Thunder Races

Thunder Races are a Bedford organiser who set out to make trail running feel welcoming: fully marked and marshalled courses, aid stations, generous cut-offs, volunteers who make a noise, and routes chosen to be runnable rather than brutal. The Harrold Odell trail races in March are the way in, a 25km and a 50km round the country park and the Ouse valley for anyone stepping off the road or up in distance. Pilgrim's Reckoning is the other end of the range: eighty-one miles of the John Bunyan Trail in a single loop from Bedford, twenty-four hours, semi self-navigated from a GPX and the trail's own waymarkers, with a field capped at about sixty and a 50km finish in the last year needed to enter.