Grizzly 2013

The Grizzly is a simply fabulous race.  20 miles of stunning scenery and terrain, shingle beaches, cliffs, bogs, forests and steep grassy slopes, all provided with quirky, offbeat good humour.  It inspires poetry, passion and excitement and all 1400 places sell out in about an hour.  Here's a nice little promotional video which gives a bit of a flavour.

I did my first Grizzly in 2008 and have been going back ever since.

It was a freezing cold day - 2 degrees, a vicious east wind and rain forecast.  I sat in a cafe with my friends Peat, Sue and John beforehand discussing kit.  Deciding what to wear isn't straightforward - to little and you can freeze, too much and you can be lugging around a load of unwanted stuff for three hours.  I decided to go with a simple long-sleeved shirt under my club singlet together with hat and gloves.

The first highlight of the race happens before the start, when the Town Crier roars 'oh yea!' into a microphone three times and everyone roars back.  He yells out a poem and then shouts 'God save the Queen!'  The resulting cheer is huge and quite moving.

Here's a link to the route.  We started with about 1km of beach, which is utterly energy sapping and puts you firmly in your place.  Having woken up with a cold the day before, I was determined to be conservative in my pacing, and I kept the pacing low-key.

Over the hill to Beer and then another climb to Branscombe - all reasonably familiar territory.  The recent rain had made the slopes very slippery, particularly where a thin layer of mud sat on even rocks.  From Branscombe, we were off into the twists, turns and crazy slopes of the course itself - and the route changes every year.  The route is very well marshalled (it has to be, or you'd be lost before you know it) and peppered with hand-painted quotations on boards, such as:

'Be there before you leave here'

'You are, therefore I am'

'If it is gone and you are still here, then you did not need it'

'Overcome by undergoing'

'7/5 of people do not understand fractions'

...not to mention a Buddhist shrine, a memorial to absent friends and lone pipers in the most remote possible places.  Is there any other event remotely like it?

After about 90 minutes my gloves went on, and soon after that it started gently sleeting.  I was feeling good; starting to feel the strain in my legs but holding it together.  I was starting to overtake others, which felt good.

And then the bog!  This my personal highlight of the race - about 50 metres of proper gloopy, swampy mire that goes up to your knees.  It's hilarious and wonderful and exhausting.  Soon after that        was my next favourite bit, a rush downhill past the Fountainhead pub with a tunnel of people cheering you on.

A few minutes later I was back on Branscombe beach.... the bit where if it can go wrong, it will.  As well as the kilometre of debilitating shingle beach, sleet was blowing in our faces.  I overtook a few poor guys on the beach who weren't looking too good.  And then, through the under cliff - a twisty climb up and up and then the infamous Stairway to Heaven, taking you right up the cliff.  I've suffered horribly here before, groaning with exhaustion... but this time I felt OK and managed to wave my arms for the photographer.

Up onto the brow of the hill and the strength of the wind made my gasp.  I pulled my hat on and realised how cold I was, and in particular my hands.  On and on with more urgency now, back to Beer and then the final push to Seaton.  From the cliff top onwards I had an invisible presence just behind my left shoulder.  I kept enough pressure up to hold him off, and as we neared the finish I could tell it was going to be a fight to the end.  I moved up a gear, and he responded.  I accelerated again, and so did he.  I pushed once more but too early, and he cruised past me to the finish.  I'm sure he pushed me to be a minute faster than I would otherwise have run.

More pressing, though, was the terrible state of my hands.  They were slabs of chilled meat on the ends of my arms.  I struggled to hold the banana and t-shirt that were given to me.  My clothes were all wet with sleet and I hobbled my way as quickly as I could to Peat's car, where I found the hidden key and after a lot of struggling with laces and fiddly bits of clothing, managed to get some dry kit on.

I have rarely been so cold in my life.  I was now dry and dressed up in several layers, but I was in a right state, shivering uncontrollably.  Meanwhile Peat had turned up, ecstatic after a huge improvement in his race over previous years, and not being remotely frozen (it's usually the other way around).  We went off the cafe and were soon joined by Sue.  I was soon eating hot soup and feeling more human.

Here are the results - 48th place overall, which is middling for my 6 years - best is 36th (2008), worst is 65th (2010). I'm pretty satisfied overall, given that my lungs weren't working at full throttle.  Now, next year...

Here are the GPS stats, and here are the official photos of the day; I tried smiling in some of them, but most of them are characteristically awful.