A frost so severe this morning that just stepping through the back door was to feel your dangly bits withering and dying on the vine.
Standing there, quivering, in my leggings and three T-shirts, apprehensive sweat freezing on my temples, the temptation was to give up. But I need stuff to write about, and if I don’t run then this blog is buggered. That’s about as basic as I can get.
My car is full of apple trees and bird tables at the moment. The branches of the Russet are so profuse and intrusive that driving is like…. like driving a car while climbing a tree. It’s fantastic.
The 25 minute journey made a stab at warming me up, but I was still practising an involuntary rigor mortis routine by the time I parked. There was a glorious chance of picking up an injury in these conditions, so I tried to spend my spare 20 minutes wisely. 5 minutes brisk walking and 5 jogging, repeated. By the time the morose hooter sounded, I was at last feeling semi-human.
This was race number 35 for me – the Cliveden Cross Country, and mile-for-mile, easily the toughest race in my modest calendar. Only 6.35 miles, but slippery going down, and very steep going up. It’s a splendid location, but I talked about the setting in last year’s race report, so I won’t repeat all that old rubbish. Instead, I’ll offer some new old rubbish.
I set off at the back, just behind the meaty girl from the Vegetarian Running Club.
The bloke beside me had a bandaged ankle, and was limping heavily. He was wearing a rugby shirt and football boots. “These boots are killing me”, I heard him say. “I’ve not worn ’em for fifteen years.” So I felt confident that I wouldn’t be finishing in last place, though I wasn’t feeling confident about much else.
The first mile or so of Cliveden is cruelly deceptive. The rest of the race is deceptively cruel. The fairy-tale frost on the trees; the splattering of snow on the trail beneath your feet; the fantastic views of the majestic Thames far below, glimpsed through clouds of desperate effort. They all point to one big fat lie — that you’re having a good time.
No.
You start with a long flattish stretch along the cobbled driveway, round the frozen fountain, and off through the grounds. Then you come to a big open field – downhill but pimpled with rock-hard, icy bobbles of grass. It was here that I first appreciated my off-road shoes. I bought this pair of Asics Gel Guts more than a year ago. Before today, I’d averaged one mile every two months in them. Indeed, the Cliveden race is their annual outing. The soles give me much better grip than my normal New Balance 854s, though the uppers are a bit unforgiving. Still, at this rate of wear, I estimate they should have worn themselves in by around the turn of the 22nd century.
After the field comes a sight to chill the blood – were it not already frozen solid in my veins. The woods. Those dark woods. The Cliveden Woods are where the worst demons live. Again, the first stretch is easy enough – a gentle downhill shuffle – but then you go down some more, and down some more, and more again… and the further down and down you go, the faster these words pass through your mind, like a manic news ticker: What goes down, must come up…What goes down, must come up…
It comes up.
Built into the steep hillsides around the Cliveden estate are a series of deep wooden steps. Because they are deep, you can’t get into a rhythm to jog up them. You step up, run forward a yard (or sometimes a yard and a half), then step up again. During the race, you do this 445 times.
Yes, you read that right. 445 times.
Most people end up walking the steps, though even to walk them is exhausting. In relation to the length of the race, the fatigue is severe, and it seems to hit you quickly. As soon as one torture session of steps is over, you find yourself on a slippery, grassy stretch. It’s no surprise that both years I’ve done the race, I’ve come across people injured by the side of the track, clutching an ankle or a knee.
But I finished, and I finished in 76:20 — 2½ minutes faster than last year.
Footnote: Just seen the results. The limping bloke with the bandaged ankle and the football boots finished 10 minutes ahead of me.
