090 RUNNERSWORLD.COM/UK SEPTEMBER 2019
FULL DISCLOSURE:
the creator of this
race is RW columnist
and former staff
member Sam
Murphy. I accepted
the invitation to review Sam and her
husband Jeff’s first attempt at race
planning because, unable to part
company with my inner adolescent,
I was hoping to discover all manner of
inadequacies and omissions to shove
under the noses of my two friends.
Sadly for me, but wonderfully forcrier, who finally released us with a
William Wallace-style battle cry.
We pounded our way out though
the Landgate, a 680-year-old
structure built to protect the town,
and into the countryside, where we
were to navigate a course along
mostly singletrack terrain through
woodland, orchards, farmland and
quiet country lanes surrounding
Rye, Iden, Beckley, Northiam and
Peasmarsh. A nice touch to the
planning is that each of those villages
has a Norman church, making the
race technically a steeplechase in
the traditional sense of the term.
I felt anything but a thoroughbred,
however, as I reached the 5K aid
station at the Domesday village of
Iden. Sam had warned me, with a
smirky tone to her emails, that since
75 per cent of the course was offroadA RACE THAT MAKES THE GLADE
RW’s Kerry McCarthy runs through some gorgeous
East Sussex countryside in the Rye Ancient Trailsthem – and you – the Ancient Trails
was one of the most enjoyable offroad
races I’ve done in 16 years of running.
There were two distance choices:
15km and 30km. I took the in-for-a-
pound longer option, strapped my
gaiters to my trail shoes and lined
up outside The George pub in the
middle of Rye, a medieval town with
a colourful history of smuggling and
highway robbery. In keeping with the
‘ancient’ theme, we were sent on our
way not by a gun or a horn but a
stirring call to arms from the town