I took the notion to enter Beachy Head a year ago, after marshalling the 2017 event. I hadn’t done a marathon for a while, and hadn’t done Beachy since 2008. The 2017 day was fine, the runners who passed me were in high spirits. I should join them, I thought.
Training began in July. I lost some time through illness, but not, I hoped, enough to matter. I’d run a half-marathon and two fifteen mile races earlier in the year. The trouble is, I’m slow. The fifteen milers took me 3 hours 40 minutes, roughly.
The weather forecast predicted a bright but cold day, with northerly winds. I chose to wear a t-shirt in Seaford Striders blue, with long-sleeved top, and a Strides vest on top of that. On the day I arrived at St Bede’s school at the foot of Beachy Head, delivered by Mrs R. I felt a chilly, which suggested I had probably judged my clothing correctly. I made my way to the baggage room, dropped off my rucsac, and engaged in my pre-race routine of multiple visits to the gents. When the public address system summoned us to our places in the road outside the school, I put myself somewhere fitting, not too near the speed-merchants at the front, but not so far back as to become entangled with the walkers, who were brandishing their Nordic poles menacingly. I met some of the other Striders running the marathon and the 10k, many of them newer members of the club who’ve come through our Couch to 5k programme.
When I used to run Beachy Head, the start was signalled by the firing of a maroon. This tradition seems to have lapsed, which is a shame. Instead we were started in a much more pedestrian way. The numbers participating have increased greatly. I think, when I used to do it, numbers were capped at 1,500, including the walkers. in the 2018 race, 2,211 finished, so more started, and many more entered but didn’t make it on the day. An index of this is the time it took to cross the line. If I subtract my chip time from my gun time, there is a difference of three and a half minutes, the time it took to cross the start line.
Everyone knows, and fears, the first section of the race, a clamber up a steep slope. The numbers of runners meant progress was slow, as it would be for the first three miles or so of the race. I wanted to run, to start as I meant to continue, but it was impossible. Even once we reached the top, the narrowness of the paths kept us mostly to walking pace. From here, crossing two roads and passing the golf club, we made our way over the downs to Jevington. According to the course profile, this takes in the highest point of the race, Willingdon Hill at 193m. In Jevington there was the first of the many refreshment stops, and then we climbed a long hill, past the gallops, and into Friston Forest and a downhill. Here the dry weather of recent weeks helped us. I’ve known these paths to be treacherous when wet, but today we strode along, as sure-footed as the goats that used to graze on Lullington Heath.
At the top of Wentover Hill the views were spectacular, prompting a blasphemous obscenity from one of my fellow runners. The nearby marshals, from a religious organisation, took it in their stride. Down we went towards Alfriston. Another runner held forth to his companion, decrying people who chat on runs, not paying sufficient attention to hazards such as tree-roots. He went on in this vein for some considerable time; I longed for him to trip.
In Alfriston we took the path up towards Bo Peep, another tough ascent. By now, the crowding had lessened and I could have run, but I began to walk the worst of the uphill stretches. I was delighted to meet Rob and Paula, fresh from Peacehaven parkrun, who came to meet me and ran with me as far as Bo Peep, that place of mystic significance where the routes of the Beachy Head marathon and the Moyleman touch. At another refreshment station (bananas, biscuits, Mars bars) I bade farewell to them, and headed on a part of the route I know very well, the fields between Bo Peep and Seaford. After the half way point, where a lock proclaimed my time as 3:34, the route turns east at Five Ways, passing above the Rathfinny vineyard, a new addition since I ran the race in 2008. At High and Over I met the Seaford Striders marshals, who provided water, moral support and encouragement and brownies, before a descent to cross the Cuckmere, to another refreshment point in Litlington (buns, soup, tea, biscuits and two gentlemen bashing out covers of Neil Young songs on small guitars).
From here we took a path over a field and into the edge of Friston Forest, climbing two sets of steps, before descending to Except. There Mrs R stood, camera at the ready, to capture this vision of athleticism and speed.
By now I’d covered about 19 miles of the distance. I still had some reserves, but did myself no good at all, when stopping to talk to Rob and Simon of Seaford Striders, by knocking my head on a signpost. Nevertheless, off I went, up and down, up and down over the Seven Sisters and the totally unnecessary extra ascent. At Crowlink the Coastguard provided more refreshment, while at Birling Gap there was yet more. From here the end feels near, but can be a good hour away. There’s a long winding path, flat at first, but then beginning to climb, that goes inshore from Belle Tout, and then Beachy Head itself. I struggled up, walking, walk-running, and sometimes running after a fashion. At the top Mrs R, who had been following me round the last seven miles in the car, met me. She later said she feared I’d had a stroke, as I looked terrible, and was running sideways. It’s true I was now far from fresh, and my left side, injured in a cross-country fall two weeks before, was painful, at foot and at hip. I struggled on, through the path through the bracken, and on to fall down the final hill. I finished in a chip time of 7:11:12, 1951th of 2211 finishers.
The winner was Andy Coley-Maud of Clapham Chasers in the frankly crazy time of 2:49:02, (four minutes off the course record of 2:45 set by Mike Bradley in 1991), and the first lady was Rebecca Bunting in 3:16:42. Other notable performances were Rick Curtis, purveyor of coffee to the running gentry through the Ground coffee shops in Brighton and Lewes, who finished in 3:22:52, and my fellow Seaford Striders, Jeff Young, 3:53:34, Ben Letschka 4:08:11, Louisa Scola 4:48:23, Anna Norman 4:56:48, Debbie Plant 6:20:12, Stacey Jones 6:27;26, Richard Honeyman 6:47:42 and Becky Souissi, who has been left out of the official results.
Recovery is going reasonably well. I’ve been afflicted with a shocking post-marathon cold. My hip and foot have stopped hurting. I may attempt a small run with the Striders tomorrow. But I have run my last marathon. It was my thirteenth, and my sixth at Beachy Head.
