Bear Essentials 🐻

Welcome back, my friends
to the show that never ends.
We’re so glad you could attend!
Come inside! Come inside!

The ever organised person, who I’m not, had the forethought to recce the Harriers Tuesday night run on Friday therefore leaving Monday free for lounging. Sunday was Grizzly day. The Grizzly is a gently meandering and slightly undulating 20 mile jog around the coastal paths, through bogs and river crossings in South Devon. My preparation for races always including an easy run the day before, if only to boost my own confidence. It used to be 5-8 miles around the ‘idyllic’ roads of Tewkesbury, floods permitting, but nowadays is the wonderfully organised Burnham and Highbridge park run. 5km of park and esplanade. Cheery smiling, hungover faces with the occasional canine or child. It was International Woman’s Day this weekend so the theme was…6 Nations Rugby no, International Woman’s Day and the park run was a ladies takeover. Maybe it should have been men doing that for the women but hey ho. 492 runners, joggers and walkers took part and I swear 2/3 were women, well it seemed like it.

With apologies to Gordon Lightfoot. My version of The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald. I thank you. By now you would probably notice I like to add a musical reference. So hear (sic!) it goes.

The legend lives on from South Devon downs
Of the cult race they called The Grizzly
The Grizzly, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of March turn gloomy
With a load of runners in awe a couple of thousand or more
Without breakfast Clive Baker weighed empty
That good runner and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of March came early

BoS Harriers was the pride on the Somerset tide
Coming back from some run we ran in
As the fast runners go, we were more sedate than most
With a crew and good captain well reasoned
Including some meds to stop a couple of churns
When they left fully loaded for Seaton
And later that morn when the town crier’s bell rang
Could it be the north wind they’d been feelin’?

Road trip was with Chairman Canvas Love, Madame Pompomadour and Captain Bakey in the Skip Mobile. On the way down we were serenaded by Ozzie Osbourne and Bryan Adams and what arias they sang to bolster our mood for running 20 miles. After about 45 minutes, Canvas needed a ‘comfort’ break. He stopped his passion wagon, leapt out into a field only to be confronted by the biggest pig in Devon. He changed his mind and crossed the road but was clearly visible to all in his bright yellow Harriers jacket.

We rocked up in Seaton and met up with the other participating Harriers Tracey Thomas and Ians Booth and Waude. The skies opened and rained for a solid hour before start time. We were huddled in our cars hoping it would subside for that final sprint to the loo. In my experience the queue to wash your hands was longer than the queue for the toilet.

Assembled on the start line the rain had stopped and the sun was shining like a perfect Spring morning. The first mile is a loop along the shingle beach, past the boatyard and the up and away on the first climb. It then sweeps down to Beer, up through a caravan park and along the coastal path to Branscombe Beach. At this time Madame Pompomadour was about to spend my money on a full English breakfast and the arcade machines.

At Branscombe Beach the race splits. The Cub runners turn left and head back to Beer and Seaton, Grizzlies turn right and climb. Soon after this point we encountered the real mud and I quickly discovered that I may have made an error in judgement. In the week leading up to the race I had been suffering with a cold and a severe lack of self belief and confidence. I thought that I had no way near done enough training but sheer bloody-mindedness had to push me on. I didn’t want to be the only Harrier not to go the whole way. I wanted that happy ending and I wanted that happy smiling face that Tracey and myself had the previous year running the Cub.

The next few, well 10-12, miles were running hell. Hills and mud, not to mention two bogs and the hill in the picture. I’ve ‘bonked’ (run out of energy due to poor calorie intake) before but I felt in a bad place today and the gels didn’t seem to help. My physiology is greatly different since my illness so my preparations for long runs and long races have now been reduced to chance. Maybe that just one more marathon dream has to be binned.

Back down to Branscombe Beach and the long drag over the shingle and the last massive climb and down back through the caravan park to a stall giving out free samples of beer from a local brewery. After the all the water energy gels, this beer was the best thing to touch my lips since kissing Tracey Danter at primary school when went on a school trip to Bristol Zoo in 1970. Back down to Beer, a road crossing, another shortish climb and the back to Seaton. I was feeling a lot better now and smugly proud of myself for completing the toughest race/run I’ve ever ran.

At the finish, after being hosed down by the ugliest, dopiest fireman in the South West, I met up with Canvas and PomPom and went looking for Tracey to go and have a celebratory beer. Alas, we couldn’t find her and journeyed home looking for a suitable hostelry on the way. We found one. Ye Olde Poppe Inn, Tatworth near Chard. Although there were several cars in the car park, the pub was empty apart from the landlord and his laundry. This was definitely a local pub for local people. We had one drink and quickly left.