1st Feb: Endurancelife South Devon Marathon.

I was woken at 5 on Friday morning to the unmistakeable sound of LSS praying to the porcelain god as she tried puking-up her toenails whilst alternating with extruding liquid napalm out her other end. Out of the blue the previous night, but thinking nothing of it at the time, I’d developed the ability to shit through the eye of a needle, so I was pretty concerned that our front door should be marked with a big red cross for being a house of pestilence with a plague of a norovirus upon it… Just what you want the day before one of the harder trail marathons out there, the Endurancelife South Devon race on the coastal path down at Beesands.

Rather than sitting at home feeling sorry for myself, an inescapably busy day at work followed for me whilst trying to manage my day around urgent pit-stops when they arose: I had 3 jobs to get through: running a new circuit for a hob for one customer, rectifying a DIY job in another house that could better be classified as ‘Destroy It Yourself’ and fitting a storage heater in the final job of the day.

Returning home I had enough time to scarf a fish supper with accompanying jumbo battered sausage, clear the van and head down to Beesands. Before leaving I said my goodbyes to LSS from the bedroom door. Understandably after spending a day doing doggies between bedroom and bathroom whilst not knowing what end to point at the toilet, she was still feeling pretty sorry for herself. I didn’t dare go in for 2 reasons, first to try and maximise any chance I had of avoiding going-down with her lurgy, especially with being trapped driving for the next 3 hours and second because you could cut that air with a knife. It properly honked in there! With the window shut, the heating on and 3 dogs having spent the day in bed with LSS, the room was a bit ripe to say the least: we’re pretty-much talking on the level of a teenage boy’s bedroom but minus the crispy socks wedged between the bed and the wall.

The drive down was mercifully uneventful and so far so good with my stomach not joining LSS’s in sympathy. At least I had plenty of bog-roll in the van and I was parked close to a public toilet should disaster strike during the night.

The starting coral

Breakfasted and registered it was almost balmy in the early morning air. The sun was out, there was no real chill to be felt. This was going to be an unseasonably clement day for the 1st of February with temperatures forecast between 10-15° C! This felt very weird as I’m more used to being down here freezing my tatters off. I’ve run this race before in the arse-end of a hurricane, torrential rain, the freezing cold. One time I was shot-blasted by hail in a gale-force wind and once the course had to be shortened for our own safety as the conditions were just that little bit too gnarly! This simply wasn’t normal.

Already looking the worse for wear!

Before travelling I had decided I was going to play ‘trainer roulette’ on this run. I’m currently using 2 pairs that are pretty-much on their last legs. The one in worst shape, my More Mile Cheviot’s, have the uppers failing from side to side, however the integrity of the upper to the sole is perfectly fine which is far more important. They also have the best grip of the 2 pairs, so I had decided to wear them and see what happened. The roulette aspect is there was the fair sized risk they would not last the race. What I did to mitigate this risk and call the bluff of sod’s law, was to shove the other pair in my pack just in case of failure, however by having a spare pair with me I knew it meant there was a racing certainty I would not need them. As a penalty for this insurance policy I would have to lug the weight of the spares around for the whole day, unlike if I just threw caution to the wind and didn’t carry spares, where you know sod’s law is absolutely guaranteed to kick-in to effect and you would definitely need them and potentially DNF!

The weather report might have been rosy, but I wasn’t. I was still feeling the effects of whatever lurgy had been lurking at home and effortlessly emptied myself a couple of times before the start whilst dosing myself with imodium and hoping things would stay put for my day on the trails - Yes it was a risky strategy, but I didn’t have much more than hope!

 
Waiting for the hooter I was chatting to one of the Endurancelife crew who said there had been a call to them during the week from a major trainer manufacturer asking to use the event to shoot footage on the marathon course of one of their paid-for athletes using a new pair of trainers that are about to be launched… A new pair of road trainers! Endurancelife pointed-out to them that the race is not a road one and far from it, so wasn’t at all suitable for that kind of trainer as per their entrant’s guidelines for kit. The manufacturer said they were fine with that, so the view taken was ‘on their heads be it’ if the trainer company didn’t manage to achieve what they hoped for with their shoot, so at least they had been warned and expectations could be managed… I just hope that the trainers in question aren’t white as by the time they could shoot their footage on the only road section, they certainly wouldn’t be that colour!

Soon we were off into the bright low sun of the cloudless sky and from the very start I was struggling. Every muscle, every fibre of my body ached, but I was not going to admit defeat, especially not now before I was even out of sight of the marquee… I’ve run whilst ill in the past and it is not pleasant in the slightest. This however was an entirely different sensation, not of illness, but one of being sore all over, lethargic, completely drained of energy before the real work has even begun and with over a vertical mile of ascent to be covered along the 28 miles of the route, this is a punisher of a course.

I realised whilst I was starting slow, I was already getting even slower, but I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel, so it was going to be a case of ‘suck it up buttercup’ and keep on going. I knew it was going to be a tough day at the office to get round, however just after the first mile I could hear myself being caught by a couple in the middle of a full-blown domestic. He was trying to cajole her forwards and faster and she was certainly having none of it - there was still 26 miles to go and it didn’t matter how fast they were going, if that was how they started for them it would be a very loooong day and I couldn’t help but crack a wry smile.

I put my head down and just went for it as best as I could, taking plenty of pics of trail porn as I went. This first half of the race along the cliffs from Beesands round to the Kingsbridge Estuary is one of my favourite runs to be had and it was great to experience it in sun and good lighting for the first time ever! Rounding the headland for the lighthouse at Start Point we faced right in to the teeth of a wind we weren’t aware was there. The blast properly grabbed you, blowing your cheeks out so you looked like a dog with its head out a car window. Trying to run into the wind it felt you were moving backwards at times as you were buffeted by the stiffest of the gusts.

