Things get good, then some get bad and then it gets real ugly on a really challenging marathon hike.
So, last year when I was taking on the Seagrave Wolds Challenge I met a fellow walker who told me about this event in March, over to the far east of Leicestershire that was worth doing. This was the first I’d heard of the Belvoir Challenge, a route up and around the titular castle which comes in two flavours: a ‘light’ 15 mile route and a full 26.2 mile marathon. Now, knowing the High Leicestershire region as I do from last year’s Leicestershire Round early stages, common sense should have sent me off to try out the 15 mile route.
Hah. Common sense and I don’t always see eye-to-eye, so I signed up for the full, rather challenging, marathon distance. How was it? Well let’s break it down into some Good, Bads and Ugly.
Good
Checkpoints: The checkpoint teams were totally awesome – hot and cold drinks, piles of food and a warm, cheerful welcome like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Those at the very end and especially the Croxton Kerrial (18.3miles) stops cheered me home/past with hooters, cymbals and horns. They were all uniformly lovely people and my grateful thanks for their efforts ahead of and on the day. As dusk fell and I reached home they really helped make the final painful few hundred meters feel like a piece of cake.
Scenery: The views along the way (let’s ignore underfoot) were, despite the regular rains spectacular. Especially mention has to go of the tour around Belvoir Castle grounds and atop Plunger Wood. There were also a lot of gooses and ducks around the Castle which cheered me on immensely.
Satisfaction: Despite the grumbles below, I am glad I did the route, and today, the day after, sitting here typing this with aching legs and abdomen there is a warm feeling of satisfaction knowing I accomplished a thing. A minor thing in the history of the world, but a bit of a milestone in my own personal walking efforts – RunKeeper I note gave me 4 ‘longest/highest/most’ awards for yesterday – so I know that this was a big win!
Trail Marking: Bar a couple of places I wasn’t sure for a moment, the trail marking with bright signs, and the regular red/white striped tape kept me on course throughout. When I was on my own for over half of the route, it reminded me I wasn’t totally lost in the wilderness of Leicestershire. Kudos to the trail-marking team for their efforts!
Catering: As mentioned above, the catering at the checkpoints was fantastic. I could have stopped and gorged myself more than I did – I grabbed a snack and moved on. Kudos to the chap I saw making a pork pie sandwich at the 12.1 mile stop – that was class!
The Weather: Look, it showered a fair few times, but we also had brilliant sunshine too. Given the weather forecast had been for rain all day – this was a genuine up. I shudder to think how hard the course would have been if the rains had been heavy or constant. It also meant I dried out a little between each muddy, puddle soaking. Given I’ve woken up today to a hard frost – brrr – we were lucky yesterday!
Photographer: Sitting around mile 6 snapping pictures as we dramatically – well me anyway – strode past. I hope I get to see some of those snaps! Especially since they were shortly after Insanity Hill, so I was feeling especially pleased with myself! He was also a really nice chatty fellow, and it was a delight to exchange a few words with him.
Bad
Start: As always with these things, walkers get crowded to the back – which means that (a) we go over the worst of the ground, chewed up by runners, and (b) we literally couldn’t hear any of the briefing on the megaphone. I hope I didn’t miss anything important.
Stiles: I hate stiles at the best of times (install a proper gate, already!) but after 25 miles, and hundreds of runners in front they were thick and slimy with mud. And more than once I rather feared for my personal safety going over them. Not to mention my muscles complaining as I lifted my legs again to clamber over them.
Route Marshals: Compared to the Seagrave Wolds Challenge, where you encounter a route marshal at least every quarter mile – there were 3-4 mile sections of the Belvoir Route where I saw no one – no marshals, and rarely any other entrants. I appreciate being stuck in the middle of nowhere isn’t much fun all day for the marshals, but it did rather make one feel a little abandoned to live or die on what was – undoubtedly – a very physically demanding route.
The Route: Look, hills were a definite on this route, so let’s discount them – numerous though they were. But given the incredibly wet preceding four months, I really feel the route planners should have appreciated this and incorporated more road walking into the course. I estimate 90% of the route was over fields and tracks, which given how muddy they all were, was a big ask to traverse. Even 10% more roads would have given my aching stomach muscles a rest from trying to keep me steady and upright!
Perceptions: On reflection this event should have been classed as a ‘tough mudder’. I’m not really down for those sort of events – I mean, my fitness is pretty good these days but man alive, I don’t think it’s really at those levels (yet?). Had I been prewarned I might have had second thoughts about taking on this course. Then again, had I, well, then where would that satisfaction be at the end, eh?!
Ugly
Mud: I joked in the early miles that like the Inuit we’d have a thousand words for mud by the course’s end – I wasn’t wrong – from thick, to slimy, to tacky, to sucking, to slippery and everything in between. I was walking in Norfolk last week across flooded marshes and submerged trackways. I thought I knew mud – but I have never before encountered mud on a route as deep, thick and constant as the Belvoir Challenge. It was telling a long-distance and ultra-runner friend of mine mentioned after the fact that she’d done the 15 mile route once – and refused to do it again. One of the final fields was so thick with mud, that both my shoes were sucked into it, and I couldn’t actually move – I had to fall backwards and wrench them free in order to continue. And let’s not even talk about hill climbing up super muddy slopes…
Insanity Hill: At mile five heading into Plungar Wood we ascended an incredibly steep hill, which got steeper and muddier the higher we climbed. It reached a point where all of us were more or less on our hands and knees, sliding all over the place. It was genuinely the most challenging climb I’ve ever done, and I confess more than once I was in genuine fear of seriously injuring myself. I made it, but was surprised to find no course marshal at the top – which seems a serious health and safety omission. Had someone fallen or injured themselves, the nearest accessible course official was two miles previously – not ideal at all.
DNF: I made it home a good half an hour before the official close of play. From checking the remote finishers details later, it appears people were still finishing a couple of hours after that, and at least four people ‘unaccounted’. I’m kinda hoping they called it a day and stopped somewhere, rather than being lost in the mud and mire.
Aftermath: Mrs Llama was not happy my how mud coated I was at the end, and after hosing off my trousers in the bath…the bath is now a muddy swamp too. A fitting memorial to a brutally muddy event!
So, on final reflection – would I do it again? Probably not, I’m sorry to say. The route is already quite a challenge and with the uncertainty of February and March weather leaving the course potentially in a horrible state for much of the distance, doesn’t draw me in. Glad I didn’t try filming this course either – I would have probably lost my phone/camera!
Oh okay, maybe I’ll think about doing the 15 mile route next year…just don’t hold me to it!
Walking With Llama Paws 