Published: June 13, 2008 11:29 am      

Runner’s roots: Stroud hits trail for charity

Athlete covers 105 miles in England

DANVILLE — Many people who hike the scenic Cotswold Way in western England devote a week to it. But Kevin Stroud of Danville and two other runners completed the 105-mile trail in 23 hours and 8 minutes.

Stroud met one Englishman who joked, “Just like an American — you want to see the whole thing in 24 hours.”

The trip at the end of May was special to Stroud for a couple of reasons: He would stay in the town of Stroud, where his ancestors came from, and the run would raise money for The Meningitis Trust of the United Kingdom. And — the icing on the cake — he would be accompanied by his 11-year-old daughter, Sarah, also a runner.

The run was sponsored by the Stroud and District Athletic Club, which is similar to the Kennekuk Road Runners.

On the run, he would brave a driving rain, mud-caked shoes, stinging nettles, steep hills, a pitch-black night and fatigue.

But he also drank in the pastoral beauty, forged new friendships and relished the challenge of pushing his body to the limit.

“It was great fun,” Stroud said. “It’s a huge challenge.”

His daughter, a student at North Ridge Middle School, was supposed to join him on the trail for one of the legs. But, due to the muddy conditions, she ran only the first mile of the 10-mile final leg.

For Sarah, it was her first time out of the United States, and she loved the adventure.

She enjoyed the hilly scenery, saying, “You could see for miles,” as well as the brick roads and stone fences.

Also, she said, “I loved the sheep. Everybody thought I was crazy because I got excited when we saw sheep.”

Another highlight was going shopping and finding Italian shoes for only $20.

Sarah wants to return to England, but she’s already told her father, “You’re not doing the entire thing next year.”

At the 80-mile mark, he looked horrible, she said, adding, “It’s heartbreaking to see him that way.”

Stroud, however, said, “I’m already thinking about how I can do it faster.”

TOUGHEST SO FAR

An avid ultra-marathoner who regularly runs races over 26.2 miles, Stroud has run 100-mile courses in the past. The Cotswold run, though, was the toughest so far because of the hills.

“One hundred miles on flat ground is no piece of cake,” he said. But this course was difficult because it went up and down, up and down, with a net elevation gain of 14,000 feet.

Also, he wasn’t familiar with the course. People called pacers would jog along for 10-30 miles, giving encouragement and showing the way.

HOW IT STARTED

Stroud has always been interested in his family history and traced his genealogy to the Cotswold region, including marriage records from 1629.

A little more than a year ago, he found the Stroud and District Athletic Club on the Internet. He joined so he could get a club vest with his name on it.

About that time, a young runner in England, Jonathon Brough, contracted meningitis while skiing in Canada and was left paralyzed from the neck down. Later, Kenny Roberts with the Stroud athletic club decided to have a run that would raise money for The Meningitis Trust, which is headquartered in the town of Stroud.

Early this year, Roberts contacted club members and nearby runners to find those willing to take on the challenge. Three people committed to running the entire 105-mile course — Stroud and Englishmen Martin Beale and Dave Burton.

The weekend of May 24-25 was chosen.

SCENIC TRAIL

The run was broken into 10 legs of about 8-12 miles each, and included short breaks. The course started within 10 miles of William Shakespeare’s home at Stratford-on-Avon and finished within 20 miles of Stonehenge.

Along the scenic trail were castles hundreds of years old and even structures from Roman times, Stroud said, particularly at the southern end, where the town of Bath is located.

The runners even passed through an Iron Age fort, built 1,500 years ago.

The Strouds flew from Chicago to London, arriving early on May 21. They rented a car, and drove to Sarah’s choice — the London Dungeons, a cross between a haunted house and amusement park, he said.

After that, they drove to Roberts’ home in Stroud.

Stroud kept a detailed journal of his adventure. It can be viewed online in its entirety, but here are excerpts:

HOME IN STROUD

Thursday, the 22nd, Sarah and I wandered around the town of Stroud during the day doing a little shopping. We had an appointment that evening to meet up with some of the club runners and a BBC “remote reporter” for a promotional video shoot, and to get in a few miles of running on the Cotswold Way.

The video shoot was a live broadcast during the evening news and it went well …. Importantly, it also drove donations to the JustGiving Web site.

The point we met at is known as Coaley Peak and gives a broad vista of the Severn River valley to the west. We did a short 6-mile run that evening on the Cotswold Way and it was definitely an eye opener to me, coming from Illinois which is nicknamed “The Prairie State.”

CALL OF THE BUFFALO

One hilarious incident that evening was when we topped a particularly scenic hilltop and paused to enjoy the view and I let out a long yell of “BUFF-A-LOOOO!” which echoed down the valley for what seemed like 10 seconds. We were a group of about eight runners, and the response from Philip Manning was “Bloody hell! What was that?!” which cracked us all up.

I explained that, while it wasn’t typical of American running clubs, it was “the club call” from the Buffalo Warriors (an informal ultra-running group) and we would often let out just such a yell and then be answered by other members of our “herd” with the same yell in response.

I suggested they use a similar yell for SDAC, to which the reply was, “But, we don’t have buffalo here.” I replied, “No, use some local animal.” Richard Hurdle suggested “badger,” since those were quite common in the area forests, but his clipped British rendering of “Baj-ah” failed to resonate down the valley quite the same as my ode to the American bison.

DOGS WELCOMED

We all had dinner that evening at a local pub, and Sarah was thrilled to see that Philip was able to bring his dog, Sam, into the bar area, where Sam was happy to eat scraps from everyone’s plates while we dined.