Running this section when exposed to the blast was particularly feisty, to the point it was pretty tricky to make much headway or speed, plus with the exposed rock on the path you had to cover it was pretty slippery at times under foot - I nearly went over on my arse a couple of times and rolled my ankle once, at least focusing on this pain gave me something ‘proper’ to take my mind of being painfully slow.

On this leg we went round Gammon Head. With what had happened the day before during my drive down, it seemed particularly appropriate and I couldn’t resist taking a pic. As a Big Benless 11pm rang-out the previous night, Britain had left the EU and the radio phone-ins seemed to be full of drunken ‘gammon heads’ shouting down telephone lines with a discourse playing out thus: ‘we’ve won, we’re free’, only to be consistently asked ‘What have you won? give one quantifiable example’. Silence then reigned time after time before aggressive shouts of ‘WE’VE GOT OUR SOVEREIGNTY BACK’ were beerily bellowed… The responses of ’but that’s not a win as you never lost it in the first place’ seemed to all fall on deaf shouty ears!

Whilst my trainers may have had the bonus of added ventilation with the holes in the uppers, they had been allowing stones to ingress as I had traversed beaches and through puddles. I’d tried to ignore them as much as I could, but it had got to the point that I had to stop to empty them. Setting myself down on a boulder I emptied the trainers, put them back on and tried to stand-up and found myself struggling to do so. In the end I had to do it in stages, which certainly didn’t make me feel any better in myself.

Leaving the coastal path we climbed inland for the northerly section of the course. Compared to the stunning views of the coastline this is not quite as inspiring, but offers plenty of challenge with the continual changes in elevation and we were sheltered from the wind, the sun shining down on us getting a proper sweat on as a consequence that made you wonder if we would be slightly lobstered from catching the rays.

To take my mind off the slog I hit the podcasts to help while away the solo miles. I was also in bit of a dilemma - I knew I should be eating to keep my energy levels up, but at the same time with how my guts were I daren’t eat anything for risk of it reappearing sharpish from one end or the other as I was fully expecting the puking to start. Perhaps it was the anticipation of this that made me feel sick, yet at the same time the rational part of me realised the sick sensation was probably related to hunger and the strenuous activity rather than a lurgy, but I couldn’t trust it… My guts were cramping-up as well and I was properly deep into ‘never trust a fart’ territory, as no matter how confident you are that is is just a fart and how you much you crave to release the pressure, you don’t know what if anything is about to be involuntarily unleashed so you just don’t dare! All I had trusted myself to have in the two previous aid stations had been a handful of fruit jellies plus I’d also eaten a pack of jelly from my pack.

Eventually I made it to the final checkpoint of the day with around 10k to go and a familiar marshal who is always there, so I stopped for a chat as I certainly wasn’t in a hurry! As we spoke she told me that that Endurancelife had received a call this week with some bad news. It turned-out that after their previous race in Anglesey, one of their regulars, Brian, a gent who is in his 60’s had returned home having run the half marathon and died of a massive heart attack the following day. He’d certainly been a recognisable face to me ever since I ran my first of their events in 2012. Brian was pretty-much an ever-present at and had been since almost the beginning of Endurancelife. He ran mostly the half marathon and some 10k’s and just loved being out doing them on the coastal path. You couldn’t really miss Brian as he was very distinctive looking - think Noddy Holder’s doppelgänger, complete with the hair. You also got the impression he was still exactly the same as he was back in the 70’s just greyer and a little more rotund (hey it happens to us all)! The marshal had some very fond warm words to say about him, how he was always smiling and pleasant, one of their regular characters who was always chatting with people, smiling and joking with them. You could tell from the sadness in her eyes how she missed him on a personal level, as did the rest of the crew she said. They are thinking of doing something in his honour, or naming something after him to mark what they feel is ‘the end of an era’ with his passing.

Leaving this last aid station the majority of the rest of the course was on the flat through the mud and slippery duck boards of a nature reserve and along Slapton Sands, however my legs had long since already given up on me, I just couldn’t muster much more than a shuffle. The cyclist Jens Voigt used to yell through the pain ’shut up legs’ to his to persuade himself onwards and upwards, but me trying the same today it was more a case of ‘computer says no’ than a positive outcome.

Eventually I finished in the waning sunlight, pretty much the last of the marathon runners over the line (but hey a finish is a finish) Chatting with a crew member after - he had been working the event for 4 years and he couldn’t believe how good the weather is, forget about the sun he said, this was the first time he'd seen blue sky at the event!

My trainer roulette plan had held-out and my trainers survived the day. From what I could see under the caking of mud they didn't look too bad, however I had to wait to find out if they were in fact held together by the mud and I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome!

Coated!

Not too bad after all!

I met up with running buddy Luke for a post race beer in the Cricket Inn where I told him about Brian. Both of us had initially noticed him on our first race down in Pembrokeshire a good few years back - Luke was saying on the morning of one of the races he had seen him polish-off a fried breakfast before later running the half marathon and when Luke finished the marathon he was there at the finish line with a pint and a fag! We both raised a glass to Brian and his memory… You never know when you will have run your last.

This put my day’s run into perspective. I felt like shit, I wasn’t particularly ‘up for it’ physically and consequently mentally, but it doesn’t matter how poor my run was, I was fortunate enough to be able to get out and do it; a chastening reminder of NEVER taking it for granted, count your blessings that you can. Here’s to running tomorrow.

Eat pies.
Drink beer.
Run far.