Bacchus Half Marathon

This race was amazing and I would commend it to anyone.  Much of the week leading up to the race, I had been suffering from ibs, something I had never experienced before, nor want to again!  On the drive to Surrey on Friday night, the dartfford crossing on the M25 was closed for 7 hours due to a security scare, but we weren't aware when we left home,  so ended up sitting in a tailback for 4 hours. Our expected arrival at 8:30pm became 1:30am.  All in all, not the best preparation for a half marathon.  All of this, together with the fact I have two 'A' races in the coming weeks meant I was going to use this race as a training run.  I would take the first 8 miles steady, with 4 miles at half marathon pace (8:20mm) and then I would take advantage of all the fun part of the race after- wine drinking whilst running!  This was a copycat of the famous Medoc marathon, so everybody was encouraged to wear fancy dress, and wine was served from the Denbies estate, which is the largest vineyard in England, established in 1986.  David dressed as a giant banana... I dressed as a TR24 competitor, as my name was on that shirt :)

The race started at midday, so there was plenty of time beforehand to potter around the gift shop and have a second breakfast, of an iced bun.  David tried on some yellow sunglasses in his banana suit and the man selling them took a picture and said it would appear on the bloc website/Facebook page.

I started with David and enjoyed looking at all the costumes.  We all know I like elephants, so I was particularly pleased to see a man sized elephant,

but David wouldn't let me go and give him a cuddle, so I had to stick to cuddling bananas (who cuddles bananas? Weird, right?).  I started toward the back of the field with David as I wanted to ease into it.  A third of a mile at 14mm pace and I got irritated and ran off- clearly lots of people ahead of us were planing on walking this one.  I managed to get ahead of most of them in the first mile or so, and got up to a 10mm pace, which with averaging was probably more a 9mm pace after the 14.  This was nice, we were going steady and I got into a rhythm.  There was a slight uphill around 1.5 miles, but everyone around was running steady, then there was a downhill on a slightly rocky path clearly someone ahead who doesn't like downhill had stopped to walk, and as the path was so narrow, this held everybody up.  I was thinking why aren't you using gravity, surely running downhill is much easier than running uphill, but I guess I've had a lot more off road experience than a lot who were doing this race.

Eventually got past them and joined a footpath running across a field.  This is when I decided to up the pace for 2 miles.  At times it was difficult to keep up as the path wasn't conducive to overtaking, but I managed mile 3 at 8:15 and mile 4 at 8:33, given the off road and overtaking issues, I was very pleased with this.  I think the rain that started at mile 3 and continued for 20 minutes really helped this.  Back down to a steady pace, and some of the people I had overtaken started to overtake me, I wondered if they were thinking (she went off too fast) as I often do if I catch someone up who's passed me so early in the race... Little did they know that was my intention!

5 and 6 were steady again, and I did stop to take on some electrolyte drink.  I really struggle to drink from that bottle at the half marathon pace, so I need to find a good drinking strategy for Ipswich.  Hopefully it will be that much cooler that I don't need to worry about drinking so much.

7 and 8 and back up to pace.  I managed 8:15 for 7, then my garmin started bleeping at me that it was running out of battery.  Mile 8 and I blew up.  The course started going significantly steeper uphill and I just couldn't maintain pace.  Now I look back at garmin connect, and the first 8 miles were pretty much all uphill, so no wonder I was tired by this point.   I switched the garmin off when it clicked past 8 miles and took it easy from here, stopping to take photos of the beautiful scenery.

At the top of this very steep hill, I guess it was 8 and 3/4 miles, I stopped at the fuel station, first to fill my bottle with water, then to gorge on some orange slices- there was an amazing selection of food! And finally to sample some wine.  

This was the rose hill Rose and I had 2 of the sample shots. I waited up here for quite some time, hopefully I could meet up with my giant banana, and do the rest with him, but up on the hill, exposed to the wind and having done a hard 8 miles, i started to get pretty cold, so decided to get on with the rest of the race.  Before this, I had been thinking about running hard for the whole thing, but I hadn't prepared by taking on extra fuel, plus, with my illness and tiredness, I thought it best not to push it.  I took the next 5 miles really really easy, walking when I felt like it and rehydrating, as well as enjoying everybody's costume.  I really started to find it difficult on mile 10 and 11.  This is certainly the point where a strategic energy gel at miles 5 and 9 would have helped me.

The fuel stop at mile 10 had red wine- I didn't take notice of anything else.  This was not great to run on, and with my slightly dehydrated running self, I didn't enjoy it as much as I normally enjoy a red wine, so only had one taster.  The last drinks station at mile 12 had sparkling wine. This was absolutely delicious! I wish I could have had lots more of it, but as I had said David could drink as much As he wanted and I would drive after, I decided not to.  I wish I had remembered the name so I could buy some.

Much of the last mile was downhill.  After some nice dirt paths you came out to a hard concrete road alongside the vineyard.  The steepness meant it was very hard on your feet running down hill, soi jumped onto the grass.  I started winding up for the finish now, and had loads in me.  Wish my garmin was on so I could see pace, but I went flying past everyone I saw in this home stretch, and around the corner for a sprint finish.  At the end, I was greeted by superman (a grey haired superman)- i think he must have been the race director.  This was a really nice touch- he shook our hands as we finished.  Then I went to have my timing chip removed and the lady who removed it noticed a lot of pieces of plants attached to my socks and started removing them for me- how lovely.  Next was picking up the medal, a nice chunky silver medal with giant 13.1 on it, and the t shirt.  Bright yellow technical T.  Unfortunately a man's t, so another night dress for me rather than running top.  Then wow, what a spread!  All sorts of fruit-I had a chunk of pineapple, my favourite.  There were lots of cakes too, which I think were homemade.  It had become quite overcast so I went for the hot drinks stand and had a coffee- free tea and coffee!  Again a really nice touch.  I finished in 2:21- given I did up to 8 miles in 1:16 you have some idea of how easy I took the last 5 miles :)

I was getting really cold now, so went to get my baggage, and put on David's joggers and my waterproof ride London top.  This helped for a while but then it got really really really cold and started pissing down with rain.  Some of the full marathon runners were starting to come through the finish, but there was no sign of my giant banana and I started to get worried.  Eventually after about an hour, he started running through the finish chute.  It was really raining hard now, but the top of the banana costume was keeping him dry and warm.  We got in the queue for the hog roast, and a full glass of wine and gorged on that.

This was a fantastic event and great value.  At first I thought £46 was a bit much for a half marathon, but with free parking, as much food as you want, as much wine as u can drink on course, and free hot drinks, it was really good value, especially with that hog roast lunch.  I think the cost to enter the full marathon was the same, and I will definitely go for that next time.  The course was challenging, but not as impossible as off-road races can be, so I think it would be a nice one to amble around in 5 hours, enjoying the food and wine along the way:)