What a very English collection of words: "the Hogweed Trot, Chipping Sodbury". But why did I feel it so important to drive 80 miles at white-knuckle speed after work to take part in it?
The inaugural Hogweed Trot (named after the local Hogweed Trotters running club) winds round 10 kilometres of rustic lanes around Chipping Sodbury and Yate, somewhere north of Bristol. We lived there for 6 months in late 2001/early 2002, and it’s on those very lanes that I started running, and on which nearly all of my London Marathon training took place. The nostalgist in me had to be there.
The plan was to leave work in Maidenhead at 4:30, but a succession of trivial catastrophes kept me back until just after 5pm, which was cutting it fine. The M4 isn’t a very reliable friend in these situations, but this time it stayed pretty clear, and 80 minutes of reckless driving later, I arrived in Yate, at the home of Pete, otherwise known as Griff Of This Parish.
We didn’t hang around long – I still had to register. They evidently expected a maximum of 200, as numbers higher than this had to be constructed from the back of entry forms, and a rather weedy blue biro. I managed to nab the penultimate real number: 199.
We trotted back to the start, and had only a minute or two to spare before the off. For a heartening 30 seconds or so, I was ahead of Griff, but I was soon given the brief opportunity to study the pattern on the soles of his trainers as he moved out of first gear. I nonchalantly dropped back to last place, not because I thought this my rightful position, but because _colin was telling me to do so. I’d set the gadget to aim for 1 hour. I knew I wouldn’t manage this time, but I wanted to stick to the pace for as long as I could. I knew there would be plenty of people finishing slower than 60 minutes, but I kept to the pace I was being told to, and there was no one behind me. This could only mean that quite a few people had gone off too fast. I waited for them to drop back.
And they started to do so, almost immediately. By the end of the first kilometre I’d overtaken 8 people, one of whom was walking. Then another 4 or 5 drifted back behind me, and that’s pretty much how it stayed.
It wasn’t the easiest 10K I’ve done. As usual, the race was described as "flat" by the organisers, but someone had evidently inserted a few hills over the weekend without informing them. Perhaps "hills" is an exaggeration, but inclines, slopes, undulations, whatever. Bits going upwards.
It was a grand evening for a race. The sun was still warm and bright, and everyone seemed to be in a good mood for a Monday. Perhaps the two or three years since we lived there is too short a distance to talk about nostalgia, but it did resonate (a great word that means nothing very much. Great because it means nothing very much). It’s a different kind of countryside from the stuff I inhabit now. The Yate/Chipping Sodbury version is more authentic and raw than sanitised Berkshire, where it all seems a bit more ‘pretend’. Once again I had the pleasure of ferocious dogs battering at farm gates, roaring and snarling as I passed, desperate to disembowel and devour me. If I was a kid living round here, I’m sure I’d spend the summer holidays poking sharp sticks into them through the farmyard gates, just for the dry-mouthed, teeth-chattering, terrifying hell of it.
The marshals were friendly and supportive, and surprisingly, even the normally grumpy locals seemed to tolerate the inconvenience in good heart. I approached one crossroads where a young, suntanned figure with shades, sitting in an Audi coupé, an arm suspended through the window, ostentatiously drummed his fingers. "What a twat", I thought, but as I passed he suddenly gave me a clap and called out, in a strong Bristolian accent, and without irony, "Well done mate, not too long to go I hope". I felt bad about having jumped to the wrong conclusion.
But not that bad.
A long stretch round the halfway point saw the race double-back on itself so that we were plodding alongside runners coming the other way. One of them was Pete, and we exchanged some breathless encouragement.
Madness, I kept thinking. Madness. Only a week since running a marathon, and I’m already going through all this again. But another part of me was glad to be up and running again do soon. It’s one of the many lessons that I keep saying I’ve learned from the flawed Copenhagen project. Don’t sit around guzzling beer and cheesecake for 6 weeks after a marathon, wondering if you’ll ever want to run again. Get out there.
I kept plodding until just after the 5 Miles marker. Here I stopped to walk for a minute or two to catch my breath before chugging on again. During my walk I was overtaken by a grinning elderly lady, and I now set off after her. As I did so, I heard someone come up strongly behind me. They got closer and closer but, rather uncharacteristically, I decided to make a race of it. I kept hearing their footfalls coming up behind me, then receding again as I pulled away. I never saw who it was, and in the end they gave up and dropped right back.
Meanwhile I’d caught up with the older lady, and as we came towards the final 200 metres or so, my flickering competitive spirit spluttered and died. Too cruel, I thought. We ran in together, and crossed the line at the same time. She got a huge cheer from the crowd of faster finishers still hanging round at the end. The time on my watch was 1 hour 5 minutes. Slow compared with… most people (including Griff who managed 47 minutes in his first 10K), and 5 minutes outside my least slow 10K, but I was pleased just to be out there running in a race so soon after the marathon.
The quick follow-up to Copenhagen says something else. It says that the marathon last week was just one of those long training runs that I didn’t manage, and the real marathon is yet to come. When and where? Not sure yet. Perhaps Dublin. Perhaps not.
