TrailX Winter Woodland Run

Posted by Ed on December 19, 2020

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Not that there is anything wrong with writing about nothing – the pages of my journal will attest to that – but I do make an effort to only post something on this blog when I actually have something running/adventure-related to write about. For this reason, the last few months have seen me posting very little. After sustaining a hamstring injury at the end of August that plagued me for nine weeks, it took me some six or seven weeks to build back up again to the point where I am confident running fast, or running long. I’m still not sure about doing both at the same time.

Of course, there is a sizeable elephant in the room, too. It’s almost become a cliche to point out how ‘different’ or ‘unprecedented’ 2020 was, but a quick glance through my racing calendar makes it clear. In 2019, I ran seven races, a decent number considering four of those were marathon distance or longer. Virtual events aside, though, 2020 yielded exactly zero medals, thanks to COVID-19.

By all other metrics, the year was a great success – I ran multiple 50+ mile weeks without injury, I successfully pulled off my first 50 miler, and I achieved my first ever win, Parkruns aside, at a (very) small time-trial event with the brilliant folks at Runaway. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel as though something was missing. There is a reason runners flock to races – for most, it’s not the free T-shirt or the goodie bag. It’s not the medal, either. It’s a sense of community, a reminder that we are not alone in possessing a strange desire to push ourselves. And it’s a chance to put it all on the line, and let the chips fall where they may.

Which is why I was very, very excited to take part in a real-life, in-person race last weekend down in Hampshire – the Winter Woodland Run, hosted by a small company called TrailX.

Emily and I had already booked a pre-Christmas break in the Peak District some weeks before, but when the dust settled following the implementation of the government’s tier system, it emerged that Derybshire and the surrounding counties would be in the dreaded tier three, which meant no pubs, no restaurants, and certainly no holidaying. Instead, we opted to head for one of England’s less celebrated national parks – the New Forest. One of those “I’ve always wanted to go there” places, that did not disappoint.

As usual, I did a quick spot of Googling to see if there was any good running to be had in the area. I didn’t expect to find much, but it was as if the stars had momentarily aligned specifically to allow us to attend this race. The event was on a Sunday, the same day as our hotel booking. Seeing as the race didn’t start until 10:30, however, we were able to get up before the crack of dawn and zip out of a still-sleeping London, making it to the venue with 45 minutes to spare. We even had time to get a Starbucks.

Usually, this would be a lot of hassle just to run an 8km race, but sometimes you have to pet your cats wherever you encounter them on the street. 2020 being what it was, 5k or 50k, I was going to be there.

Emily had the same mindset, but when we parked up in the drizzling rain and went to fetch our bibs, she was feeling less enthusiastic. It was, frankly, biting cold, and the ground around the start/finish area was what we would later come to realise is classic New Forest terrain in winter – boggy, squelchy heathland, rivulets trickling here and there through minuscule valleys in the grass. But we’d come this far, and I convinced her that once we got moving, she would feel more enthused.

I was nevertheless feeling a little sheepish at having convinced Emily, usually a fair weather runner, to splash her way through what was shaping up to be, to quote Lazarus Lake, a ‘ball-buster of a race’. On our way in, as we cruised down an undulating gravel road, we caught glimpses of tape strung out in the woods either side of us. The course looked, well – tricky. Not so much a trail as a demarcated line that weaved itself around trees and through bogs. Having gotten very accustomed to running long, slow distances, I gulped at the thought of powering my way through this terrain at something approximating 10k effort.

Still, I didn’t have much time to worry about it, as we were quickly asked to self-seed into waves of nine and get ready to depart. Seeing as there were approximately 80 participants, and based on the fact that I usually finish somewhere around the 10th percentile (i.e. out of 100 runners I am usually 10th, out of 500 I am usually 50th, etc.), I decided to back myself and start in the first wave. Before I was able to wonder about whether this was the right choice, a countdown was sounded, and we were away.

The Race

We set off like the clappers, shooting up the gravel road which we had driven down to enter the venue. Perhaps it was the pent-up angst of months without racing, or perhaps it was an awareness of the technical terrain to come, but out of the nine men and women in my wave, eight of us, myself included, shot off at a relentless and, for me at least, unsustainable pace. The only one of us to hold back was a friendly chap with whom I had exchanged a few pleasantries on the starting line, and whom I shall refer to hereafter as Pink Shorts, because – well, I’m sure you can figure that one out.

Within a couple of minutes, I was already cursing myself at having been swept along by the momentum of the pack, knowing that my best bet is always to start out conservatively. But I soon settled into the ‘no guts, all glory’ mindset – this was my only race of the year, after all! After overtaking two of the three women in our pack, I settled into a rhythm behind the leading lady, the three or four male runners ahead of us having shot off into the distance immediately.

I say ‘rhythm’, but if this race had a time signature, it was 5/8. At 200 BPM. (Hurrah! This blog’s very first music joke.) The terrain was simply impossible to flow through – twists, turns, rocks, roots, bogs, the lot. It was what I imagine a cross country race to be like (having never actually done one) if the ‘country’ being ‘crossed’ was the Forbidden Forest from Harry Potter.

