The Grizzly 2022

March 6th 2022

20 miles coastal and inland trail

The Grizzly. Probably the most iconic race to be held in this area of Devon (right on the Dorset border). Entry usually by ballot only and highly oversubscribed.

This race I entered whilst hanging my phone out of the window of my best friend's wedding venue, my hair being done up in a bridesmaid up-do. It took a good half an hour to navigate the system, but I was in! 6 months later the race instructions plopped into my inbox, with phrases like "mud can be waist deep at times", "there are a few miles of pure beach running" and "please ensure your shoes are tied on tightly" sticking in the mind.... The aim: to equal my road marathon PB.

I'd done a parkrun at Seaton (the start) before, and remembered the pebbly beach vividly (thank goodness I hadn't taken the buggy...). However, the scale of the Grizzly was unreal, with over a thousand people milling on this beach, ready for that all important start gun. When it went off, within a minute or so, the sound of a couple of thousand feet running / jogging / walking / crawling along the pebbles was deafening! I picked my way along the beach, keeping in mind the advice not to overdo it on the first beach stretch. From here it was up on the prom (wow what a relief) and up the cliff at the end of Seaton via a winding road.

The route came inland, undulating as only the jurassic coast does, through fields and along tracks, down to the next beach along. Here, there was a very deep estuary water crossing, at which the 10km runners turned back to return along the beach, whilst we carried on along the river valley. At this point I noticed a few people pausing to tip water out of their shoes, and was seriously questioning my decision to wear waterproof shoes. Whilst they normally keep my feet dry, once underwater they did a great and unwelcome job at keeping the water in :(

I carried on to some farmland, heading up and over, spotting runners returning through the nearby fields. A lovely, gradually rising woodland section followed, which I failed to enjoy to its maximum potential thanks to the shuffle of runners ahead of me. The Grizzly was a *busy* course, my navigation worries were unfounded as I never found myself more than a couple of metres from another runner, and the string of runners formed a consistant snake for the duration of the race. This made things tricky when wanting to overtake, with the single track paths not lending themselves to rearrangement of runners. Oddly, this race felt like a majority of normally road runners, and the pace on the trails was somewhat tentative at best.

Soon we were rewarded with the infamous thigh-deep mud, climbing out and up a mud bank (assisted with a rope) and along the top of a ridge to the turn point. The route largely stuck to the coast on the return, with a few more water crossings and plenty of undulations. I had a better sense of direction on the return and indeed had walked some of the stretches too. I found myself doing a lot of overtaking on the beach, which was hard work but runnable for me, then the final rise was a fun stride up the cliff. From here, mainly down into Seaton, reaching the roads for a mile or so sprint at the end.