088 RUNNERSWORLD.COM/UK SEPTEMBER 2019
LET YOUR RUNNING LOOSE
RACESAND ON YOUR
OWN TWO FEET
The runners started full
of confidence but they
were soon singing a
different duneIT’S A BAKING-HOT, cloudless morning as I make my
way down to Margate beach for the inaugural Red Bull
Quicksand event – terrible news for a man of my ghostly
complexion, but an excellent excuse if I don’t make it past the first
round. Although described by the organisers as ‘uniquely brutal’, I’m
comforted by the fact that it’s only one mile. How hard can it be?
With around 400 people taking part, runners are divided into
waves, which are then divided by gender. Finish in the top half of
your wave and you progress to the second round; finish in the top
quarter of that and you make it to the final.
I join the queue for registration and begin to get a sense of what
lies ahead. A couple of huge ‘sand castles’ sit at opposite ends of the
course, which also includes some smaller dunes and deep trenches
dug into the sand. The whole thing is laid out like a capital H,
beginning on the long stretch by the registration area, and taking
runners in an anticlockwise direction to the bottom of the course,
before cutting back on itself several times. Once on the opposite
side, there’s another long stretch to the other end, where it again
loops in and out to bring us back to the top of the starting straight.
In the centre is a warm-up area for competitors who are about to
set off. This contains a few fridges full of Red Bull, a marquee and a
van-based DJ courtesy of Run Dem Crew. Explaining the inspiration
behind the event, Red Bull’s sport director, Nick Gracie, says, ‘We
wanted a unique race that hadn’t been done before and were partly
inspired by moto-cross, where they do huge jumps over sand dunes.
We want people to sign up because it’s different.’DUNE AND DUSTED
Isaac Williams experiences a beach break like no other in the Red Bull Quicksand race