My family, almost every time we've skyped for the last three or four weeks has kept asking me, "did you do your race yet?!" And I've had to say, no, that's in a few weeks, no, that's next week. But, huzzah! it finally came!
Let me start at the beginning.
Before even coming out to the London program, I knew that I wanted to run a race in the UK. How cool would that be? Awesome. First one in my family to run an internatio
nal race. So, I started looking online to find a race that met my requirements. First, it had to not be on a Sunday. I don't run on Sundays. Second, it had to be within a time slot of four days; November 9th,10th, 11th, or 12th. One of those four days I could do, but any other time and it might be tricky (unless the race was in London itself). Our professors told us that those days were a weekend that we would be allowed to travel (in groups of 3 or more) anywhere we wanted to go. So, that weekend was ideal for a race; I could travel to the location, hang out, stay the night, and then that next morning, go run the race.
Well, these requirements were harder to meet than at first I had anticipated. I searched hard and long, but it's really difficult to find a race that isn't on Sunday. Most races (at least Half-marathons and marathons) are on Sundays because... well, I don't know why, but they are. And fewer still tend to land on the exact day that you need it, just because... idk, murphy's law maybe?
Finally, after trudging through mounds of internet data, I found the gem. The CTS Endurancelife race series; a series of 7 trail races that include 10k, half, marathon, and ultra races at each Race. They are located all along the southern coast of Wales and England, in some of the country's most beautiful areas. And one of them just so happened to fall on November 12th, the Saturday of my travel weekend!
So, it was decided. When I got to London, i found two other girls, Carolyn and Nicole, who volunteered to go with me to Wales (my race was in Southern Wales, on the Gower Peninsula) so I could run my race.
So, before we could go on the trip we had to figure out transportation (we took the train), a place to sleep (Southmead Bed and Breakfast, a quaint little B&B that was clean, friendly and had a good continental breakfast), and then how to get around once we got there (the bus system). After many hours of planing and preperation, we had tickets to travel, a reservation at our B&B in Llanelli (a little town nearby Swansea, the town which is at the neck of the Gower Peninsula), and we were ready to go.
So, after much planning, preparation and training, we made it out to Wales.
The first day was a little bit stressful because we got in to Swansea in late afternoon, just as the sun was setting. So, we were wandering around the city, looking for the bus to take us to Llanelli, with a map printed out from google maps and carrying all our stuff in the dark. It was great. But the people were really friendly and we finally made it to our B&B after asking directions from the nice lady in the Newspaper store.
So, the next morning, we made the hour bus ride from Llanelli back into Swansea, and, noticing that it was actually a really nice, sunny day, we changed our plans (to explore the city that day) and instead headed to the bus station and found a bus to take us down to Rhossili (the little town where my race was to be held!) down by the coast in the Gower peninsula. It had been forcasted to be a nasty, wet day, but it turned out to be, surprizingly, a gorgeous, 60 degree weather day.
My wellies!
We had a great time down in Rhossilli. It took about an hour to get there, but the landscape was beautfiul, all the oranges and browns and reds and golds forming a leafy blanket over the land as we drove past sheepfields and up and over hills and down into shadowed vales, thru tiny villages of sandstone and stucco, and finally, emerging from the hills to see the ocean, a grey-blue mass broken by huge waves that roared silenetly as we viewed from behind the mud-streaked plexiglass windows of our creaky old bus.
We drove further until we got to the coast itself, and meandered through a skinny roadway, hills on one side, cliffs, and the occasional hamelt on the other, dropping down into the sea. Finally, we curved into a little village full of cute little white stucco houses, a tiny church spire rising up amid the sloping roofs and brilliant green grass patches, neatly trimmed and gleaming with dew, adding color to the scene.
Rhossilli is a beautiful little village that starts higher up in the hills and then migrates downward, till it hits a flat slope that snakes out to a point and then drops away into the ocean. And then, your eye jumps to a double-island (two huge hills that are connected by a tiny strip of rock down the center) emerge from the waves like the loch ness monster rising from depths of the ocean. It's called the worm's head (worm being an old english translation for "dragon," which, when you see it, it makes perfect sense to call it the dragon's head).
