28th December: Gut Busting an Ostrich

Today was my hat-trick of Winter Gut Busters. For this and the last two years on the Sunday after Christmas I have hooned around for 10 miles over the fields and trails around Silchester to earn a cup of mulled wine, a mince pie and a medal. This race also has the shorter option of a 5 mile route, but in the interests of physical stupidity I have gone with the longer distance as per my norm!

Like yesterday’s Brutal I was running in the ostrich costume, but unlike yesterday, which was just cold, today was absolute brass-monkey and I was glad of the extra warmth that the costume would be giving me!

This year I had been organised enough to book my place early and get a parking spot on-site, so I did not have to worry about transporting my costume on the complimentary bus transfer from the overflow parking several miles away.

Last year and this, the country roads on the way to the race were very icy and for the second year running I lost the van on some black-ice, regaining control of it before crashing, although not as spectacular as doing a 180 in the middle of the road as I did last year!.. and on both occasions I was well within the speed limit, so it goes to show you cannot be too careful!

All parked and changed I huddled in with everybody else to try and keep warm with the sun still too low to shine over the farm buildings and give us any warmth, as we listened to the safety briefing - with a few amused and plenty of scornful looks at my get-up from fellow runners… If anything those running today were more po-faced than those at yesterday’s Brutal, with lots of people in running club vests and expensive kit ready to go and ‘own’ the 10 miles in front of them so as to not waste all the training and fore-going of quality Christmas fodder and booze.

The Gut Buster course is an undulating mix of country lanes and fields - muddy fields to be precise, as well as the delights of running around the walls of one side of the ancient Roman town of Silchester, before cutting through the middle of it. Because the terrain is relatively flat, with only a few hills that are mercifully short and not too steep, the pace is quite quick and unrelenting and it is completely different to the 10 miles I ran yesterday as there is no continual changing of pace as you move from ascending to descending and back again rapidly or stand catching your breath in a queue to get in to a large wading section… That said there is one water hazard here on the Gut Buster and you encounter that after around the first mile as you run through a ford that is only about ankle deep, so certainly no challenge to get through!

After the briefing we were shepherded around the corner to await the start and following the mercifully short wait the countdown was over and off we went, both races setting off at the same time, with nobody having a clue who is running which distance so gauging your pace against those around you proves to be difficult.

As I ran along, passing some slower runners and in turn being passed by faster ones as we all found our positions in the pack I was getting a mix of comments over my attire, splitting opinion, those people who did pass pleasantry’s with me rather than harrumphing their disapproval found it inspirational for themselves, as they were damned sure they were going to try their hardest not to have been beaten to the finish by a man dressed as an ostrich!

The road sections over the first half of the course were very treacherous through the ice on the ground. With having trail shoes on my feet, like most other people, grip was at a premium as you have very little surface area of your foot in contact with the icy tarmac, so most people were attempting to run as much on the very narrow grass verges as possible, with everyone looking out for each other with shouts of ‘ice’ whenever we cam close to frozen puddles or stretches of black ice.

Through the ford and we were soon climbing up the hill towards Silchester and the section around the roman town. The sun was now rising to its near zenith and sending some warmth down from the cloudless sky to melt the ice, transforming the previously hard ground to squidgy mud, which doubled the fun as soon as we hit the field section the other side of the ruins! As we crossed the fields I could hear the serenade of gunfire from people out shooting pheasants relatively close-by, so I commented to people as to whether it really was wise to be dressed as a bird whilst there were trigger-happy men with shotguns prowling around looking to shoot at anything large and with wings!

On this second half of the run I found myself keeping a similar pace to a lady called Ruth who was sporting a ‘Grim’ t-shirt from earlier this month, so I had asked how it was to find out if the course had changed since I ran it… Over the course of the next couple of miles that we ran together, it turned out she is in training for the Paris marathon later next year. She also had her family along to cheer her at certain points, so she was looking forward to seeing their smiling faces later on.

Running with Ruth

About a couple of miles from the finish, a fair few of us took advantage of one of the water stops. Whilst we were taking a drink, a local drove-up and started to angrily berate us for being out there making a mess and instructed us to pick up all the used cups and do it NOW! It was true that some cups had been discarded a little down the road, but those running the water stop would be doing a litter sweep to get rid of them during and after the event, but the old-boy in his car was just in a bah-humbug kind of mood so us runners just did our best to ignore him and carry on with what we were doing.

Soon enough we were heading across the final fields towards the finish. The last mile or so is a right slog, a continual slight ascent through the muddy fields as you think the end is never going to come, but eventually it does and I made it across the line in a slower time than last year, placing 267/313, and I eagerly took the chance for the glass of mulled wine and a couple of mince pies.

'Flying' across the finish line.

Ah well, this was the last run for the year for me as I’m back in the saddle tomorrow to carry on with the Festive 500 challenge that I set myself to achieve.

What I have concluded having run the last 2 days whilst dressed as an ostrich:

Surprise surprise, running with a costume does slow you down, as the bulk around you tends to make a smooth flowing running style difficult to achieve (not that my normal style is in any way smooth or flowing), plus you do become aware of rubbing in certain areas and you do heat-up more than normal, so its certainly not something to be running in when chasing a pb!

Most importantly, lighten-up people! don’t take it so damned seriously, the whole thing about running should be to have a bit of fun as well as challenging yourself in getting out there and doing it - just because some random person puts a costume on to run in, does it really ruin your race or spoil the experience for you?

Eat pies.
Drink beer.
Run far.