Race start – Thank you to Sally Galsworthy for the photos in this post
What a special marathon the tunnel marathon was! It lived up to everything I hoped it would. I’ve always had a bit of a fascination with tunnels and things to do with World War II so when the opportunity arose to run in a second world war Royal Navy bunker, a hundred foot below ground overlooking Portsmouth harbour came along, I just had to enter. Even if it is one hell of a 238 mile journey from my home near Manchester.
To give you an idea of the size of the bunker, it was used to track allied forces during D-Day and some 700 staff worked inside. The bunker consisted of a rectangular matrix of tunnels all on the same level taking up an area a little larger than a standard athletic running track. The reason I could roughly work this out was from the fact that for most of the course we ran around the perimeter of the underground facility and we had to do 91 laps. This compares closely with a track marathon which is 105.5 laps.
The event had chip timing to help us keep track of the number of laps we had completed. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to keep count, you just keep losing track!
Some of the tunnels were large probably about 15 foot across and 12 foot high but many of the tunnels were much smaller, hardly wider than a conventional door and merely 6 foot high. For this reason, the use of helmets was mandatory, most of the runners used cycle helmets, including myself. There was also a couple of unlit sections so some kind of torch was required, most went for a head torch, for me, I decided to simply carry a small hand torch.
These requirements were wholly necessary, I watch several runners bang their heads and even knock their head torches off. I even hit my head a handful of times! I felt for a few of the taller runners who were regularly stooping. In contrast there were a couple of fast short ladies and they were able to zoom round, regularly lapping me.
Most of us brought a kit bag into the tunnel and kept it near the start/finish, to keep clothes, drinks and gels etc. I had 3 gels and stopped at intervals to take them. At 17 miles I took on a gel and accidently left my torch behind. When I got to the dark sections I though I might struggle but I quickly realised I had got used to the dark and the floor levels in the tunnels and could comfortably run in the dark. I elected to finish the rest of the marathon without carrying my torch. Even though I was happy doing this, I wouldn’t really recommend it.
The narrow tunnels made over taking problematic and there was a lot of it, I was often being over-taken and also over taking. There were also a lot of corners on the course. I decided to count them, 11 left turns and 6 right turns each lap. That adds up to a ridiculous 1547 corners to negotiate to complete the marathon! I had no idea how long it would take me to complete this marathon and was guessing at 5 hours so I was really pleased to have had a very steady paced run and finish strong in 4 hours 10 minutes 31 seconds.
It has been the most bizarre, crazy, brilliant and fun marathon I have ever run. It is the only fully underground marathon ever in the UK and only the second time it has ever been held. I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to take on the race and must thank Sussex Trail Events for having the mad idea for creating and hosting the event. I look forward to them hosting something else as bonkers in the future.