To the right of this little peninsular-type geography is a huge, sandy beach forming a crescent-shaped bay. Surfers bob up and down in the surf, waiting patiently for the waves that march towards the sand like an army coming in from the horizon-line, continuous and massive and imposing. This area of Wales is apparently the best surfing spot in the whole UK; which, by the size of the waves and the amount of surfers still around during early November, seems to be pretty on the spot to me.
We wandered through the village for a little bit and then walked down to the Worm's Head. You can access the island(s) by walking over a rocky causeway that emerges during low tide. Sort of like St. Michael's Mount, but the causeway isn't paved, it's a natural rocky reef of some sort. We scrambled over sharp rocks and around tide pools, crunching mussel shells beneath our wellies, for about half and hour, finally reaching the island on the other side, tired, sweaty and ready for a rest on the grassy slopes.
We passed an older guy on the way over, just before we got to the island, who said there were "quite a few seals" on the right side of the island. When we went over there really were "quite a few" seals playing in the surf and sunning themselves on the rocks below, just up against the island's base. We sat and picnicked for a time, watching the seals, the sun warming our backs and the wind tousling our hair.
After a while, we got up, though, in a hurry to try and reach the worm's head (a good twenty minute walk to the far side of the island, across the rocky strip of land to the "second" island). We had to get there fast before we had to head back, so we wouldn't get cut off by the tide closing in. It was 1pm and we had to get back to the other side of the causeway by 2pm. So, we hurried, but we didn't make it. We chose to head back instead of getting caught with the random dozen sheep (how those sheep made it over to the island I have no idea; that causeway was
treacherous!) overnight.
After returnign to the village we went to the one little cafe and had tea and scones and then took the next bus back to Swansea.
The next day was wet and rainy and cloudy and I was so glad we had decided to go to Rhossilli the day before. We spent the morning wandering around town (Swansea). We found the National Waterfront Museum and explored that for an hour or so. It was actually quite a nice little museum, recently redone, so it had a bunch of techy gadgets and interactive little exhibits which were pretty neat. My favorite was a big screen projected onto the wall that displayed a geological map (showing hills and trees and water, like a picture) the city and the surrounding lands on it. You sat at a little desk in front of it and moved a little ball with your hand. That moved a glowing strip of color across the projected screen, highlighting different places. You could touch a screen on the desk infront of you then, and a little movie about the place that you had just highlighted would tell you all about it. It was pretty neat.
Me coming in towards the finish line
After the museum, I was getting pretty hungry, so we left and, right across the street was a glowing orange and red sign for the local movie theatre. Food forgotten, I dragged my friends over to the theatre and got us in for the next showing of TinTin (actually, a pretty awesome movie!). After the movie, we got lunch/dinner, walked around, went shopping (i got some sweet new clothes), and then went to bed early in preperation for my race the next day.
Race Day: I am converted to trail runnning. Best kind of running ever. Imagine running through open feilds with no track, no concrete, not even a trail to follow, just the churned up, muddy grass in front of you. Imagine running along a cliff, glittering grey waves crashing beneath you, stony rocks climbing up on your right, breaking the cloudless blue sky. Imagine scrambling up hills and dancing down the other side, trying to do it like a mountain goat, with light, but firm feet, not too fast, but not too slow or you'll trip and tumble down the slick, muddy, hillside. Imagine running up a mudslide, through streams and marshes in a scraggly, prickly moorland that goes on forever in an upward slope that finally curves back around to a little village and you break out of the grasses onto hard, black asphalt and then hurtle down the road to the finishline, located beyond a farmer's feild and back through the mud and grass and wet.
Nicole, me and Carolyn (left to right) after my race
Imagine running a race like that and you've got my race.
It was awesome. I loved it. It was one of the hardest races i've ever run, but it was also one of the most fulfilling. Before the race started I wasn't even a tiny bit nervous. I was prepared. I had no fear. I had run hard and worked up to a half-marathon distance before the race, so I was ready for anything. I was really glad I had done that too, because the race took me 1:43 hrs/mins to finish. The longest I had gone before in training was 2hrs. I was so glad. That is about half an hour longer than any other 10k i've ever done, but then again, this 10k was actually more like an 11k, cus it was 6.8ish miles instead of 6.2.
So, that was our trip. After the race we went back to Swansea, took a train home to London, took a bus to our house and hit the sack.
No comments:
Post a Comment