Tag Archives: Butleigh

Butleigh MT 10k: race report

by Ben

It was the second year in a row running the Butleigh MT 10k for me. Last year’s race summary ended up in my catch-up post in July.

My focus over the past few weeks has very much been looking towards Snowdonia in July. The nature of my training plan means that at the moment I have been adding on distance, rather than looking at any serious speed stuff. While this is absolutely the right approach (I’ll discuss this more in my weekly summary) it does have a slight detrimental affect on my racing at the moment. (If you’ve read enough of these, you’ll know that I like to get my excuses in early.)

As is the case with a lot of the Somerset Series races, Butleigh has a relatively small field, and I wasn’t worried about it selling out, so left it until the day to enter. Even on the day, it was a very reasonable £12. A few of the Somerset Series regulars were missing, possibly because of the Yeovil Half Marathon, which clashed with the race. It was though nice to see Matt Powell, my old sparring partner, back racing again. Well, it was at first.

A gorgeous backdrop that I was entirely unaware of.

We headed over to the start, which was the same as last year, a zig-zag through a field and then out over a bridge. I was chatting to Matt for a little bit as we went around the field – mostly commenting that as his pockets were jangling with some change that he’d forgotten to leave behind, I’d avoid running with him. As it turned out, I didn’t have much of a choice.

Climbing up the first, small hill, Matt passed me and soon opened up something in the region of a 20-metre gap pretty quickly. I dug in to hold it at that as we came onto the first road stretch, just over half a mile, before we turned into the field that had been so horrendous last year. The conditions were definitely better this year, though it was still tough going. Once across the field, we turned into a copse that ran alongside the road. The terrain through this section was fun and technical, though I hadn’t remembered quite what a climb it still was!

When we dropped down the next field, I had hoped to make some headway on those ahead of me on the descent, but no such luck. Or rather, no sudden discovery of previously untapped pace. Back on the road for a short stretch, and then we turned right to head through Butleigh Wood. Or, more properly, the third hill, which feels like it goes on, and on, and on. I made headway up the hill – passing one of the two red-topped runners ahead of me. The pair had been my targets for a while, and I was relatively confident of passing them both before the end.

Climbing through Butleigh Wood.

Coming down the other side, my downhill speed finally seemed to reap some benefit, and I closed right up to the next redshirt.  I remained right on his heels as we dodged the badger holes on the narrow path. I was just behind him through the last bit of field, before we headed back onto the road. Unfortunately, he then started to push away from me again. Or I dropped away from him, I’m not entirely sure which.

So close, and yet so far… After closing in, the redshirt opened the gap back up again at the end.

The bad news (or my bad finish) continued. The second redshirt put on a pretty impressive finish, and passed me just before we entered the playing fields at the finish. Another runner, from Wells City Harriers, also caught up to me during the lap of the football pitch. This time though, I was able to put on a sprint of my own. I had hoped that an initial push would see him off, but he kept coming, so I had to kick again all the way to the line.

Fast finishes aren’t pretty.

I finished in 48:36; thirty-five seconds slower than last year. Most of that was lost in mile two, though I benefited from not getting caught at the road crossing this year. As ever, comparisons aren’t worth too much – the conditions were better than last year, but my training has been anything but. Onward and upward.

Next race(s): Isle of Man Easter Festival of Running 10k (Good Friday) and Peel Hill Race (Holy Saturday)

A race report catch-up: part one

by Ben

So, it would be fair to say that I’ve got out of the habit of updating the blog with my race reports. Well, to be honest, I’ve just stopped writing pretty much anything on it. Which is annoying, as reading my blog reports from previous years is one of my most effective pre-race preparations. This year I’ve raced 11 times, and yet I’ve only put up 4 race reports. Now two of those were Yeovilton 5k races, which I don’t tend to write up properly, but that still leaves five whole races unrecorded.

With this in mind, I’m going to try and summarise my thoughts on each, going back over some short notes I made at the time and the Strava report.

Butleigh MT 10k – 19 March

This was another “new to me” Somerset Series race for 2017. It used to be 7 miles, but this year they dropped it down to 10k. Unfortunately, to make it this distance, the race had to loop some fields at the start and end of the course, which wasn’t great – I’m not convinced that it is important enough to make a race 10k that this looping was needed. But whatever.

I probably, definitely started the race too fast on the initial lap of the field, but wanted to make sure I was in a decent position to avoid having to wait to cross the stile out of the field, which became something of a bottleneck for those behind. We then entered another field (there were lots of the them) which was extremely boggy. Everyone was taking different lines, trying to find some firm ground, but there simply wasn’t any. I ended up tight against the fence on the right-hand side, which I’d initially worried was electric, but it turned out not to be!

