Endurance Life – Gower 10K

For those who find the reports on the half marathon, marathon and Ultra too difficult to stomach, here is a more gentle report – of the 10k which three of us ran in the Gower. While the others were battling with horrendous rain and wind between 7.30am and 9.45am, Steve, Ian and I sat in our comfy kitchen, drinking coffee, feeling SO grateful that we had chosen to run the 10k!

We drove the 5 minutes down to the beach, parked up and watched the half-marathoners leave in their coaches for their start. At this point, it stopped raining. We registered, said ‘Hi’ to the omni-present Mark Thomas and then wondered how to spend the next hour or so before our race briefing.  Gradually, the beach area around the marquees filled up with other 10k runners and, eventually, we all piled into the briefing – which was very informative. We then had 10 minutes or so to sort our clothing (ie take layers off as it was now much nicer outside!) and then we were off.

The route took us off the beach and over lots of sand-dunes, which were not my favourite terrain (I don’t like sand in my shoes!).  Gradually we wove our way inland, over a dodgy bridge and then steadily up, through woods – all in all a very pleasant route with little need to walk as the hills were not too bad. There was a loop at the top (where there were more sand-dunes; how did they get there?) and then a descent down onto Oxwich beach.

We had been told that the last 1.8 miles was across the beach; indeed, once on the beach, we could see the finish marquees in the far distance and so it was just a case of ploughing on towards them. I recited to myself my lines from a forthcoming play (and that took about 1.5 miles!) before crossing a stream that ran into the sea – thus ending up with soaking wet feet – and then I focused on catching up the couple of people ahead of me before a final short climb up more sand-dunes to the finish.  All of this was in pleasant sunshine; weren’t we lucky?? We hung around to hope to see the others finish, but when it started to rain hard, we decided to nip back to the bunkhouse and shower/change. We still got back in time to cheer Lorna in at the end of her half. I had to leave for home after that, so I missed all the photos!  All in all a really fun, well organised event that I can highly recommend.

And if you want to read about the Half marathon – https://cotswoldallrunners.club/2019/11/15/gower-and-the-wower-1-2-marathon/