Silly o'clock
This was my first White Star Running (WSR) event. I had heard great things about them, Judith from running club had previously done the Giant's Head and told me about the naked farmer in the bath and medal with a giant spinning willy. WSR events are all about having a good laugh at yourself and not really worrying about times or taking things too seriously. My sort of running.
So the day started at really silly o’clock, as per usual for race day. The marathon start time was a somewhat aggressive (for a Sunday!) 8:30am and we had to get from North-East Hampshire down to Larmer Tree Gardens. The alarm went off at 4.45am - way too early! I had agreed to run with my friend Chelsea who wanted to use it as a training run for London. I picked up Chelsea at 6am from her house, and we were off for the drive down to Lamer
Tree Gardens, with a small disco going on in the car. This was on the Wiltshire/Dorset Boarder near a village called Tollard
Royal. It was chucking it down with rain at this point and my heart sank at the
thought of running for 7+ hours getting cold and soaked.
We arrived at the car park which was a muddy, soggy field. I
could see the car in front of me wheel-spinning in the mud, and pushed into
place by one of the (friendly) marshalls. Was this was a warning sign for what
was to come?! First things first, we took off our outer layers ready for the race. I had pre-warned Chelsea about my outrageous peacock
leggings, however she laughed her head off as I removed my outer layers. Most people dress up for the WSR events and Larmer Tree is peacock-themed, due to the amount of peacocks roaming around the estate.
Registration and off
We went to the registration hall. Slightly odd that they had
divided it up into male and female collection (of course, I went to the wrong
one). We had a sneaky coffee and purchased a hoody (was that jinxing things to
buy the hoody in advance, I wonder? Almost as bad as running the race in the race t-shirt - a shootable offence!) A
quick last minute stop to use the ‘facilities’ (no queue!) and we were lined up
that start – why does time fly so by so quickly before the start of a marathon? A race
briefing was mumbled by some chap at the start with a megaphone, which I never
heard a word of. Next thing I knew, we were off and running over the timing mat.
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| Mud, mud, mud |
Easy(ish) start
We had a small amount of rain early on in the race but this soon petered out, and were were rewarded with a pleasant day. The first 6-ish miles of the marathon were reasonably relaxed. We were running on a mix of nice hard surface trails and tarmac, which took us in a gentle loop back towards the start and through the small village of Farnham (nothing to do with the Farnham back in Surrey). Little did we know what was awaiting us! From mile 6 we started a gently climb, which then got steeper. And steeper. And muddier. And steeper! Seeing the skeleton of a dead sheep was somewhat disconcerting and a sign up saying “we are still looking for the bodies of last years runners”. Mmmm… OK. The odd thing about this race was the complete lack of mile markers, but then this fitted in with the white star running ethos of “having fun”. Not sure that was the word I was using in the last six miles! We exchanged some light hearted banter with fellow runners, including a lady who told me she was perving my arse in my peacock leggings. You don't get that at London, do you.
My legs weren't really feeling the love at this point, although only around 8 miles into it things were beginning to hurt a bit, so I stopped and had a bit of a stretch. We ran for a bit with Emine, who I had run East Hanningfield with and it was great to catch up with her. She was too speedy for me though, and off she went.
That was something about this race, the views were totally worth it. After reaching the top and a humourous sign inviting us to moan about about our climb, we at last reached a flat part.
As we
looked behind us, we could see the tail runner about half a mile behind in a
bright hi-viz jacket. Doh! We panicked slightly about being timed out and my Garmin confirmed we were on for an 8 hour marathon at his pace. We dug in and put in a few 11 minute miles, the tail runner had no choice but to eat our dust (mud?!)
By this point we were getting really knackered, the mud was just horrendous, and it was like the mud back in Essex when I did the East Hanningfield marathon. Sticky, squelchy stuff that your shoe wanted to stay behind in and not come with the rest of your leg. This mud demanded respect and was going to let you know who was really in charge. This was hard going but made up for by the absolutely gorgeous route the race was taking us round. Through the many wooded sections of the route there was wild garlic growing, the smell was amazing. Not at all sickly smell but a sweetish, pungent smell which reminded me of garlic bread! We laughed at the signs put up “Don’t touch this sign!”, “We told you not to touch this sign” haha.
The hill from hell
As we reached the 9 mile point we stood in front of a massive
hill. Not only was this a crazy steep hill, but it was also completely bogged down
with churned up mud from the stampede of runners in front of us, not to mention
being churned up from the previous day when WSR ran the Larmer Tree Half. We just crawled up, slipping and
sliding our way up the hill, laughing our heads off at the sheer lunacy of what
we were trying to do! Better to laugh than cry, I suppose. This is the best part of trail racing. I had my trail
shoes on but Chelsea just had regular road shoes, so I had to drag up her
behind me, like two lunatics going on an obstacle course. I nearly went over a couple of times but somehow managed to stay on
two feet and avoided rolling back down in the mud. Next year I’ll bring a rope I think. The view from the top was just
amazing though, we could see right back towards the valley we had just run
down. It was a simply breathtaking view.
