Running the Grizzly Cub 2022 at Seaton
The irony about getting injured before a race is that, in all likelihood, you're only injured because of the race. After all, what are you training so hard(ish) for if not that? I signed up for the Grizzly 2022 in November 2021; the right length of time away for me to be at peak optimism. A.k.a., winter hadn't quite arrived so I'd forgotten what annual funsies that brings and the race was still four months away. Four months! That's enough time to become a wizard at hills and teach my legs how to run 20 miles. Off-road.
Which is definitely true for someone who follows a gradual plan and understands that just because they're not injured now does not mean that an injury is not in their future.
Not so much for me.
I continued to run the same distance as usual, only this time I added 300m of elevation into my runs. At the beginning. Like an idiot. Going from sitting at my desk working to running up a huge hill with only walking up the stairs to get changed as a warm-up is not, as it turns out, a good recipe for a healthy training plan.
In retrospect, it seems pretty obvious.
But this attitude crops up time and time again in (my) life. I see that my body can take a significant beating and so I just think next time. Next time I'll drink more water, next time I'll eat after, next time I'll get an early night, next time I'll warm up. But 'next time', like 'tomorrow', never comes, and so you end up effectively just abusing your body. Until it says MMKAY NO THANKS BRUH.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that, in January 2022, my Achilles tendon started raising some complaints. Complaints that were at first much like the shy person in a meeting who puts their hand up but lowers it when someone with a bigger ego talks instead. But when you ignore your quiet but thoughtful coworker enough, one day they're going to throw their water glass across the boardroom and start screaming that you're all talking out of your ass and that actually it's them you should be listening to.
Which is exactly what my Achilles was building up to. Except I'm not the person with the loud voice. I'm the person who hates meetings so I proverbially sit there watching everyone talk and not talk, occasionally looking out the window and being disappointed it doesn't open. Eventually I decided it was time to give the floor to the Achilles, not the Ego that says, 'but if I don't run 15km up some big hills my #strava won't look good even though it's on private setting'.
Are you still with me?
So I did what anybody in my position would do. I turned up on race day and switched my 20 mile Grizzly number for a 9 mile Cub number and told my tendon that if it behaved I'd buy it an ice cream.
Running the Grizzly Cub 2022
The Cub is just called the Cub, but I'm going to persist in calling it the Grizzly Cub for SEO purposes. Also because it's cuter.
Here's the deal with the Grizzly race in general. It's a Big Race held in the small town of Seaton. Seaton sits on the coast in the south of England, in East Devon. Devon is so big we need to split it into its geographical quadrants just to cope.
There are lots of towns along this coast, each in its own valley, separated by significant hills and situated around the edge of Lyme Bay. Sort of like a cul-de-sac of detached houses: everyone thinks theirs is the best but regularly go to the others to make sure they're not getting too big for their boots.
You've got your Jones' – Lyme Regis, Exmouth and Sidmouth. I mean, really Lyme Regis is the big fancy house with the Palladian entrance and the other two are renovating on finance but whatever. Then you've got your calmer, sweeter towns like Budleigh Salterton, Beer and West Bay (I think, I don't know, I've never actually been to West Bay). All get tourists. Lots of them.
Then you've got Seaton.
Seaton's an interesting place. It's got a beach, a long promenade, wonderful walking, epic cliffs, friendly people and yet it hasn't reached the dizzy heights of its neighbours. Which is one of the reasons why a) it's such a cool place to swing by and b) why the Grizzly is such a big deal. It's not often Seaton gets 2000 people descending on it in the tail end of winter. And Seaton does not hold back.
In every shop window on Grizzly day there are mentions of the race, pictures of bears, paw prints and discounts. On the balconies and in the front gardens, there are local residents ringing bells, waving flags and cheering. It's the friendliest place to be when running a tough race.
Grizzly day 2022 – we're getting there I promise
So, come Grizzly day, the town fills up with cars and we were directed to the seafront, given a parking permit for the day and a sea view. I headed to the nearest portaloo, already four wees in by 0930 and curious how much more liquid my bladder could spontaneously create.
I headed to race HQ in the town hall and elbowed my way through the throngs of runners milling about in the warmth. Oh, did I not mention it was about 7C and blowing a freezing northerly wind? It was.
I found the number change table in the farthest corner, not easy for someone 5'4" surrounded by runners of Latvian proportions. I changed my Grizzly number for a Cub number, not surprised to see a whole stack of spare Cub numbers giggling in a box together saying 'ahaha but in November you thought you were too good for us eh?' Assholes.
