Bedford Clanger Marathon

I'm not sure which is the biggest relief.  Completing the third marathon of the year or England's narrow victory over Scotland in the Six Nations.  Why is it Scotland can always raise their game to give England a hard time?  Of course, I know why.  They still hold a grudge for 100s of years of English rule.   The rugby this weekend has thrown up a surprising win for Italy over France (who would have predicted that?), a controversial win for Wales over Ireland and a narrow victory for England in a frustrating game.

I had to make another sacrifice at the weekend in the name of my ambitious target.  A friend was holding his 39th birthday party last night, complete with samba band with which he is a member.  Ruth and I popped along for a brief period of time and had one drink before returning home for an early night.  I would have liked to have stayed longer.  I enjoyed the brief bit of samba that I heard, but was glad I took my ear plugs.

I can't imagine that anyone else at the party last night got to see 6:45am this morning, unless they were just on their way home.  That's the time that I got up so that I could have my breakfast and get my kit organised ready to leave for Bedford at 7:45am to ensure I was there in time to start the race at 9am.  I was there in plenty of time, along with many more other competitors than I had expected.  The start line itself was very vague, in that there didn't seem to be one.  Everyone just gathered outside the registration tent and when 9 o'clock arrived we were set off on our way.

Competitors gathering outside the registration tent

The start of the race was at Box End Watersports Centre to the west of Bedford.  From here it headed more or less due north across a mixture of road and trail to the village of Stevington, where we'd pass through the first checkpoint at about mile 5.  Competitors quickly became very spread out after the first couple of miles, and I almost missed a turn, but was shouted by a runner behind me (thanks, whoever you were).  At the first checkpoint I was overtaken by a group of five runners.  I was taking advantage of the Jaffa cakes that were on offer, but the group behind me just carried on running through the checkpoint.

After the checkpoint the marathon followed the course of the Great River Ouse for about a mile, before once again joining back onto tarmac at a pretty little bridge. 

Bridge over the River Ouse at about mile 6.

At this point we were mostly heading due east around the north edge of Bedford.  We passed through pockets of countryside and several housing estates.  There has been much development in this area, to such an extent that my photocopied map was completely unreliable, and even the race instructions were out of date at one point.  Whilst trying to make sense of the instructions I was caught once again by the group of five runners who had previously passed me at checkpoint 1, and who I'd then overtaken.  We had a group discussion before reaching a decision about which way we should go.  At this point I decided I'd stick with the group, rather than risk getting lost on my own.

It was also at about this point that I realised I'd made an error in my choice of running shoe.  After running the Cambridge Boundary Marathon in road shoes and regretting not wearing trail shoes, I opted to wear my trail shoes this time, on the advice of the organisers, which proved to be a mistake.  The sections of the route that were on trail were very firm underfoot, and there were considerably sections on tarmac.  We hadn't reached halfway and my feet were feeling mashed.  Life would be so much simpler if I didn't have a choice of shoe.

We continued eastwards until we reached the third checkpoint at the village of Salph End, and roughly the halfway point of the marathon.  From here we started to make our way south around the east end of Bedford.  We ran through some fairly uninspiring countryside, passed underneath the busy A421 Trunk Road, and around the artificial landscape created by the Willington gravel pits and then started heading westwards towards the village of Cardington and checkpoint 4 at 19 miles.

At checkpoint 4 - mile 19

As we left Cardington I noticed the village sign, which included a picture of an airship.  Was this the centre of airship construction, I wondered?  A kilometre or so further on my question was answered as we passed two enormous airship hangers.  A google search has confirmed this to be the case.  The R-31 and R-32 airships were built here in 1915.  Airship construction continued at the site until the late 1920s.  It was here that the R101 was built.  But when that airship crashed in October 1930 all airship construction ceased.  In the late 1930s the site became a centre for the construction of barrage balloons and the No.1 RAF Balloon Training Unit.  I bet you never expected to get such an education from this blog.

Shortly after seeing the airship sheds we headed north, passing underneath the A421 once more and then through a large section of residential streets to the southwest of Bedford.  I have to say that this part of the course was fairly uninspiring, and the group I was with thought that it would have been better if we'd run the course anti-clockwise to get through this section earlier on.  However, we soon reached the final checkpoint at mile 23.5, and from here we had a fairly scenic run along the banks of the River Ouse all the way to Church End, which was then just a few hundred metres from the finish back at Box End Watersports Centre.

Marathon number 3 done.

I crossed the finish line in something like 3 hours and 50 minutes.  My Garmin tells me that I ran a little over 27 miles.  The group I had run the majority of the marathon with mostly finished at the same time.  At the finish the organisers were ready to offer us tea or coffee, and there was a huge pile of home made cake to tuck into.  There were also a few mini clangers - a Bedford variation on the pastie, which have a meat filling at one end and a sweet filling at the other.  We had pork and apple in our mini clangers.

On the whole, I'd say that this was an enjoyable marathon to do, but not for first timers.  It was tough, and the need to self navigate adds a level of complexity you don't get at larger marathons.  However, it's certainly good value for money at £9.75.