Rabbit Run 12k, 19th July 2025
Tara Hipwood tells us a tale of haring (wrong animal) around Wales this weekend:
“This race is part of a Run 4 Wales running festival that takes place on a Saturday afternoon in July at the Merthyr Mawr country estate near Ogmore, on the South Wales Coast. The day kicks off with some brave 40K Trail runners heading out at midday for an extended tour of the Glamorgan Heritage Coast. This is followed throughout the afternoon with a 2k ‘Family Bunny Run’, a 4k ‘Double Bunny’ for 11-17 year olds, and a 100m ‘Toddler Dash’. I signed up for the final and most popular race of the day – the 12k Trail ‘Rabbit Run’ with just over 1100 participants. I should clarify that the name is derived from the shape of the route and disappointingly, I spotted no rabbits on the course itself.
Despite being otherwise incredibly well-organised, perhaps because of the popularity of this final race, many of us were still queuing to enter the relatively small start pen when the whistle blew, meaning I started pretty much at the back. This race was always going to be about the views and the experience anyway, and most of the route was quite narrow, so I decided to tuck in and conserve my energy for a bit of speed whenever the course opened up a bit.
The first 5k was a steady climb through fields, lanes, woods, and dunes, accumulating about 60m of elevation to reach the highest point of course. All this elevation was then expended in a single tumble (slide/stagger/bum-shuffle) down the ‘Big Dipper’ – the tallest sand dune in Wales. The second part of the race is much flatter, and features more woods, lanes, a river crossing, a single-file trot through a corn-field that felt like it might go on for all eternity, castle ruins, ponies, a second (much-deeper) river crossing, and finally a short tunnel before emerging up some steps onto the finish field for a sprint finish past an enthusiastic congregation of spectators.
I only realised when I finished that my little bursts of speed in the wider parts of the course had been pretty effective and I had managed to climb into the front third of participants, and the first 100 females.
I had dragged some family along to the event, who said that the time we were all out on the course had passed quickly, with a steady trickle of 40k runners making it home to cheer.
All in all, not an easy course to race if you’re looking for speed, but a thoroughly enjoyable and unforgettable experience. I highly recommend it if you’re in that neck of the woods! I managed to skilfully avoid the photographers at almost every turn but here’s a link to the Flickr page which gives a feel for the course.”
Well done Tara, finishing 355th, well inside the top third (and 79th woman out of 568!) in a time of 1:20:12.
