Bed and Bootcamp
Beep tests before breakfast. Speed sessions in place of spas. A new bed and breakfast for Britain’s fitness obsessed is becoming the recreational runner’s new Mecca. Sarina Lewis is put through her paces.
“This is your wake up call.” It’s 6.30am. Dawn is breaking in the south of England to reveal a threatening grey sky, the scent of bubbling coffee is wafting up the staircase and Fiona Bugler’s gentle knock is the final, definitive signal that the day has begun. For guests of The Running Inn, a fitness-inspired B&B on the shores of Eastbourne, lazy mornings with the weekend newspapers are nothing but a pipe dream.
Well, at least not until after your Sunday long run.
This brings us to how six un-showered and Lycra-clad strangers find themselves looking down the barrel of a before-breakfast sprint test with varying degrees of disbelief and anxiety. “Right. This morning we’ll be taking you down to the foreshore for the beep test.” It’s Mike Owens, ex-Marine sprinting champion and the other half of the super-fit husband and wife team behind the inn and its training program for runners.
Once or twice a month the heritage-listed guesthouse becomes a weekend retreat for the more athletically inclined. A B&B that’s more bed and boot camp than boudoir and breakfast. For £175, guests buy themselves two nights accommodation, breakfasts, lunches, and 48-hours of fitness instruction – everything from seminars on nutrition and Pilates to the four (yes, four) scheduled runs designed to test, teach and push. And in the end? A one-on-one consultation that results in a take-away, six-week training plan to keep you on track.
Which brings us back to our Saturday morning sprint.
Apparently last night’s red wine and Pringles welcome had lulled us all in to a false sense of well-being. Looking more vibrantly alive than any adult has a right to before 7.30am on a Saturday morning, Fiona and Mike take us through the first of the weekend’s four scheduled runs in all-too-painful detail.
Two markers, 20-metres apart. A portable CD player emitting intermittent beeps. Six slightly jelly-kneed runners who will run between the markers in enough time to reach the other side, thereby beating the beep. As the test progresses, the pace of the beep picks up, along with our running speed. Get beaten by the beep three times – in other words failing to cover the distance before the next beep sounds – and you’re out.
The idea is to test our VO2 max. In plainer language, the amount of oxygen our bodies can take up while exercising. And if that all sounds too complicated, think of it this way – Lance Armstrong scores big. Kath and Kim’s Sharon would not.
Worded up and psyched out, Mike and Fiona lead us out in to the grey morning. But even a dull sky can’t cast a pall over Eastbourne’s appeal. About 20 miles from Brighton, the coastal hamlet is a stunning visual cliché. From the white chalk cliffs and verdant green of the rolling Downs, to the pebbled beaches and the classic cream terrace houses lining the windswept promenade like sentinels, the town has successfully retained the appeal that took it from 1, 700 residents in 1801 to some 90,000 today.
But there’s little evidence of any local life forms as we complete our warm-up jog along the foreshore. Which is quite lucky, really.
Making short work of us, the beeping CD leaves our slightly motley group red faced, sweaty and panting, though Fiona and Mike reassure us we have done well. (Up until the 18th century the idea of living near the sea was considered unhealthy. It was the Prince Regent who changed this conception by transforming neighbouring Brighton from a fishing village to a popular health resort. Had the prince been witness to this, he may have changed his tune.)
They later tell us David Beckham is one of the only athletes to have achieved the unthinkable by successfully out-running the beep’s 20 levels. I lasted until level 10, which, using plain logic, must make me half as fit as one of the world’s fittest men. At least that’s what I tell myself.
Of course there is more. A gut-busting 1500 metre sprint test, circuit training that my triceps may never forgive me for, and a hill running session that leaves everyone but Mike for dead. Forget BMI calculations and skin-fold tests, this is hands-on, all-out hard work.
And all before lunchtime.
Though tiring, it is exhilarating. I’ve always been curiously attracted to the idea of paying drill sergeant-types to put me through my paces for a weekend, and, if I’m honest, a few days of dragging myself up and down muddy English hillsides in the middle of a downpour holds a kind of bizarre, masochistic appeal. Hardly a surprising admission from someone who has packed her running shoes for a weekend in Rome (and used them), and braved the dumbfounded stares of Indian villagers while taking a pre-dawn trot among cow pats and pot-holes in a semi-rural outpost 40 minutes outside New Delhi.
Of course not everyone that attends the course is so mindlessly enthusiastic, and it’s to Mike and Fiona’s credit that all levels of runners are catered for.
This weekend there’s Lucy and Andy, ex-Londoners now running their own PR business from Bournemouth, both weeks away from their first 10 kilometre race. Antonia, a London-based health journalist, and Tracy, a former Starbucks HR manager from Canada, are both here to test themselves before upcoming half marathons. James, another journo here for a weekend break with his tango-teaching wife, is a self-confessed running amateur.
The morning’s shared pain should give us plenty to chat about over lunch but the exertion seems to have left us incapable of speech. It has, however, done wonders for our appetites. Which is a good thing considering the fantastic spread laid before us. Gathering around a large wooden table in Mike and Fiona’s cosy kitchen we dig in to a midday feast of vegetable curry, homemade soup, delicious crusty bread, tuna pasta salad and baked salmon.
Food really is a highlight at the inn. With a sumptuous, healthy breakfast and lunch catered both days, it leaves Friday and Saturday night’s free to explore Eastbourne’s other culinary options. (We never got further than Pomodoro e Mozzarella, a brisk five-minute walk from the guesthouse. The restaurant itself is a little noisy and over-bright, but the thick Italian accents of the waiters hint at the food’s authenticity, best experienced with a divine tomato and mozzarella salad – the eatery’s namesake dish – great house red and a moist eggplant parmigiana that manages to escape the tyranny of oiliness.)
The remainder of our Saturday afternoon passes in a slight haze of exhaustion. The nutrition seminar and 90-minute Pilates course – included in the cost of the weekend but by no means is attendance mandatory – seem to wipe out what little reserves of energy we have left. A succulent steak at the aforementioned local Italian provides a brief boost but by 9pm we’re tucked up with lights out, comfortably ensconced in tastefully decorated bedrooms that have benefited from the inn’s extensive renovation.
A running-induced sleep coma knocks me out until 8.30am. I wake feeling surprisingly perky, thanks, in no small part, to the combo of a near-12-hour sleep and yesterday evening’s £10, 30-minute massage (an un-missable element of the weekend experience).
A big bowl of porridge and a couple of mugs of coffee top up the tank in preparation for the culmination of our weekend – the Sunday long run.
Why runners have deemed the one morning of the week most people choose to relax as the perfect time for a torturously long run is something of a mystery. But this morning I have no complaints. Hyped from yesterday’s hard work I take to the rain-drenched streets with gusto. There are three of us – Tracy, Antonia and I – planning on going the full two-hour distance, though the driving wind and horizontal rain eventually forces us home 20-minutes short of that goal.
We finish, noses dripping, legs covered in mud from the now-soggy green hills and fingers so frozen un-tying shoe laces becomes a feat above and beyond current capabilities.
And it feels fantastic.
Getting there
Trains run every hour from London Victoria to Eastbourne station. The 90-minute journey costs about £18 one way. National Rail Enquiries, +44 (0)8457 48 49 50.
For contact details and information on scheduled weekend courses at The Running Inn visit www.therunninginn.com.