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.