Highclere 10k 2017

The lovely Mrs S and I drove up to Highclere Castle on a misty Sunday morning. We parked in a field having passed through glorious mature parkland.  This is going to be fun, we thought.

There will be mud, the pre-race email had advised. So we turned up at the start line wearing fell shoes.  Just before the start, we were briefed that the course had been altered... no more mud. Cue cheers from the crowd but groans from the two of us.  Mud is good. And wearing the wrong shoes is not so good.

We set off on a circuit around a field with a fair old slope which got the heart moving.  It was then a fairly constant undulation along roads and tracks.  The landscape was terrific.  I overtook a few people but felt I was working hard... I didn't feel quite as well in control as I had the previous week at Hursley.  

I was a bit suspicious about the km markers along the course.  By the time we got to 8km I was highly sceptical.  At about 9k on my watch a sign said 400m to go.  It was a vey long 400m but I heaved my way home and managed to get 7th place and 1st M50, which I was very happy with. I chatted with a 50-something guy whom I'd overtaken early on. 'I was hoping', he told me 'that you were 60-something or possibly a very old-looking 49'. Thanks, mate.

The finish was hard work

But I got a nice bottle of wine from the lady of the manor

It's now Thursday evening and I'm well into the tapering phase prior to Clarendon on Sunday.  I never enjoy this. I feel lethargic, sluggish and unhealthy. It feels impossible right now that I can run 26 miles... the training has gone well, but it's an effort to remember this.  I'm really looking forward to Sunday in many ways.

Hursley 10k 2017

This is an old favourite. I've been coming back to it almost every year since it began 11 years ago.  This year's race was possibly the most enjoyable ever.

What mud! A minute or so in, we were crossing a sodden field.  Your feet just sank in and squelched wet mud everywhere.  It reminded me of the Seaton beach in the Grizzly... grit your teeth, wade through it and enjoy the sensation of speeding up as you come out of it.

A couple of kms of tarmac, concrete and gravel, and we were into really technical rutted lanes of mud.  It was glorious. I had my fell shoes on and happily overtook a few cautious runners.  Having cursed my way through plenty of mud over the previous month, mainly from running commutes through Squab Wood, I felt completely at home in all this bog.

In the second half there were some long gravel paths, downhill then uphill, and then a final bout of muddy path with some great zigzagging around trees.  I wondered how runners further back would cope with this terrain once it was nicely churned up.  Carnage, I was told.

I managed to put on some speed for the final straight finish.  I felt strong, and very chuffed that the 16 miles I had covered the day before hadn't undone me.  I looked at my watch and wondered if I could go sub-40, but I couldn 't quite get there.  It would have been great to have some more company/competition in the second half, but I was more than happy with the race and chuffed to get the M50 prize - a massage!

Final score, 40:10 - here's the data.

Th Beast 2017

I I'd heard about this event from Mick Anglim, which assures it of being both tough and interesting. The lovely Mrs S and I piled into a car with the Sleaths and Jeremy Barber to form a crack Romsey/Hardley team and heading off to deepest Dorset on a wet and windy Sunday morning.

We parked in a field outside Corfe and none of us felt like moving.  We stayed in the car, reluctant to get soaked outside.  Pulling off layers, tightening laces and arranging bags in the boot of the car, you could look around the field and see dozens of other rather bemused people also wondering what on earth they were doing and whose idea was this anyway.

We trudged to the start line, where the race director did his game best to make himself heard. Another bloke pointed a gun in the air and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. 'Bang!' he shouted and off we went.

We zig-zagged through heathland, and then through a mix of embarked paths and fields. In one field a herd of steers was belting around, then stopped, and then started again, discombulated by all these ridiculous people. The field was triangular,band I found myself running towards a stile in the same corner that the steer were approaching from the other direction.  The lead steer was particularly spooked. Hmm, I thought, I'm going to have to judge this quite carefully. The lead steer bolted to the hedge and jumped into and through it, with a lot of twanging of barbed wire.  The other cows stopped, and I carried on, the poor marshal at the stile utterly bemused.

The course was treacherous. Really, really dicey.  In many places, the path was formed of slabs of flat rock at multiple angles. Fell shoes just slid across it.  Falling down on this would be really nasty.  I ran as fast as I dared; a rather feeble pace after a recent experience of scraping elbows and knees on a downhill path.

We emerged on to the coastal path, where the challenges were terrific cross-winds, sharp, shoulder-high vegetation and wet soil that clung to shoes.  It was exhilarating and infuriating in equal measure.  Then then suddenly the most dramatic valley opened up ahead, with precipitous steps leading both down and up. Three of us walked down, sharing the drama of the day and asking whether those behind wanted to overtake. No, we were all content to walk down these steps and avoid the risk of a terrible fall. And then up the other side, a lung-heaving effort that was not as bad as it looked.

The exciting valley

At this point we had a mile or so of open clifftop running with no claggy soil, no thorny bushes and no slippy rocks, and it was wonderful to open the throttle and enjoy the feeling of speed after a lot of technical terrain. We whooshed down past Chapmans Cove and then a long drag on a track uphill to Kingston before heading into fields for the final push.

I caught a couple of runners on the road to Kingston and pushed hard towards the end, determined not to be caught.  There seemed to be endless wet stiles to climb over and I only just managed to stay upright on a stretch of boardwalk. The grey silhouette of Corfe Castle loomed in the background. I pushed on, and then suddenly there was the final field and the finish line.

I finished in 1:35:37, 22nd place, 2nd M50 in a very strong field.  Here are my stats.  A thrillingly dangerous and exciting morning out in the wild.