27th July: Bath

Bath is a lovely place to go visit; the ancient Roman centre of Aquae Sulis and the baths that give the town its name are well worth time in your life, the Victorian and Edwardian neo-classical architecture of the town centre drawing its inspiration from what was there before. Over the years I’ve been there a good few times from field-trips when at school, journeys with my parents ferrying my sister down there for her ‘latin summer schools’ spent studying the language in more depth, doing the touristy thing as an adult and watching Farnborough taking on Bath City in the football.

When I discovered that there was a trail marathon in Bath, part of Relish Running's 'Bath Running Festival', I put it in to the diary and I’ve been looking forward to going down there for the run. Bath is a pretty hilly place - like Rome it is built on 7 of the feckers, so one thing’s for sure… It won’t be a totally flat course!

A 90 minute blast down the M4 into the wild west-country and I was in the land of cider and cheese that is Somerset on the Sunday morning… I had misjudged the time it would take me, so I was at the event base of the university very early, in fact so early they had not even  set-up the gazebos for the registration!

The good part of this meant that I was able to choose my parking space - cunningly under a tree to keep the van out of as much direct sun as possible and kill some time over a breakfast of coffee and flapjack whilst reading a mag & grabbing a bit of a snooze before having to register and ready myself.

Bath University is a centre of sporting excellence - quite a lot of the elite athletes representing Team GB have studied or are based there. The uni footy team rose through the ranks to the 6th tier of the national game here in Britain before resigning its position as the intention was not to end-up with a professional/ high level semi-professional football team on its hands. As you walk in to the sports centre you are confronted with floor to ceiling banners of their athletic alumnus and their achievements… It gives you a real sense of being close to greatness, about as close to that as I will ever get!

All changed I made my way down to the start line - where I bumped in to Robert Young, or ‘Marathon Man’. I’ve seen him in a few previous races (well you can’t miss him as he runs in a kilt) and have been in touch with him on Facebook, so I went over to say hello and wish him all the best with this his latest run.

Marathon Man is going all-out to achieve something that most people would not believe is possible; he’s running at least a marathon a day over the course of a year to hopefully set a new world record marker for the distance… He’s about a third of the way in now and still going strong.

Awaiting the start in the shade.

From the start line we headed out of the university, which is sited on a plateau atop one of the hills, and off on a 5k loop over the fields that surround the campus.

The view from the loop around the campus.

Looking back to those behind me (although not for much longer).

Running through some woodlands leading to those fields, we were all blindly following the arrows that marked the route, until we came to a fork in the path, where unfortunately the arrows had vamoosed, so all of us were faced with a 50/50 choice - uphill or downhill… Now this is where I’ll surprise you; being a fat bastard, you’d expect me to choose the path of least resistance and head downwards, but I chose the harder option and went up, which in about 20 metres vindicated my choice as there were more arrows to be found, so those of us on the uphill called-back to those behind trying to make a choice to go for the right one (in this case the left) to save them the frustration of running an unnecessary extra distance - and a hilly distance at that!

The shaded trail.

Towards the end of the loop we had our first view of the centre of Bath from our lofty position, glimpsed through a gap in the trees as we crossed a meadow.

Bath below.

Shortly thereafter we found ourselves turning a corner, hitting the road and making our way towards the town centre.

Down into town.

As the road levelled-out we made our way down some steps and on to the Kennet and Avon canal, running through a couple of small tunnels as we hit the main part of the run - 2 laps of a lollipop shape with the canal stretch and the river Avon being the stick and a steep climb to the top of one of the other hills and the descent being the ‘sweet’.

Traversing a tunnel.

The run along the canal was a real trudge, just unremitting… The tow path was popular with people out walking in the heat of the Sunday midday morning, the sun beating down on us with no shelter and the humidity being pretty high. I found the slog along here relentless, the dusty tow-path reflecting the glare of the sun and for appearances sake you really felt like you should not stop along here with all the passer’s-by looking on at you!.. Eventually it came to an end and we had a short stretch a long a road down to lovely pub/ restaurant just over a bridge on the River Avon. Here we jinked off to the side of the road and looped around on to a path that took us under the bridge. and along the river for another mile or so to the aid-station that marked the beginning of the ‘sweet’ of this lollipop section.

The slog along the tow-path.

Immediately we found ourselves climbing up a long steep hill that formed part of the Roman’s ‘Fosse Way’ road to the plateau on top and the 10 mile marker (it felt like so much more by then), before heading down and up another hill, this one immortalised in song by Peter Gabriel: Solsbury Hill (You can hear it here) skirting round the edge of the Iron Age fort, before heading back down to the river, the canal, touching a bridge and repeating it all again.

Climbing up on Solsbury HIll.

I don’t know what it was, but by the time I had hit the plateau at the top of the lollipop I just could not find my running mojo. Maybe it was the heat? Maybe it was the running along the tow-path? Maybe it was the time of year?.. I don’t know, I just could not get myself enthused or my legs working in a consistent manner. One thing was for sure though; my choice in footwear was not helping.

With the ground being hardened after so very little rain of late and plenty of sun, I chose to wear my road shoes rather than trail shoes, as grip on soft ground was not going to be an issue here… This was a sound decision on that basis, however the less robust nature of the trainers, with their soles being considerably thinner, made sure I felt every root, rock and stone that I ran over and the discomfort that entailed, which fair to say led to me getting a bit of a grump on with every wince of pain.

This time last year I ran the Fairlands Valley Challenge, which I also did not enjoy - but that was more for the organisation of the event combined with the route - having to orienteer it rather than run it. Here in Bath, the views we had of the city were lovely, the course on paper was not that tricky, the hills were no worse than many I have had to traverse on my travels, but something was not working for me today in a big way… It all became a trudge, a case of putting one foot in front of the other and dragging my sorry arse to the finish.

The next dozen miles seemed to take forever… I found myself stopping at aid stations to chat with the marshals in an attempt to prolong the inevitable re-starting along the way… By the time I got to the end of the lolly stick for the second time, the end could not come soon enough in my mind, and the long slow plod up the hill to the uni campus at least meant I was close to the end, eventually crossing the line with a sense of relief rather than elation.

After composing myself I grabbed my gear and went back in to the sports complex and used the showers… Its always good to be able to have a shower after a marathon, but sadly not something that is often available, so I was eager to take advantage whilst I could.

Walking along to the changing rooms I passed by a bank of offices, one of which was the headquarters of the British Bobsleigh and Skeleton teams, the latter being hugely successful in the Winter Olympics of late, producing in the last 4 games in the women’s event, Bronze, Silver, Gold and Gold - these two being for Amy Williams and Lizzy Yarnold, both of whom were based here at the university. As I mentioned earlier, its a privilege to be close to greatness!

Where it all happens.

After a bit of reflection and there was no logical reason for my running mojo not being there - its true I don’t enjoy running in the heat as much as I enjoy the winter running, but the course held nothing untoward, and in fact I have run far harder routes in the heat, so I’ll just have to put this down to a bit of an off-day at the office so as to speak… Then again, after 27 marathons to only have had 2 ‘iffy’ runs, that’s not bad going, and unlike Stevenage I reckon I’ll be back in the future to run it again, and hopefully set a far better marker as to what I am capable of and have this particular lollipop licked.