Eventually, we burst (read: staggered) out of the woods and onto another gravel road, where I was able to regain some composure and churn out a fast downhill kilometre. I overtook the first lady, and caught another guy who was making the best of a bad decision when it came to footwear. He may as well have been racing over a tarpaulin covered in lube, for all the good his Nike road shoes were doing him.

Whatever inkling of schadenfreude I was able to enjoy between half-snatched breaths, however, quickly faded as a runner from the second wave came zooming past me. He had started at least 15 seconds after us, and though we were barely 3km in this green-clad speedster – who was in his 40s, I might add – had overtaken all but the lead pack. What’s more, he was wearing leather plimsolls, which looked like they had all the traction of a bowling shoe.

Needless to say, by this point I was really suffering, and questioning whether I would be able to hold on to anything like this pace for the remainder of the race. The course demanded a level of explosive power that my ultra-running legs simply weren’t up to. We passed back through the starting area, and I did my best to look strong and composed as the awaiting 4k runners clapped and cheered us on, but inside I knew that, if I didn’t ease up, a serious fade was on the cards, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since David Beckham got his haircut back in 2018.

Heading into the second half of the race, then, I eased off. I was quickly caught by Pink Shorts, who had done a cracking job at pacing himself and was looking far, far stronger than me. I did my best to hold onto him, but the constant twisting and turning of the course caught up with me in a way that I had never experienced in a race – I’ve dealt with cardiovascular fatigue, and I’ve experienced muscular fatigue that has slowed me down, but I’ve never felt the kind of fast-twitch fatigue that prevented me from turning sharp corners with grace or agility. At one point, on a particularly steep descending hairpin turn, I had to come to an almost complete stop and shuffle around the corner, only to launch myself back down the hill again.

The second half of the course was, in many ways, even more relentless than the first. One or two 30+% climbs, though short, punched whatever air was left out of my lungs, and I was forced to make use of my power-hiking chops. Pink Shorts, just up ahead, did the same, but whilst he looked like a stallion powering his way up the slope, I was more like Donkey from Shrek.

As the finish line drew near, the course momentarily opened out onto another gravel road, where I was overtaken by the first lady, whom I had so brazenly overtaken myself earlier in the race before. She was looking extremely strong, and would go on to finish minutes ahead of me. The course then twisted around into an open field, and we were momentarily able to see the runners a couple of minutes ahead and behind us. Whilst I could tell that the lead pack were well out of my grasp, I was pleased to note that there appeared to be nobody behind me with much of a chance of catching me up, provided I kept up whatever semblance of a pace I could.

After coming within metres of the finish line, the course mercilessly dove back into the woods for another kilometre or so, and the fade I had anticipated earlier began to close in. By this point, though, I could smell the sweet release of death – sorry, of the finish. And so I ploughed on, enjoying as best I could the ducking and diving demanded by the roots and rocks. Every now and then, a bluetooth speaker strapped to a tree would play happy, clappy pop music, and I would laugh and dream of smashing it to smithereens.

No sooner had I relaxed into the notion that the race was over, however, when a rustle over my shoulder alerted me to a runner hot on my heels. I glanced back and saw a blue-vested young lad who I’d not spotted before, about 100 metres behind me. Cursing myself for having gotten complacent, I upped the pace as best I could, traversing what was thankfully a relatively non-technical section and almost diving headfirst into a patch of mud that swallowed my shoes entirely. A photographer, who most definitely had picked this spot to capture people’s reactions to the slop, cheered me on. “Final push, mate,” he said as he snapped my picture. All I heard was, “He’s behind you.”

After one last gut-wrenching climb, in which I actually slipped and almost face planted, I rounded a corner and was presented with the finishing straight. A few hundred metres of grass later, I was over and across, managing a time of 36:03. Good enough for 8th place out of 83 participants – exactly confirming my hunch that I could expect to be in the tenth percentile, performance-wise.

I later learned that another gentleman in the second wave had managed to run one second faster than me, which confirmed for me the benefits of a ‘real’ race environment – had we been physically adjacent, who knows if his presence would have pushed me to run just a few seconds faster and take 7th place? Starting in waves meant I didn’t have that psychological push, but nonetheless, the race was what everything I had hoped it would be, and a great deal of suffering more!

As it happens, I also realised after the race that the fellow in blue who had given me such a fright in the final stretches was in fact the leader of the 4km race, and so I needn’t have worried so much. Still, his presence definitely spurred me on, so ultimately I was glad to have mistaken him for a competitor.

Emily also had a great time, and in the end was very glad she took part. Her photograph even ended up being used as the cover photo for TrailX’s Facebook page!

All in all, the race was really, really well managed – surprisingly so, I would say, for such a short, small event. There were portaloos a-plenty, dozens of spectators and marshals supporting us out in the woods, and, as far as I could tell, at least three photographers. I can only assume that, having been so restricted all year, the folks at TrailX decided to pull out all the stops and host a banger of an event whilst they still could. And they were very successful indeed. I can highly, highly recommend their events if you are ever in the New Forest or on the South Coast, and I look forward to one day toeing a TrailX start-line again myself.

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