The Sun’s on the Run at Brandon

A trail-running event reared its tree-rooty head: the Sun’s on the Run, a race intended to make the most of the last days of the summer sun, to be held at Brandon Country Park.

Colin signed up for the ultra, which was 9+ laps, where one lap was 5.3 km. I wondered what I’d do while he was running. I decided I could use it for my long run, which was 3–4 miles in my training plan; one lap would be perfect. But I didn’t want to do just one lap. I thought I’d do two laps and get a 10k medal to prove to myself I could do it. So that’s what I signed up to.

I ran the first lap – most of it, anyway. I was slogging my guts out up this one hill towards the end of the lap, and I realised that I was expending a lot of energy with very little progress; I thought I might as well walk, and save my energy for when I needed it. So that’s what I did. When I got to a downhill section, I let gravity start me off running again.

The course was multi-terrain. It started on tarmac, then turned off quickly into forest floor, with compacted soil and tree roots. The soil was replaced by sand on a narrow downhill section, with small rocks holding the sand in place. That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, considering. Then there was a grassy track, very uneven underfoot, which one has to be careful of in barefoot shoes.

Another section was stony; I don’t mind gravel, but isolated stones – and pinecones, it turns out – are horrible to land on in shoes whose sole allows you to feel every bump and dip underfoot. Then there was the grassy parts; these are fun with shoes with toes: any seed head or flower that gets caught between the toes when the foot lands are likely to be snapped off and carried intra-toe, which can feel weird. I got some sort of flower stuck at one point, and a huge blade of grass at another.

There was a really long uphill section with a 90º turn to the right at the top. Once round the corner, the land sloped downwards a little, but it felt like it was uphill. I couldn’t run on it, which was frustrating, so I had to walk to the next bend, another 90º right-hand turn, where the ground dropped away underfoot, and gravity helped me get moving again.

After my first lap, I felt reasonably ok. I caught my breath after the short, steep, uphill section to the finish/turning point to start the next lap, where the event village, if you could call it that, was. I had a rest, refreshed myself, and set off on my second lap. I walked up more of the uphill sections this time, having made this my plan. It seemed sensible: I’m no hill runner – I can barely get round the flatlands where I live.

I finished the second lap not ready to quit just yet. I had been secretly thinking about maybe doing a half marathon. I was standing in the event village chatting to a fellow who wasn’t sue to start till 11 o’clock (we’d started at 9 o’clock) when Colin came up to the turning point, turned and ran off back on his next lap. I don’t know where he was up to. I decided I would do a third lap and see how I felt after that. A half marathon would only be one more lap after that, and I still had plenty of time left.

To change your registered distance, you had to tell the man because he needed to tell the computer so the chip time recorder machine would know what was going on. So I told the man. I said of my plans to maybe do four laps, but that I’d start with three. I told him it would be my first half marathon if I did it. He said there’s a special medal for that, so to tell them when I’d finished the four laps. Exciting!

Colin appeared in the event village for refreshments. He’d tripped over a tree root and mucked up his new Montane top. He was ok, apart from a grazed elbow and maybe a bruise or two. Having established he was ok, I was ready to go, so I went. He said he might catch up with me; I thought it was inevitable, and soon enough, he almost had, when he tripped over another tree root. I stopped and went back to see if he was ok. He was largely just fed up at tripping over tree roots. We ran together for a short while, then I told him to go off and do his thing. The rest of the lap was pretty uneventful.

Back at the event village, I registered for the fourth lap. Three laps was neither here nor there, and I still had enough in me, I reckoned, to get round the course once more to get my first half marathon in the bag. It was only one lap. It was only a bit longer than parkrun. It was eminently doable. Wasn’t it?

It was doable! I did it. I even managed some semblance of a sprint finish up the steep hill to the end, where I leant on the refreshments table and breathed a lot. Then I went to get my medal. Everyone got the same medal with a tab added to the ribbon to say what distance the runner did. Mine says ‘1st half marathon’ on it. I love it. I’m really chuffed that I did my first half there so that I got this extra little touch. I think it’s really nice that they do that. I believe they did it for the first other distances, too.

I’d been worried about my shoes because when we were training for Hadrian’s Wall, I’d worn my barefoot trail shoes, but my feet would become too sore to walk on after about 10–12 miles. I don’t know what happened, but my feet didn’t ache in the slightest. My Achilles tendon, on the other hand, was strapped up with that tape that Olympians use – if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.

Colin was nowhere near finished, of course, so I sat down with a cup of tea and a piece of chocolate biscuit cake and chatted to a lass called Tracey and this other lass who’d picked Tracey up when she went skidding face first into the sand. We had a great conversation. The other lass was the one who told me ultra runners walk up the hills. We had a good laugh until it was time for them to leave.

Then I was left with some rather intense fellows, one of which had done 11 laps. I saw Colin talk to the man about extending his distance from 9 to 10 laps, and got confused, thinking he was doing 11 laps. Anyway, he didn’t, and never intended to. He was the last person to cross the line; a cup of tea was readied for him; his was the last medal out. Pretty much everything else was packed away by the time he finished, battered and bruised, but still smiling after his second ultra.

We left happy that we’d achieved what we wanted, but definitely ready for the sofa.