use. 

---

What actually made the mountain marathon was my running partner Dom. Not only does he have actual navigation skills (and the kindness to help me improve my navigation), but also the patience to put up with me singing various versions of Devvo songs for two days in the Lakeland Fells. I couldn’t ask for a better running partner! 

All that said, next time I’m gonna go for the mega-lightweight-super-spoon created by Tony Stark himself so that we get a faster time.

– Hati

This is Devvo, for the uninitiated (apologies for the explicit content)