Diario de un Biciorejón: (cancelled) South Devon (trail) (almost) Marathon

domingo, 25 de enero de 2026

(cancelled) South Devon (trail) (almost) Marathon

Dumb & Dumber

That is the only way of describing it.

As we were leaving the hotel, around 7:15am, already in the car, we learnt the event was cancelled.

My first reaction was “fine, we go home and we run tomorrow”.

JFW’s was “nah, let’s go to Dartmouth, grab a tea and we go for a run here”.

I’d swear he said 10 miles.

Despite my strong personality and the suspicion that I was being tricked, I agreed to the plan and that was it.

Nothing would stop us.

A local telling you that if you leave the car (my car) at that place it won’t be there in an hour? Move the car half a mile inland and stick to the plan.

Strong winds and big waves giving you the (salty) shower you didn’t get at the hotel? You keep running.

Heart breaking images in Torcross when you realise how hard the houses were hit by the storm? You keep running.

Only stop running if you need to walk up the hills and to have a pee (I lost count of how many pee stops I had).

To be honest the conditions were not that bad.

Yes, a huge wave surprised us in Torcross and put water up our calves (so much for running on gore-tex shoes), it was windy enough to have to be very careful at points and it rained enough that you wouldn’t care anymore. Certainly conditions that justified the cancellation of the event but, still, good enough to enjoy the experience.

But we still were dumb & dumber. I’ll let you decide who was which.

“Oh, look, a lighthouse over there". “Let’s go and visit it”. “But it is out of the route”. “Yeah, let’s go there anyway…”

“10 miles and 2 hours running”. “Let’s carry on for a little bit”.

“Oh, this bit is slippery…” next second Javier is down, then JFW is down and Javier goes down again…

“How much further do we go?”. “Just a mile and a half”.

(3 miles later) “Oh, look, the boxes from what was a checkpoint. They have bananas and crisps (who knows what else)”, “Yeah, we are fine, we take something if we need it on our way back”.

“Half a marathon and 2 hours and a half running”. “Ok, let’s turn around, I am starting to get cold”. “I’m not cold, I'm having great fun”. “Don’t talk to me with your positivity…”

Of course, the boxes from the checkpoint weren’t there by the time we were returning, but that wasn’t a problem. I had enough gels to survive for 15 days and JFW had a pack of gummies. Enough for him to also survive 15 days.

By the time we were back to Torcross the locals were already working on the reparations of their houses. It felt wrong to be there running.

We jogged back to the car, now with tail wind, and we called a day.

We didn’t quite make a full marathon.

Dumb and dumber.