Forest of Dean half marathon 2023

On Sunday, I ran the Forest of Dean half marathon. Or Forest of Dean Spring Trails half marathon, to give it its full name. I ran it in 2013, scraped in at just under 2 hours and said ‘never again’.

But then this year’s Tewkesbury half marathon was cancelled (I suspect there will never be another Tewkesbury half marathon) and I was without a spring half marathon. So I decided to sign up for Forest of Dean. Just me. Not my husband or my sister or my brother-in-law.

There are a lot of good things about the Forest of Dean half marathon. There is a massive field to park in – right by the start line. There are lots of toilets, so the queues are either quick or non-existent. There are loads of marshals on the route (probably extra necessary as the mobile signal in the Forest is non-existent) and they are all very supportive. You have to pick up your number on arrival, but that was easy too. As it was all so easy, it turns out I’d arrived far too early. So I just sat in my car, stayed warm and read my book.

I had my usual stress about clothing beforehand. The problem with races is that you need your number visible. Which means it needs to go on your top layer. So you either get too hot and juggle swapping layers or you start off very cold, wearing one layer. I opted for that option, even though it was only about seven degrees and very cloudy. The forecast was a 6% chance of rain and it pretty much rained the whole way round (although just drizzle at least).

The half marathon starts on a closed road for just a mile, then it’s downhill for another mile – at first very steep and then a slightly less dramatic downhill. On that second mile, I noticed I was running at 6:50 minutes per mile pace, which is crazy. But I thought I would make the most of it as it would get harder and slower later on.

The Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire has lots of towns and villages, but the Forest of Dean half marathon really is just trails. You don’t run through any villages at all, just the forest. Advice online said to wear trail shoes and that certainly seemed sensible, considering we’d had days of rain and a particularly bad rainy day on Friday. The trails aren’t muddy paths. It’s not a cross country race. The trails are sort of half finished roads – logging tracks and cycle paths, which are rather uneven. Trail shoes weren’t necessary and I massively regretted wearing them! They are heavy with no give in them and just caused my calves to ache from three miles onwards.

My memories of Forest of Dean half marathon were of it being very uphill. In actual fact, there are only three really tough hills – at about 4.5 miles, 6.5 miles and 11.5 miles. Lots of people were walking up them and I did walk a bit up the second and third hills.

The rest of it was pretty much slightly uphill or slightly downhill. Sometimes the marshals kindly shouted: ‘There’s a flat bit coming up’, but the flat bits never lasted long.

There are four water stations – approximately every 5k, which felt about right. Water is in paper cups, which I find it impossible to drink while running, so I stopped briefly.

The Forest of Dean half marathon wasn’t the most fun I’d ever had. The hills were tough and it was just so grey and miserable. It looked and felt like November rather than April. But I was running well and running well makes me happy. I had a couple of slower miles, but most of my miles were around the 8:30 minutes per mile mark, which is pretty good considering the terrain.

At 13 miles, the route entered the big field where it started, then it was a dash to the line. The man next to me was exactly matching my pace and neither of us could get ahead of the other. He told me to go for it and I said I didn’t think I could, but we spurred each other on to knock a few seconds off.

I finished in 1:52:55, which is about my standard half marathon finish time and remarkable considering how much tougher it is than a road race. That’s seven minutes faster than I ran 10 years ago! I expected to be a bit quicker, but not as much as that.

I was 340th overall out of 972 runners, 77th female and 13th in my age category (FV45, so I won’t be in that category much longer!).

Was Forest of Dean half marathon tough? Yes. Will I run it again? Almost certainly.