The Main Event The Bath Running Festival
Damian Hall takes on a hilly Bath Running Festival marathon route – and emerges victorious
‘FESTIVALS’ OF RUNNING are becoming a bit of a thing. You’ve only to spend a few minutes browsing the RW race listings and you’ll find several offerings. Held either over one day, a weekend or several days, these events feature quite a number of distance options to which equal organisational attention has been paid and from which participants are invited to take their pick.
My options here were a 500m sprint event, a 5K, 10K, a ‘long’ half marathon (16 miles) and a marathon, all on lumpy trail terrain, of which there is plenty surrounding the lovely city of Bath.
I chose the full eye-candy experience by signing up for the marathon. When race day dawned and the thermometer said 25C, my first thought was that tackling the 650m of climb in that heat was going to be… interesting. But I still fancied a crack at this one.
The shorter events began first from the grounds of Bath Uni, but it was our turn soon enough and our task started easily, with some gentle trails through the woodland surrounding the campus. After less than a mile, however, we were bombing downhill on a fairly hairy single-track. From there we burst briefly onto the wide streets of the city centre before a third terrain change, onto the picturesque towpath of the Kennet & Avon canal.
After a pleasant mile and a half by the water we left the canal (we would be back, more than once), took in another road section, then sauntered over the handsome Grade Ii-listed, 19th-century Bath Easton Toll Bridge. Via a small wooded loop, we ducked under it and reached an aid station, where, eager to test the race’s claims of fuel-station greatness, I was overwhelmed by chocolate cornflakes, cereal bars, jelly beans, malt loaf, crisps, oranges, bananas and flapjacks. Delicious but quite unnecessary after a handful of miles.
It was a decent slog up Banner Down, north of the city, and most of us walked it, the temperatures seeming to rise as we did. And
then, finally, lungs burning, sense of self-loathing peaking… we reached the 170m-high summit, where I stopped for a wide-ranging chat with myself.
It was soon back downhill through root-strewn woods and long-grassed fields. At the end of a lane waited a second super-steep climb – this one formed of loose stones and scree stretching up through a tunnel of trees. I tried to run it at first, but was soon reduced to levering my way up, sweaty hands pressed on grumpy, unwilling thighs.
When I got to the top I caught, in between tall yellow flowers and fluttering butterflies, a glimpse of Bath in the vast valley ahead. The idyllic scene is still pastel-washed in my mind in hazy sunshine and wholesome happiness.
A little further on, around mile eight, we climbed up the back of Solsbury Hill. Older readers will know the name from the 1977 Peter Gabriel song of the same name. He wrote it after a spiritual experience on the hill soon after leaving Genesis. The lyrics refer to an eagle flying out of the night; I saw no eagle and the only experience I was having was one of overheating – but as I looked about, the sight of long, wiggly, green valleys spreading into the distance all around made me grin.
After a fun downhill on a gradient that was just enough to let me fly without braking, and then a country lane, it was back through Bath Easton to the canal. The marathon route is two laps of the half marathon but with one of the climbs left out. The potential for mental torture was considerable, but the testing course was made much more tolerable by the act of passing lots of runners – doing both distances – who, almost to a person, whooped each other on.
With most of the half-marathon runners gone, the second half of the race was quieter. Marshals did their best to stay out of the sun, using umbrellas and trees as cover. At aid stations I poured more liquid over my head than down my gullet, on one occasion almost throwing a full cup of cola in my own face.
Back over Solsbury Hill, back along the canal and back through the Bath suburbs, where one final, cruel incline awaited my shattered legs. With a short distance to go I spotted that some wonderful local had placed a sprinkler beside the pavement. I veered unsteadily through it and was given the energy to stumble to the finish line, a sweaty but elated mess, where pasta, ice pops, a massage and a couple of hundred sunbathing finishers awaited.
‘That was, quite honestly tougher than climbing Kilimanjaro,’ said the bloke next to me, not unreasonably. For the moment, I could only nod in silent, knackered agreement.
The next Bath Running Festival takes place on July 28. relishrunningraces.com