A long distance cyclist turns to running

The Sussex Coast Marathon

Why run a marathon?

I was a runner once.  I used to run Cross-Country races at school.  But then I discovered bicycles, and after that I discovered cars.  I did occasionally do some running, but that came to an end in the winter of 1999-2000.  After a season of indoor cricket where my main skill was taking suicidal singles (in fact they promoted the opening bowler to opening the batting with me as he was the next fastest runner) I damaged some tendons in my right groin from the many high speed turns this silly sport involved.  After that even a knockabout game of football was enough to make the old injury complain.  So I didn’t run, not even for the bus.  It didn’t matter as shortly after that I discovered long distance cycling and the world of Audax.

But in 2011 the local office of my new employer entered 40 people in the Reading Half Marathon.  It was too late for an entry into that year’s event but, being recognised as a sporty type from my regular Lycra-clad commutes into the office, I couldn’t turn down an entry in the 2012 event.  I started off running 2 miles and gradually built up the distance, with a rule handed to me by my cycling club captain and former occasional marathon runner that I shouldn’t run more than once a week.  The time I did surprised me (and I think a few colleagues).  But I fully intended it as a one-off.  That’s until the summer when Mrs CET asked me why I wasn’t doing any running.  I said that I preferred cycling to running because it didn’t hurt so much.   But I decided to give it a go and entered the Basingstoke Half Marathon.  Training was interrupted by tweaking the dodgy groin and I went in underprepared and without much expectation.   (Although I was fit from a summer’s Audaxing including the 1000km Mille Alba.)  To my surprise I finished in the top 50, with a time that’s generally recognised to sort out the runners from the rest.  So I couldn’t let it rest there. 

In 2013 I decided that it was time to stop doing things by halves and go for the whole hog.  The Reading Half and the Combe Gibbet (a 16 mile cross-country run) were done to build up the distance, and the Milton Keynes Marathon was the first full distance event.  The Combe Gibbet was great but I struggled in the second half of the marathon, taking 29 minutes longer than the first half.  It was still what would be recognised as a good time but I wasn’t happy.  Having enjoyed the off-road event more than the on-road event I decided I would try to make amends in the Clarendon Marathon, a one-way trail run from Salisbury to Winchester along the Clarendon Way.  Again, I struggled in the second half, especially because I was about 5 minutes ahead of the start of the Half Marathon that followed the second half of the Marathon course, so on narrow trails I had lots of fitter and faster runners trying to push past.  This time my second half was 35 minutes longer than the first half.  I still needed to run a Marathon properly.

The Internet is a great thing for discovering stuff.  I’d enjoyed the trail run, even if it had hurt a lot.  So I looked up events and found the Enduralife series of coastal marathons.  The Dorset Coast event in December was too close but the Sussex Coast event on 22 March 2014 looked like it had potential.  It would certainly be pretty, starting off over the famous Seven Sisters chalk cliffs, and then going in land for a monster ascent of the South Downs and then more rolling hills before doing a double ascent of Beachy Head, one from Birling Gap and the other from Eastbourne.  26 miles and over 4000 feet of climbing meant that on average the run was either going up at 4% or down at 4% and since there were a few flat or gradual bits some of the hills would be very steep indeed.

What I’d found in previous marathons was that my legs would tie up at a certain distance, which could roughly be described as the distance of my previous longest run less one mile a week from that previous run.  So runs of 19 miles four or five weeks before the marathon weren’t cutting the mustard.  So for this one I gradually built up the distance, 12, 14, 16.5, 19, 21, 23 miles, occasionally stepping down the distance and then moving up again, but the 23 was just 17 days before the marathon.  People said I was crazy, but then I can only fit one run in a week, the rest of my leisure time is taken up with cycling (I’m also in a parallel challenge to ride 50 100km rides this year, with the current tally being 14).  It probably helps that I do have a natural running style (I need no fancy adjustments to my shoes) and I have good balance (from the cycling) and my legs have low mileage (because nearly all my endurance sport was done on the bicycle).

The Event

I left home at 5.30am for the two-hour drive to Birling Gap.  When I got out of the car it was cold and windy, there was no hint of the spring conditions of recent weekends.  Normally I run relatively lightly clothed but made the decision to start with longs, hat and gloves, togged up for the exposure that we would face on the cliff tops.

It is a fairly full-on start to the Sussex Coast Marathon.  After a quick briefing, we filed up for a mass start and we were off.  I started about twelve back, but as soon as we climbed out of Birling Gap I found myself in about fifth.  There was a strong head/cross wind.  It began to rain.  The first hill was steep and hard to run up, but my legs were fresh.  I watched the leading runners ahead of me gradually spread out.  I soon lost count of the ‘Sisters’; it was just a constant roller-coaster of steep up and steep down, with the wind making the crest of each hill as hard as the steepest bit.  Then it began to hail.  By the time I reached the top of the seventh ‘Sister’ I was coated in little pellets of ice, glad that I had worn longs and kept my hat and gloves on.  My sunglasses helped me keep the hail from blinding me.   If it kept this up for the rest of the event it was going to be arduous.