At the end of this field, the course rose up towards the road, though we didn’t actually run on the road, but through the trees alongside it. This was apparently the local fly-tipping area too, which a range of furniture and tyres on offer. It wasn’t great terrain to run on, but thankfully I was following another runner, so was able to keep track of the track, so to speak. We dropped back downhill into the fields after this section, and were helpfully warned by the marshal “Careful as you go, very slippy.”

Pack running

He was right – I slipped over. Thankfully it was all just mud, so no harm done, and I barely even lost any time on those I could see ahead of me. I picked up the pace a bit down the hill, but a little more cautiously than normal after my fall. After a short stint back on the road, we turned off it again and up hill. I was passed by another Series regular, Graham, (no surprise there) as we climbed up, but I went back past him once we headed downhill again. For most of the last two miles, four of us ran close together, our positions switching around a few times.

Graham’s course knowledge helped a couple of times, but I was leading the group coming into the last mile. Until the bloody “main” road crossing, when I got held up by a car passing, and the group caught back up to me again!

After a few more twists and turns (and the bloody pointless lap of the field) I finished in a reasonable (given the course and conditions) 48:01. More importantly, I was around, or ahead of, those I considered competitors in the Series.

Yeovilton 5k – 10 May

After Butleigh, I had a couple more weeks of good running before illness (a sinus infection) and the arrival of my new son stymied my running for a while. I skipped the April edition of the Yeovilton 5k Series, and returned in May. My hope was for a time around 20:15. Last year I peaked at 19:13 in September, but I was obviously going to be well short of that. Rightly or wrongly (the latter) I headed out at sub-20 minute pace, ticking off 3:56 and 3:58 for the first two kilometres. Then the wheels fell off; 4:12 for the third kilometre followed by 4:25 and 4:22. My body had just given up on me, though I shouldn’t have been surprised. I finished in 20:48, more or less equivalent to my time at this race in May last year, when I ran 20:44. So, if nothing else, I knew I was in roughly the same place, and so could improve back to the same place as last year.

Wambrook Waddle 10k – 14 May

Lani probably had as much fun as I did at this one!

This race came on the Sunday following the Yeovilton race, and so I was feeling a mixture of disheartened by the 5k result, and confident that hopefully if I had more or less matched my 2016 5k performance, I could more or less match my 2016 Waddle performance. Which I guess I more or less did. I opted to follow the Nigel Baker Race Start TacticTM, which I admit probably isn’t the best long-term plan. It essentially involves doing a race with a downhill start, and then absolutely pegging it down the hill. It was great fun. It probably killed my legs. Unsurprisingly, I lost a lot of places on the subsequent uphill, though I had plenty of fun dropping back down it again after.

In essence, this race was categorised by me not really being mentally prepared for racing in the Somerset Series “lower down the pack”. I saw those that I had previously raced around, but they were way ahead of me, and it was difficult to deal with. I probably had a reasonable race considering my fitness levels, but it just felt like a bit of a fail. But if there is anywhere to do that, it’s the Wambrook Waddle, which remains a gem of a course – impossibly hard for a race that is only 10 kilometres long (though in fact, most of the work is done in the first 5k, it’s just that your legs are completely shot for the second half.) Again, my race time was more or less equivalent to what I ran in 2016 (about 20 seconds slower.)

Wells 10k – 28 May

I did actually do a full write-up on this race, which you can find here: Wells 10k: race report. In summary; felt tough, but managed to equal last year’s time.

Crewkerne 10k – 4 June

This was the final of the more or less back-to-back-to-back Somerset Series races, which featured three 10k events in four weeks. This was a return to a race that I last did in 2015, when I found it really, really tough. The race starts with a steep hill climb, then drops down just as steeply, and then undulates until it loops back around to do that hill in reverse once again. When I did this race in 2015, I’d done about 1,800 ft of elevation so far that year. This time, I’d done 17,300 ft. It’s fair to say that I’m a bit better prepared for hills these days. In fact, the whole race only has about 500 ft of climbing, which isn’t unusual for Somerset Series races.

My time of 44:03 was almost identical to my Wells time of 44:02 the week before, and gave me a lot more confidence. For whatever reason, I just felt strong on the hills, and quick on the descents. Sure, I was still a distance back from the pack of runners I felt I should be with – I could see them for most of the first half of the race before they got too far ahead of me. But I’d come to terms with that now, and knew that I was running for myself, and working my way back to where I had been. Even if I wasn’t there yet.

Right, that’s enough for the moment. I’ll follow this up with part two later on; another go at the Red Bull Steeplechase, the Quantock Beast and my second Yeovilton 5k of the year.