Race review: #27 Bewl Water Marathon

Bewl Water, Kent. Saturday, 13th May 2017

This was my first double marathon and, unfortunately for me, it today was the second marathon! I had run 'Top Run' marathon the previous day over in Walton-On-Thames with Phoenix Running. My legs were already feeling sore and to be honest, I didn't really fancy the prospect of a further beasting of another 26.2 miles. I had been warned in advance by my friend Rachael that Bewl Water was "hilly". You know you're in trouble when a runner describes a course as "hilly". "Undulating" is what most people think of as hilly... so "hilly" means mountainous... 

Anyway, I digress. Bewl Water is a large reservoir in Kent, owned by Southern Water, and the perimeter is 13 miles. The course is two laps around the reservoir, starting and finishing next to the visitor centre. So it's next to water - that's flat ... right... what can possible go wrong or be hard eh? ;-)

As per usual, the day started at silly o'clock. I had entered this race with my running buddy Chelsea. She lives fairly close so I offered to drive - I picked her up from her house at 6am - waaaay too early - and we started the long drive over to Kent. Bewl Water is just south of Tonbridge Wells, so we had to drive quite a way from Hampshire over into Kent. Our earlier start was rewarded with torrential rain the whole way. Our hearts sank. Were we in for a thorough soaking? Also on this long drive, a bird decided to end it all by flying into the windscreen as I was doing 70 on the M25.  A sign of things to come?

Eventually the weather perked up, the rain stopped, and we arrived at Bewl Water. We paid £2 to park all day, and we were marshalled over into a field right next to the visitor centre. Race HQ was pitched up directly outside. It was super convenient being able to pop back to the car and appreciated that there wasn't a long trek.

Number collection and baggage drop

Number collection was very quick and easy, this was from a gazebo that was set up outside. I bumped into Emine who I had seen the day before at Top Run, she was again marshalling. We exchanged the usual banter and had a really good chat. Amusingly, Chelsea managed to blag a donut from a total stranger after telling her she had the munchies. We have a very civilised cup of coffee in the visitor centre while we waited to start and this helped take the edge off my nerves. There were plenty of toilets in the visitor centre and hardly any queue, so no problems there.

Donut blagging in progress

As we went outside to head off to the start, I bumped into my friend Jo who I had ran Beachy Head with, she was their with her wife and they were running the half marathon together (there was a half on at the same time as the full, although it started an hour later). This was a really pleasant surprise and of course a mandatory selfie was taken!

There was a short walk from the visitor center to the start line of probably half a mile or so. As I saw the course in front of me, I have to admit my heart sank as the first mile was totally uphill! Doh. What had I left myself in for. At the start line saw I saw Kelly (who I had picked up a race number at the Brighton expo) and her other half, they were also doing the full marathon. I've never bumped into so many people I knew before!

The race was run by Hermes running and they gave us a quick briefing before hand - the usual stuff - nothing really to worry about. Bang on 9 o'clock, the start horn was sounded, and we were off. 

Immediately we started going up an incline and my legs decided to co-operate for now, but "under protest". Half a mile and we made a right turn which made us go back on ourselves parallel to the track we had just run down, skirting along the banks of the reservoir before turning the corner and going back through the start.  The views across the water were brilliant, and is stretched for what looked like miles into the distance.

Right from the start Chelsea and I agreed we would "Jeff" this marathon (the Jeff Galloway method), so 3 minutes running followed by a 1 minute (fast) walk break.

The first few miles my legs felt very heavy and stiff and protested pretty strongly against the indignity of being asked to do another marathon less than 24 hours after the last one! After a couple of miles this wore off a bit, they felt tired but began to feel almost normal.

Those first few miles were pretty good, and it was reasonably flat. It was on wooded paths which was lovely, and loads of bluebells out and at their best. This was really nice, and for a while I was able to just keep plodding along. I had my camelbak with me, with a litre of Lucozade sport which was just as well as the first aid station wasn't for almost 4 miles, I thought this was a fairly long way to go with no drinks. 

The aid station was really well manned by the local army cadets, and a great range of sweets and crisps, nuts etc. There were loads of Chia seed flapjacks - they were keen to ply us with as many of these as we could take. I made the mistake of trying to eat one - the inside of my mouth felt like sandpaper afterwards, and I was spitting out seeds for the next hour!