Along the Cuckmere River we became a group of three and had a conversation about cyclists becoming runners, but then we reached a series of steep hills in the woods.  The rain had turned the paths to a gloopy mud on top of a firm base with no traction in my road/dry trail running shoes (during the wet winter I’d looked for a pair of trail shoes but couldn’t get any to fit).  I wasn’t the only one to have problems; the first runner from the Ultra (that had set off 40 minutes before us) was walking up a hill with a large red lump on the side of his right knee.

We descended back to the river and I hoped that I could get a good rhythm, but I struggled once again on the muddy sections and a group of runners caught me up.  There was a fantastic view of Alfriston Church, sitting snug by the river.  As we reached the church I started to make a wrong turn, but was called back just as I saw the wrong way sign.  This allowed a runner to catch up to me and we slithered up a muddy slope together.  After a long hill we traversed the scarp slope of the Downs, with a good view of the ancient chalk figure, the Long Man.  But going sideways across a slippery slope was difficult and I lost ground on the group of runners that passed me.  By now we were passing ultra marathon runners with some regularity.  But the ground was about to turn in my favour.  The path went up a steep north ridge of the Downs.  It was almost impossible to get traction in places on the muddy surface.  I had to walk for two very short sections behind someone else but then got into a rhythm on the grass above.  I wasn’t going any faster than walking pace on the flat but I was still technically running, and I was going faster than those who were walking.  I passed the group that had overtaken me on the slippery ground.  I’d taken my hat off but at the top put it back on again because the wind was cold.  There were fantastic views in all directions and a long springy-turf gentle descent that allowed me to stretch my legs. 

The group of three (the fourth had dropped back) caught me up at the edge of the woods and we had a chat.  They were all locals from Eastbourne and impressed that I’d only started running a couple of years before.  But as the path started to descend more steeply I slithered about and let them go.  I caught them up on the next hill but lost them again in the woods to the half-marathon point.  I was starting to feel low on energy and so grabbed a few jelly-babies to keep me going as I got my tag read to check in.

It was starting to get harder to keep in rhythm.  The route went up and down in the woods, followed by a steep climb including a couple of awkward stone stiles that brought us up to the main road.  I was hoping for an easy descent into Birling Gap but there was a hard climb back onto the coastal cliffs.  On the negative side my legs were definitely tight on the descent but on the plus side I could see all the way to the top of Beachy Head and knew that the next checkpoint would be on the other side.  I felt quite rough on the descent to Birling Gap and it was difficult with all the 10K runners setting off in the opposite direction to us.  I seized the opportunity of a small gap and started up the long ascent to Beachy Head.  As the ground rose I got into the zone, passing runners from other events (in retrospect probably slower half-marathon runners).  One guy from the marathon passed me and I used him as a marker until my brain got tired.  I also caught one of the three I had run with in the woods. 

The descent off Beachy Head was the steepest yet; I couldn’t run down it properly.  The presence of surging waves in the creamy chalky water several hundred feet below heightened the exposure.  By the time I got to the bottom my legs were sore and I couldn’t get back into a rhythm.  I got passed by a couple of runners but caught them up on the next rise.  It was hot in the lee of Beachy Head.  We got to the final checkpoint and I stopped to pack away my hat and gloves and sink a gel.  There was another steep climb and I struggled up this one, my progress could barely be described as running but it wasn’t walking.  At the top it was back into the full-on wind but I consoled myself that there wasn’t much more than 4 miles to go.  What’s more, it was mostly downhill.

The thing I steeled myself for was that just as you could see the finish and hear the crowd, the route took a dog-leg and it was a further two miles.  Everything was hurting by now and even the easy descent was painful.  But I found that zone where I managed to tell the legs to shut up and I was able to keep concentrating on style and rhythm.  At the third attempt I was finally managing to run a marathon properly.  So, when we turned away from the finish for the last two miles, I wasn’t rattled.  The steepness of the last main hill surprised me but I wasn’t going to start walking now.  I started to up my pace (probably from dead slow to slow) and even managed to sprint a little bit to make the gap between two cars on the road to Beachy Head.  One last climb, then it was a mile to go.  Despite the stiffness and fatigue in my legs I tried to open my stride and started to pass the 10k runners with greater frequency. 

There was a lot of noise and confusion at the finish.  I’d pretty much emptied myself in the last few miles and almost fell over a couple of times.  I was almost in tears, not from pain or relief but just from the emotion of absolutely nailing the run.  There wasn’t anything I would have done differently.  It was like my best ever 100-mile time trial on the bike.  When you surrender your electronic tag you get a print out of your split times and your overall position.  “You are currently 11^th out of 11 finishers”.  It took me a while to work out that the software expressed it this way for events where there was a staggered start rather than a mass start.  The second half was only 10 minutes longer than the first half.  Now I’d run a marathon properly.

I was quite done in at the finish and didn’t feel like eating but I bought a soup to keep me going for the hobble back to the car and the battle to change clothes over cramped legs.  But nothing could dampen the delight of having done a good run, through spectacular scenery, on a demanding day.

Reflections

At £50, this was an expensive event.  The fee included free parking, the race, a T-shirt, a free snack at the start and finish and snacks during the run, as well as marking the course.  But it was very well organised, there were 30 people around the course, which was very well marked out and, presumably, a fair amount of negotiation to get permission to hold the event in such an outstanding location.  I’ll almost certainly do another of their events, with the Dorset Coast Ultramarathon (33 miles) in December potentially being the next.