Medal #22: The Forest of Dean Half

In some sort of divine blessing, the weather for the FoD half this year was marvellous again. Unfortunately, it hadn't been in the previous week - so there was a fair bit of mud around!

The FoD half has evidently been becoming more popular due to its great reputation, but I think this year it had slightly exceeded its organisational capacity. There was a woeful lack of toilets at the start considering the number of runners, and once the course left the main driveway and deviated onto the forest trail, it became hopelessly congested. Mind you, it wasn't helped by some runners who appeared slightly surprised at the appearance of mud, who actually stopped and walked around it. This, predictably, created chaos amongst a congested field, with people almost tripping over each other in the resultant bunching up.

There was a fairly sharp long descent within the first couple of miles, which meant the rest of the course was almost relentlessly uphill. There were a few downhill runs, don't get me wrong, but certainly after that first descent we had around 6 miles of gradual uphill. Around mile 12, heading up towards the finish, there was approx a mile of shoes-sucking muddy uphill - great fun, but gruelling at this stage of the run!

Despite the challenging nature of the course, I managed at PB in 2h 9mins, which I was really pleased with. As long as the organisation improves, I would certainly do this again as it's a lovely forest run, albeit a challenging one.