GO APE

Friday, the 23rd, was our last full day before beginning the run, so Sarah got to pick an activity for us. She selected Go Ape! in the nearby Forest of Dean which is a “high wire forest adventure course of rope bridges, Tarzan swings and zip slides ... all set high up in the tree tops.”

We did enjoy seeing Gloucester Cathedral, featured in some of the Harry Potter movies, as we drove to and from the Forest of Dean.

TOUCHING VISIT

That evening we went to visit Jonathon Brough at a hospital facility near Cheltenham … it was tough to see such a vibrant young man wheelchair bound and not even able to turn his head. He can speak softly between puffs of his ventilator, is able to use a vision tracking computer to write e-mail, and is learning to drive his wheelchair via a cheek-controlled joystick.

What was most touching to me was that he had a picture prominently displayed in his room of himself finishing the Stroud Half Marathon in 2006 … This gave running for The Meningitis Trust a lot of meaning.

THE COURSE

The Cotswolds technically aren’t hills, but are an “escarpment,” a tilted bed of honey-colored limestone nearly 100 miles in length formed during the Jurassic period almost 200 million years ago. The slope of the escarpment toward the east is gently sloping, while to the west the “scarp” side drops steeply to the plain of the Severn River. It is along this slope that the Cotswold Way meanders.

Most of the course is dirt woodland trail, although it does pass through a handful of villages along the way.

RUNNERS SET OFF

We began at 8 p.m. on Saturday at the gates of St. James Church in Chipping Campden, with the idea of being relatively fresh for the approximately six hours of night running that would start a couple hours into the run, and a projected finish in Bath of 8 p.m. Sunday evening.

The schedule also allowed for alternating five- and 10-minute breaks between the legs.

It was just getting dark enough, about 10 p.m. that we turned on our head-mounted flashlights at the beginning of the second leg.

STOPPED BY COPS

Somewhere in the third or fourth leg, the course had a short distance on a road (going uphill of course!) and we were stopped by two policemen in a car who were wondering what five guys were doing running around in the dark with lights on their heads ninja training? They bought the story that we were running 105 miles and let us continue.

RAINS HIT

The rain that had been predicted hit about 3:30 a.m., turning much of the trail to mud. At times the rain was torrential, and when crossing open fields on the hilltops it was vigorously whipping our running jackets … it was a thrilling experience!

I believe it was at the end of the fourth leg, having covered 46 miles, that Dave Burton retired from the run due to stomach problems and the inability to eat and keep food down.

We finished the fifth leg about 6 a.m. on the edge of Stroud at The Fifth Dimension Health & Fitness Club where we had a brief respite planned. At that point we were soaking wet and tired from having run 57.5 miles, but the sun had been up a couple hours, the rain was abating, and we were over halfway.

ONLY A PHASE

Leg six was only 8 miles, the shortest leg yet, but very hilly. In a run of 100 miles or so, you’re guaranteed to have “down spots” where you don’t feel good that you just have to push through knowing it’s only a phase. My lowest spot during this run was the end of leg six, at which point I’d been on my feet for approximately 12 hours, running 66.5 miles.

Legs seven (8 miles) and eight (12 miles) went by in a blur to me ...

By the start of leg nine (another 8-mile leg) I was feeling pretty good, all things considered. … I knew that I’d powered through “the black hole,” there were less than 20 miles to go, and a sub-24 (hour) finish was looking promising.

Leg 10 is 10.5 miles to the gates of Bath Abbey and I remember it well. We ran through an awesome Iron Age fort atop a hill near to Bath, but all that remains of the fort now is the earthen works.

‘GRACEFUL’ FINISH

The Cotswold Way officially ends at Bath Abbey, where it is customary to kiss the intricately carved doors to mark the end of your journey. Of course, as the doors finally came into sight, I sprinted toward the doors as fast as I could and then saw a barrier of a low metal fence had been put up to keep people away from the doors.

Not to be deterred from my mission of lip locking the portal, I continued to run toward it, stutter-stepped at the last second, and then ATTEMPTED to jump the fence but caught my foot on it and went down in a pile on the other side of the fence.

Undaunted, I jumped to my feet, took a bow, turned and kissed the doors, and then collapsed on the fence.

Official finish time was 23:08, which isn’t too bad for the distance and elevation traversed.

EPILOGUE

We went to a restaurant close to Stroud where I had half of a really good steak, as that’s all I could eat at the time. Finally hit the sack about 11 p.m. and, except for the night sweats, which are common after a run like this, slept well.

Took it easy on Monday, May 26, and Kenny and Richard hosted a party at their place.

On Tuesday, May 27, Sarah and I did some final shopping around the town of Stroud, and then we met up with the entire SDAC club that evening for their weekly “Tuesday Run,” where Kenny made a special presentation to me of a Stroud Half Marathon shirt and a book signed by everyone involved in the effort.

We then ran about seven miles on the Cotswold Way, less than 48 hours after my finish.

What it all comes down to, though, is the fun and relationships built. Runners have a great tradition of getting along well with other runners, especially in the Trail Runner camp, and I met some wonderful people through this that I hope to see again soon.

FYI

To read Kevin Stroud’s journal, go to the Web site http://kestrou.com/cotswoldway.

The runners’ fund-raising Web site is http://www.justgiving.com/cotswoldwayultra

More information about the Cotswold area may be found at http://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/Cotswold/