Every organisation has its own internal politics – it’s just how life is. Some play power games, some want money, some build empires, and some just want to get on with the job. Politics in voluntary organisations can be particularly bad – it’s not that surprising when you get a bunch of people together who all believe passionately enough in a cause to donate that amount of time and effort. It’s the main reason I stopped my work with the First Responders – between the voluntary side and the involvement with the ambulance service, there was just too much politics. Mountain Rescue in this area has traditionally had some interesting politics, but never let it get in the way of the job.

So when Mountain Rescue politics did kick up last week, it caught me by surprise and annoyed me. More than that, it blindsided Sean. As a result he’s now announced that he’s no longer interested in joining the team, which is a shame – I was really looking forward to working with him on jobs and seeing him do well on the team.

Thing is, it’s got me thinking and has got me pretty angry right now. Do I really want to be part of a wider organisation who can treat people like that? I love the job that we do, I love getting in there and doing the job, and I know that 99% of the people in the organisation are there to do the same as I am – get on with rescuing people. But I find myself questioning my membership over the event. I’m sat here at the moment while there’s a rescue going on a few valleys away thinking about my membership and my commitment and other things – my hayfever, my contribution. Hayfever’s stopped me halway out the door today because I realised that if I wandered up a hill with the pollen this thick, I’d be collapsing in a heap of mucus, sneezes and wheezes before I reached the casualty. No drugs can stop that amount of pollen from affecting me.

So my head’s in a mess with a million different thoughts going through it right now. I’m damn well sure however, that I’m not going to let politics or the team come between Sean and I.

Postscript: I toyed with the thought of posting this for a while. I’m aware that several people will read it and feel like I’m airing the organisations dirty laundry in public. However, I feel strongly that since I started this blog that I would comment on the things that I came across that mattered to me, whether positive or not.

So, with the Met Office promising gales of up to 50mph, we headed off in the glorious sunshine on Sunday morning, with the remnants of last night’s torrential rain still making it’s presence felt on the heads of the valleys road. Down on the Gower, the wind was gusting uncomfortably high, so the pneumatic aerial mast was only raised a little and control was set up. Tasked with leading a party in an area of fields the police needed covered, we headed off and spent the next few hours making our way through fields of …well knee-high (or occasionally higher) meadow grass – that is, grass with a random spattering of wild flowers and grasses in it. In other words, hayfever hell.

Nevertheless, onwards we plodded working our way through the fields and hedgerows. In searches like this, where there’s a real possibility that the person you’re looking for is dead, you have to look under hedges and in undergrowth in case they’ve crawled in there to seek shelter and died. It’s not a particularly joyful kind of searching and, heartless though it may seem to onlookers, we joke and laugh amongst ourselves, sometimes with exceedingly black humour to try and keep our spirits high.

By 1400 I was slowly collapsing in a sneezing lump of streaming mucous and with everyone’s stomachs grumbling we headed back to the pub for a lunch of sausage and chips. It’s amazing just how good simple food tastes after hard work. With the masses fed and watered, the afternoon’s plans were outlined and with a few changes of plan as more information about the morning’s searches was acted upon, I ended up staying around the control vehicle – good for my hayfever at least!

By 1700 it was decided that we’d done enough and the long job of packing up and making the vehicles ready for the next job, whenever that may be, was started. No sooner had I taken the cap off the generator to check the fuel levels than the pagers went off – area call in the Swansea area. What luck – we were already in the Swansea area. So, hurriedly repacking everything, mobiles, radios and police radios blaring all around us as more information rapidly came in, we jumped into Alpha and headed off – our destination was north of Swansea, in Glais.

The journey through Swansea was rapid – combination of sirens and two-tone air horn works well to clear traffic on what had been a very busy day in Swansea with the Race for Life on. It didn’t take us long to clear the traffic and as we arrived on scene the full details were apparent. Two men had fallen 25m down a cliff face – ambulance and fire brigade on scene, 169 en route in.

A complete contrast to the gentle start to that morning’s activities, helmets and harnesses were thrown on and within minutes the area was empty of personnel as people headed up to the casualty site. I stayed behind to man the radios and start the paperwork. It soon became apparent however that they desperately needed more personnel up on scene. Leaving the incident in the hands of a senior member who couldn’t go onto the hill, I headed off.

169 had already winched the first casualty out as I arrived on scene to help with the second casualty. Helimed was providing some medical assistance along with the paramedic winchman from 169; the fire brigade was helping us with the technical equipment and they’d already cleared a few trees to allow 169 to winch clearly. It didn’t take long for the chap to be packaged properly and his stretcher was soon being passed the 20m up to the winching point hand-over-hand, his IV bag following him. The usual clatter of rotors overhead soon drowned out any conversation and within minutes, the casualty and winchman were on board and rapidly making their way to Morriston hospital which was only a few minutes away, leaving us to clear up and get everyone out safely. Reversing down the track was interesting, and we passed Pete our team leader giving a TV interview at the bottom of the hill on our way out.

It was a good job for what was a long and fruitless search – always nice to end the day on a high note.

Anyway, I have been doing some figures. My morning run is just short of 4km (2.5miles-ish). I can normally finish that run at the moment in about 55mins. That’s a long time I hear you runners say (do I actually know any runners?). In fact, it is a long time…given the assumption that you’re running a flat 4km circuit. I, on the other hand, live in Wales. Flat is what happens when the valleys flood, and even then you can’t really run on it. Flat is what happens when you get to the tops of the hills. Flat is the one thing my route doesn’t have in it.

With a bit of map-reading, it looks like I’m climbing about 150m from the start point to the midway point before turning around and going back down again (via a slightly different route). Just over 130m of that is over a 500m stretch of the first km – yup, that’s one hell of a climb. So, some rough calculations using the amended version of Naismith’s rule, gives me an estimated total trip time of about 1hr 15min at 4km/hr. So, given some figures about the fitness level I want to reach, I need to be running this circuit in….umm…carry the one….31 minutes. Right. What?!

31 minutes. Owch. Best I’ve managed so far was about 47 mins and that was a while ago.

So, some work to do then…look out for a fitter, healthier, slimmer Aled near you soon…