BEAR GRYLLS SURVIVAL RACE LONDON 2017

I was fortunate enough to win tickets to this race through the wonderful thisbunnyruns with themarathonmarcus. I couldn’t believe I had won, I was literally saying to Mitch that morning how I hadn’t won anything and really wanted to just win a competition. We got back to the hotel and as I log onto instagram I see that I have won!

I couldn’t think of anyone better to take than my friend Liv, who for years at uni, we have been saying we would do an OCR together but just never got the time to!

We were entered as part of a team of eight (Mind over Mudder) and met on the morning.

Bear Grylls survival race was held at Trent Park in London on the 30th September. There was a choice of 5km, 10km, 30km & kids races. They set off all day and continued until later evening. Prices ranged from £25 – £65 dependant on the dates you signed up.

Race

The race village was pretty full, probably one of the biggest villages I’ve seen at a race in a while. These were mainly food stalls including pancakes, burgers, duck wraps and many more. We arrived at 11oclock as we were told to get there early for check in and registration, the check in queue was fairly quick only taking 5 minutes – our wave wasn’t until 1 so we did have a bit of waiting about without anything to do; unless you wanted to eat food and not everyone wants to do that before running 10km!

We unfortunately missed the warm up so I cannot comment on that – because we had waited a while we decided to just quickly run and sprint and start the race after one wave had gone (we missed it as we were in the queue for the bag drop).

We set off for the 10km race and were met with different obstacles, they included:

– Log climbs

– Cargo net

– Wall climbs

– Climbing wall (with actual holds)

– 3-4 carry obstacles, rucksack, hammers etc.

– Hay bales

– Net crawls

– One of my favourites, shooting range (you had to hit 2/4 or you bear crawl, thanks to the guy who let me have 5 attempts!)

-Fire jump & a fire lighting activity

– Rough runner spinner obstacle

I unfortunately woke up with a cold and was still suffering with my leg injury, and so couldn’t run as fast as my other teammates. After about 4 miles, they made the decision to head off – they were way to fast for me anyway – and Liv & me carried on with the race.

I did understand where the lady had come from about there being no one on course (see below). There were few marshals on the route, but most were just the medics who had been thrown into being marshals! There were several obstacles on route that were shut off, there weren’t really any signs, but they were sectioned off.

We did enjoy the race, we did have a good day, it turned out to be 7.5 miles in the end and not 6.2 but we did have fun. The finish was greeted with a wall that you had to climb and jump onto podiums to get over the finish line.

The finish line was greeted with medals, flapjacks, t-shirts and protein drinks. We then finished it off with pancakes and burgers. It was a good day meeting everyone and seeing Liv again!

Personal thoughts

– In my honest opinion, I probably wouldn’t do this event again. I felt like the whole thing was poorly organised and it was the poor volunteers & medics that were taking the fall for it.

-Parking was in shambles, they had 2/3 volunteers for the whole thing and there were no signs to get to the main site. There were no people at all either! I was lucky to be waking with a few people so we all were in the same boat. It took me almost 25 minutes to walk to the main event village after wandering around trying to find a person/sign with no luck. This route was also nearly all uphill and crossed over the path of the runners. During this time where I was searching where to go, I had a runner come past me shouting to the medics “I have no idea where to go, no ones told me anything, there’s no signs!” I was in the same case for getting to the event let alone running it!

-This issue with parking, you had to pay £10 (£11+ with admin fee) online or £20 on the day and an extra £3 per bag for bag drop. I usually would have no issue for this but with the way parking was handled and the organisation of the race, I thought it was a little cheeky!

– I loved loved loved the shooting section, this was a real interactive part of the race. After speaking to some scouts, you had to say for Bear’s 4 points for survival were (I can’t really remember what I said!) you then had to wait in line to get handed a pellet gun to shoot at bell targets. As said before you had to get 2/4 or bear crawl, they give you a good amount of instructions to line up and shoot against the hay bales and target. My guy was lovely, he let me have 5 goes and on 4&5 I managed to hit the target! After this, you were given a cotton wool ball to jump over the fire pit and then with a scout, light a fire with the wool and carry on.

Improvements:

-Water stations had no water and were not manned, at one stage I was really thirsty and there was none left. I had to resort to drinking the scraps out of 3 bottles.

– Parking, need more signs or people in places telling people where to go. Or find a closer solution to the event

– Signage may need to be clearer, certain parts weren’t clear.

– Maybe a bit more range of obstacles, I felt like a lot of them were just wall climbs.

This race was a good opportunity for teams to get out and enjoy it. There are plenty of times to get muddy and have a great time with your friends. Maybe next year they will listen to feedback and improve the event, I would like to do it again once they improve the event.

Thanks again to my team mates and Becca & Marcus for letting us join in and run with you guys!