'Baying for mud' at Sodbury Slog

By Ira Rainey
Sodbury Slog runner

"Mud, mud, glorious mud, Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood", or so the lyrics in The Hippopotamus Song claim.

The course, as Ira found out, was very, very muddy!

But I'm not so sure that Flanders and Swann had ever ran The Easy Runner Sodbury Slog when they penned that.

Whilst trudging through a ditch with mud coming up to your waist in early November, it can certainly be said that the mud is cooling, but I'm not sure it's exactly glorious. That said, I'm not even convinced it was entirely mud. It certainly didn't taste like it.

Sunday morning is often seen by many as the preserve of the lie-in. The deserved mellowing payback for the stress of the working week. So why is it that I find myself slipping and sliding through the fields of South Gloucestershire plastered in mud of indistinguishable origin? Again.

Well that's the question I've asked myself many times (five to be exact), as have many others. But one that can't easily be answered.

The Sodbury Slog is an off-road race which has been running for ten years using various routes through rural Chipping Sodbury and the surrounding countryside. It is renowned for being something of a mudbath, but one that runners seem keen to participate in, time and time again.

In the last three years the race has been voted in the top five races in the UK by readers of Runner's World magazine such is its high regard, ahead of all other local races.

SODBURY SLOG Race is now in its tenth year Route is through South Gloucs town of Chipping Sodbury More than 1,000 people take part in the race It has been voted in the top five UK races by Runner's World magazine The race always coincides with Remembrance Sunday and is preceded by a blessing Raised over £20,000 for local charities to date

Undoubtedly part of its high status is down to the sheer precision of organisation that goes into the event. It is consistently well organised, well marshalled, and you get a great goody bag and t-shirt at the end of it all.

But putting its success down to that alone is missing what I believe to be the real attraction of the race: the unadulterated fun of it.

Don't get me wrong, this event is no fun-run. It's a trainer-ruining, hill-climbing, multi-terrain challenge that should not be undertaken without serious consideration. As the entry form states: "Not for those with something better to do on a Sunday morning".

But clearly, the 1,000-plus entrants every year prove, if nothing else, that there are plenty of people who enjoy nothing better than a good bit of clean muddy fun.

The race always coincides with Remembrance Sunday, and is preceded by a blessing, a two-minute silence, and the playing of The Last Post. It certainly sets the scene for a memorable day, and at the same time puts the challenge of the race into perspective.

After a steady start made up of a mile or so of Chipping Sodbury streets we take a sharp right turn into what seems like another world.

... We plod on through the countryside, which I'm sure would make for a stunning scenery, were we not all puffing and wheezing up the hills to notice. Ira Rainey

It's a muddy world where the pace naturally slows somewhat and trainers disappear into boggy marshes, much to the cheering of a baying crowd, who want nothing more than for some poor runner to end up face down the the mire in true comedy style.

Avoiding that we plod on through the countryside, which I'm sure would make for a stunning scenery, were we not all puffing and wheezing up the hills to notice.

Through fields, over stiles, and up and down what seems like many hills, we finally end up back on the road coming back into Chipping Sodbury School and the finish line.

It's with a mixture of relief, satisfaction, and a tinge of sadness that I cross the finish line. Another Slog survived. Next year? Hmmm...

The event is organised by Bitton Road Runners, a running club based in the east of Bristol, and helps to raise money for many local charities, directly raising over £21,000 in the last ten years. Further money is raised for Macmillan Cancer Care through the use of sponsored runners.