There was a right turn and Bewl Water was still in sight, now we were running along a road. The traffic sadly didn't seem to want to slow down for the runners - I had a similar experience last year with the A20 Path & Downs Marathon which was also in Kent.  Are Kent drivers completely crazy? I even had a mouthful of abuse from one driver who told me to "get out of the bloody road". Nice!

We followed the signs and before much longer we were thankfully back onto the Bewl Water trail, fortunately back off the road. I did think this race was rather odd in that I saw NO marshals at all (other than at the aid stations and one poor chap on his tod near the finish). There were plenty of signs up to follow (amusingly marked "do not remove"). I really felt the lack of support or help in negotiating tricky crossings. Also no mile markers - what's that about then! I did have my Garmin with me of course but they can be notorious for under reading especially on a long distance run.

The trail got a little more tricky now. We came past some beautiful Kent Oast Houses (hop kilns) - I remember these well from my years living in the Medway towns.  The path had narrowed quite a bit now, and was getting difficult to run along, constantly having to pick out and avoid the tree roots and rocks, not to mention the path had quite a camber making it difficult to keep your footing.  Suddenly we started to get overtaken by hordes of runners. We realised the the half marathon group had caught up with us (despite starting an hour later than us) and were busy overtaking us en-masse. I found this quite demotivating, as both me and Chelsea kept having to jump out of the way to let them past. Not many said thanks or even hello - guess they were in "the zone", but even so that was a shame.

The route turned away from the Bewl Water trail now. We climbed a series of rather tough steps, and by now Chelsea was getting quite far ahead. My legs felt like two dead weights underneath me and it was a struggle to keep running. I kept taking on board energy drink from my camelbak and ate a mars bar every few miles, but the lethargy in the legs wasn't going.

As we left the trail we ran along some very quiet Kent Roads, with just the odd lunatic Kent car driver trying to mow us down! Unfortunately this was tough hills, with an uphill section which went on for over two miles, before a slight downhill then another uphill. My ability to run by now had packed up and I just walked as fast as I can.

After hitting another couple of aid stations, we finally picked up the Bewl Water trail again and got another glimpse of the reservoir. A couple of nice flat miles in Bluebell woods restored my running mojo a bit, but by now I was knackered. I told Chelsea to go on ahead as she was still fairly fresh and fancied getting a reasonable time. The legs were by now refusing to run so I just walked as fast as I could. There was a nice downhill section though back towards the 13 mile point where the finish was! It felt a bit odd running through the finish line, with spectators telling me "you're almost there!" I had to tell them I had another a lap to go - that felt tough. My watch told me I was over 3 hours just to finish that first lap. I was hot, tired, hungry and thirsty and in no mood to complete a second lap. Which made me even more determined to actually go and do the bloody thing - you have to dig in when the going gets tough. 

Finally I made it back through the start and onto the second lap. I didn't realise that I did not need to repeat the first little loop section, which added on an unwelcome extra mile. I walked as fast as I could, past the first aid station again and back onto the trail. The hills along the road section the second time round were absolutely brutal, and my legs really hurt by now. I looked at my watch and realised I was going to finish quite close to the 7 hour cut-off - not quite a personal worse, but not far off it. 

I spotted an amusing sign which told us it was a 13 mile walk around Bewl Water, which would take "6 hours". So I had to walk twice as fast as that!

Finally I came to the downhill section where the one and only marshal out on the course waved us to the right. Up in the distance I saw three ladies walking and I was slowly but surely catching them up. I suddenly realised it was Chelsea and a couple of other ladies, so I had to catch them up. I managed to somehow break into a gentle jog and catch them up, but it almost killed me! I found out the ladies names were Carol and Sophie, a mother and daughter one of whom was in the 100 marathon club and Sophie had already done 50 marathons. Amazing and very inspirational. 

We ran down that final hill together and AT LAST! We crossed the finish line. The race director, Peter, gave us our medals and shook my hand - the ladies got a hug. He thanked us for racing with them and we were invited to help ourselves to some crisps and chocolate, which tasted wonderful! Bewl was done, but my legs were completely trashed beyond belief. I hobbled back to the car, but happy in the knowledge that I had completed my first double and racked up number 27.