I had considered that my Achilles pain was psychosomatic, a symptom of my brain saying, 'erm this looks too hard let's pull a sickie' but I ran a couple of days ago and can confirm that no, it really does just hurt.
I headed back to the portaloos for a Safety Wee – the type forced upon children by parents about to embark on a long car journey.
'But I just went!' they whine.
'GO AGAIN.'
I saw my sister in the queue, hopping up and down because she was both cold and desperate for a real wee. Sure, running races are hard but to be honest, managing one's internal waste system is the real battle.
My dad, stepmother, brother-in-law and my own patient partner stood in a huddle. My sister headed off to the front of the huge pack of runners as she has a propensity to come in the top three women for the Grizzly, and I wormed my way mid-pack.
The gun went off and we all started doing the mid-pack shuffle before reaching the beach and breaking into an actual run as people spaced out. This first section was along the shingle beach for a kilometre before you run through the sailing club hardstanding and back along the promenade road westwards, towards the first big hill. I'd been wearing a non-Buff-buff and a thermal headband, both of which I'd tucked into my run pack at the end of the beach. I mean, beach runs are bitches but they sure do warm you up.
The first hill meandered up through the town and was lined by supporters and people cheering from their gardens. Then came a brief downhill before another uphill, steeper, and then an exhilarating descent into Beer.
Beer is the type of village you'd put on a postcard and send to someone who read a lot of Enid Blyton as a child. It also lacks anything flat. You run steeply down, then steeply up the other side. Then comes a tough, steep hill through a holiday park and boom, you're running across the cliff top with magnificent views. This is why I've come to love trail running in the last year, especially in Devon – the views are just so damn good.
At the end of this hilltop-of-joy came the 4-mile mark and my Achilles had worked out what was going on and was doing its best to stop things. To the point where I realised I might have to pull out. Optimism only gets you so far. I ran down a very steep hill to Branscombe Mouth, where the Cub and the Grizzly plunge through a 2-metre-wide, knee-deep river that's just flowed from the Arctic Circle and discovered that what optimism can't quite achieve, freezing an injury certainly can. Pain gone, I turned at the marker where the Grizzly split away to go explore muddy hills, and proceeded to run the full kilometre eastwards along Branscombe beach into a horrific headwind where every footfall felt like it was stealing all of my energy and power.
The return
I know it was a kilometre because I just measured it on the map but, I mean, it felt like five.
Lots of people were walking that section but I really couldn't bring myself to. Not because it was easy enough to run, but I just had to get out of that wind. That nice layer of sweat I'd built up over the preceding hills? Yeah, now the wind was co-opting that to rob my body of every ounce of heat it had. Ugh.
After the beach came the Stairway of Heaven, a lengthy, meandering path up the cliff face which was so steep it had steps cut into it. Let's not beat around the bush here, me and my fellow runners walked this, jogging the ledges and staggering the rest. With a vertical drop on our right hand side and only half our brain cells after the Beach of Doom, I think running would've ended up in an air ambulance call out.
At the top of the cliff, I hugely enjoyed the undulating clifftop run back to the holiday park and back into Beer. By this point, runners were significantly spaced out and I was the only runner in sight coming through Beer. So when all the spectators started cheering, it was only for me, which was so lovely I could've hugged them.
In fact, I could've hugged every single marshal I saw, because they were all absolute heroes.
It was a nice boost too, because what goes down in Beer must come back up again, and so began the slog back to the top of Seaton's hill. Now everything started to hurt. When I finally rounded a corner need the top of the hill and saw my dad with his camera, I found some extra energy to look vaguely spritely, but 300 metres further up the road and the sprightliness was nowhere to be found. No matter, it was only downhill to go.
The finish
I'm a big fan of a sprint finish and always manage to find some extra juice to enact one of these. But at the end of the Grizzly Cub, my sprint finish was a little half-arsed. Still, I got across the line after 01:40 running and managed to not fall over. Hurrah!
I gingerly headed back to the car for a full costume change and in the process of resting my feet on the dash to do up my clean shoes, muscles in my thighs that I legitimately did not know existed, began cramping so badly it took me about 5 minutes to just get my shoes on. Then I headed back to the finish line to await my sister, who managed to finish the Grizzly just over an hour later than I finished the Cub. Très vite.
Stats: 1 hr 40 mins, 15 km, 450 metres elevation gain.
If you want to hear me talking about the race while lolloping around muddy trails – I made you a video: