Endurance life Anglesey Coastal Marathon
As I lay in bed on Friday night listening to the shipping forecast, the man with the Radio 4 voice worked his way round Fisher, Viking, Tyne, Dogger (my favourite), Rockall, Malin and eventually to the Irish Sea when his dulcet tones informed me that for my coastal path marathon I could expect "West or Southwest, 6 to 8 reaching severe gale force 9 at times, rain or drizzle, good occasionally poor".
Perfect.
Not only am I not marathon fit (still carrying a small orchard's worth of chocolate oranges from Christmas), but marathons on coastal paths are never easy and on top of that the course was advertised as 27.6 miles which as you all know in my book means it's an ultra marathon.
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| Is this Jason hiding underneath all this kit? |
Nevertheless Jo and I arrived at the Breakwater Country Park on Anglesey at 7.45am ready for the marathon safety briefing at 8.30am and a 9am start. The walk from the car park to the registration was almost a mile. I thought about moaning about the distance but having had a 16 day walk to the start line of our last marathon I thought better of it. I've run a couple of Endurancelife events before and they're very well organised (which they should be for the entry fees of £29 for the 10k, £39 for the half marathon and £49 for the marathon) so checking in, getting the chip, number, t-shirt, energy bars etc all went very smoothly and before I knew it I and about 100 other runners were stood in the wind ready to go. The hooter sounded and we all headed off down the road we'd walked up. In fact we ran past the car where Jo had now retreated to the warmth of the heater for the 90 mins before the start of her half marathon. We then almost immediately started climbing until we peaked at about 1000ft and then settled onto the coastal path. The wind was spectacular blowing us all around like rag dolls but we just kept plodding along until the first checkpoint at 5 miles where we had a quick refuel before continuing on the path.
The weather continued to make life very difficult with a mixture of rain and sea spray making it hard to see our way as we negotiated the rocky terrain. At one point we were showered with foam from the sea which distracted me momentarily from the discomfort of the situation as I reminisced about a messy night in an Ibiza nightclub.
For some reason my knee started to hurt more than it has for almost a year but nothing that was going to stop me shuffling forwards.
At about 10 miles I came up next to a runner called Connor. He's a barrister specialising in family law and is running the Marathon des Sables this year. As soon as he knew I'd run the MdS he spent the next hour picking my brains on everything from gators to food, training to sleeping mats.
I then spent the following hour asking him if there was a legal way for me to force Jo to sleep less.
Sadly it appears not but at least it took my mind off my knee for a while.
I eased away from him at about 22 miles and then just kept going. We had to climb back up the other side of the big hill at 25 miles before dropping down to the finish line.
As a final twist they sent us round the houses a bit before actually crossing the line but thankfully Jo was there to cheer me in.
It was a great day out and whilst very tough it didn't involve as much scrambling as there's been on other coastal runs.
Jo's half marathon went well although they did seem to draw the short straw by having to do nearly all the ascent and descent that the marathon had but with less of the flatter road sections.
Details of the Endurancelife race series can be found at www.endurancelife.com
Jason
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