Feel the badger
This friendly chap - Kevin Day - was marshalling at around mile 16, we had
been running for around 5 hours now and quite frankly getting pretty knackered.
I thought it was slightly odd that he was wearing a kilt and took great delight
in flashing his peacock running shorts (sorry fella, you didn’t beat my leggings). “Have
you felt the badger” he asked us. Ermm... no. Turns out this was a sporran which looked like a badger, he
took great delight in telling us the story of a lady runner he had given a hug
to, and the badger had touched her nether regions LOL. All in good taste, you
understand. Honestly. Really.
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| Chelsea is about to feel the badger |
So after some light hearted banter, and a quick hug (very very quick in my case!) with
the badger and collecting some “I felt the badger” stickers, we were on way
again. We were promised some "I felt the badger" badges at the end, just for good measure.
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| I made her go through the mud, while I walked around it. LOL. |
By this point we were getting really knackered, the mud was just horrendous, and it was like the mud back in Essex when I did the East Hanningfield marathon. Sticky, squelchy stuff that your shoe wanted to stay behind in and not come with the rest of your leg. This mud demanded respect and was going to let you know who was really in charge. This was hard going but made up for by the absolutely gorgeous route the race was taking us round. Through the many wooded sections of the route there was wild garlic growing, the smell was amazing. Not at all sickly smell but a sweetish, pungent smell which reminded me of garlic bread! We laughed at the signs put up “Don’t touch this sign!”, “We told you not to touch this sign” haha.
Fortunately there were quite a few aid stations, with some very friendly marshals and a great selection of salty and sweet goodies. As per usual, I stuffed my face with everything going!
The Lovestation
Well we could hear the lovestation well before we could see
it. We were running through some woods now, past a sign saying “welcome to the
deep south”. Haha.
Suddenly a left turn took us out of the trees, and in front of us was this massive pink gazebo. The marshals at the lovestation cheered us in very loudly, quite a feat considering there was
dance music belting out. It was like a little private party just for the Larmer
Tree runners! A dazzling array of sweet and savoury goodies as well as cider
awaited! A group of lovely ladies with pink hoodies were dispensing kisses to
every runner, so of course I got “done” and so did Chelsea. The idea of the
love station is that it’s your last chance to “get your shit together” before ticking
off the last few tough miles of a marathon. We lingered here far longer than we
should have, but the chocolate brownies were just so delicious at this point and we had a brief chat with some of the other runners and a good opportunity to have a moan about the mud! The ladies gave me a sticker “I’ve felt the love”, and once again we were back
to running, somewhat reluctantly leaving the lovestation behind but now quite keen to actually get to the real finish.
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| Matching leggings |
After leaving the love station we ran along a field of
sweetcorn, we could still see last year’s kernels lying around, and on our
right a beautiful valley. It really was yet another breathtaking sight. On our
left was the hill from hell that we had climbed back at mile 9. The mud had
given way now to a chalky path which was a blessed relief on the legs. These next
few miles were all gently downhill which was very welcome, gravity at last
could do it’s fair share of the work. I won't mention the gigantic pile of cow shit that we had to run past.
Towards mile 23 there was yet another hill – this was the
same hill we had skirted around right at the start. My god, it was tough! We
power walked our way up and reached the top, once again another fantastic view
awaited. Somehow we just dug in and kept going, doing more walking than running
by now. We could see in the distance a few runners who were by now 2 or 3 miles
behind us, so any anxiety about being timed out by the tail runner vanished. We
just had to dig in and keep going.
IN what seemed to be quite a short time, we went
past the sign “400 – ish meters to go!” I wondered how “ish” the 400 meters was, turned out it was actually quite accurate. Chelsea was still itching
to run, she was in much better condition than me, as I just had nothing left in my legs. We sped walk past the arch and round the
corner. “Hurry up, FFS!” the sign said, and I could see the race photographer
now.
Somehow managed to wring a last piece of energy out of the legs and
started running again. I didn't want my finishers photo showing me hobbling in, oh the vanity. We finally crossed the timing mat and the finish line in 7 hours and 13 minutes. Oh the relief! My legs were utterly trashed. I had done a marathon just 4 days previously, and boy did I feel it.
We were given the wonderful finishers medal and a food voucher. We saw "badger man" Kevin who handed us our "I felt the badger" badges (apparently these are highly prized, according to the WSR facebook page) We went back to the start where I traded my food voucher in for a delicious gourmet burger. What's not to like! As we sat in the sun, the friendly peacocks kept milling about us. What a fantastic end to a lovely day. It was a seriously tough race, but the whole relaxed and fun atmosphere made it really special and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Would I do this race again? Absolutely! I'll be back again next year!
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