Hellrunner South takes place at Longmoor Army Camp, Bordon, Hampshire. It is part of a national series of events that take part yearly up and down the country sponsored by Brooks.
I didn't know the course but I did know to expect the infamous 'Bog of Doom' and the 'Hills of Hell'.
When it comes to running, I'm a bit of a purist, I run because...well, I like to keep running! I've done a similar event 'The Grim' (which I'm doing again next Sunday) which like the Hellrunner, features water obstacles along the way. To me this is more like competing in Total Wipeout than a running race.
As long as you go into these type of events with a different mindset, ie: Time means nothing and I'm going to get wet! then you will be fine. I had this in my head that this was more a training run than a race.
With 2000 people running, and the run starting at 10am, I would advise to get there at 9am. I was running this event with running partner Brian, and we were not parked up until 9:15am, which wasn't a problem and made for less waiting around but meant queueing in traffic for a while.
Miraculously the weather had broken into clear blue skies and not as cold as expected for the time of year. At the start area there was the usual stalls set up selling running apparel and the Clif company selling their energy and recovery products. They also had bite size tasters of their products to try, which was a welcome pre race boost and very popular with everyone.
Lined up at the start we waited for a devil on stilts to make his way down the road ahead wielding canisters of green smoke, followed by fireworks and a large explosion which I assume meant that we were off.
The course is, and I quote from the official web site 'Somewhere between 10 and 12 miles'. Not the most helpful but I'm guessing that it is nearer to 10 than 12....I'm going with 10.5 miles.
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| Brian and myself, early on...dry and clean! |
The course is challenging not only with the hills going up but coming down can be quite hair raising too and very unpredictable under foot. This would be a great course to run on your own one weekend because with the amount of people running, from the very first hill you hit a queue and are forced to walk. This was the biggest problem all the way round, every hill for the best part of the race was a bottleneck.
There are some hills that were very tough not only because of the gradient but also a lot have sand under foot making it doubly hard to get up. The water features are probably the highlight of the race because they are so different to what you're used to on a Sunday run. The good thing about the water features are that they come towards the end of the race, so there are no silly water obstacles along the way put in for the sake of getting wet.
The Bog of Doom is the first of the water to overcome, a stretch of black, stinky water that you have to wade through with the level above the waist. There are roots underfoot that cannot be seen and can easily be tripped on, and yes right towards the end I tripped, luckily my arm partly breaking my fall.
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| The Bog of Doom |
After this it's more hills to cope with and with wringing wet trainers and shorts to drag you back. It's not long before you're back in the water again, this time with the lake crossing. This consists of reaching the top of a 20 ft sand bank that you have to slide down before wading across a quite large expanse of water before attempting to climb the same sized bank back up again.
With the water features out the way it's then the final couple of miles back to the finish, which again consists of...you guessed it, hills and also the sand dunes, an undulating trek across the sand before hitting the tarmac and crossing the finish line.
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| The sand dunes |
I finished with a chip time of 1:39:52. If this was nearer 12 miles or 11.75 miles as someone told me on Twitter today then that would give me a mile pace of 8:30. When running I was probably running close to this if not a little faster, but with the stops at most of the hills and the water obstacles there is no way I was maintaining this pace. If I go with 10.5 miles that gives me a pace of 9:30 which overall is probably nearer the mark. If anyone has the precise distance, please let me know.
Overall this event was better than I expected, as I said at the beginning, you are best going into this race with no expectations and treating it as a really good testing, training run. The organisation was generally good, a scattering of Marshall's, one water stop (It needed no more) and a great goody bag at the end which included a Brooks tech training T-shirt.
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