Many thanks to Smiler Sid for his phone call on Monday and a last minute invite to the Faversham Marathon. I had to react quickly to arrange the trip to Kent and start my taper with only 5 days!
I quickly planned to go and see my biggest Supplier Mittal Steel Kent Wire Ltd in Chatham on Friday and managed to book the Beaumont B&B in Sittingbourne @laterooms.com for Friday night.
Friday has been good, seeing the members of Kent Wire who are all a lovely bunch and they made my visit very pleasant. I’ve not seen most of them for over 10 years so great to see them and have a look round their factory. I think it is funny sometimes how you can speak to people at work on almost a daily bases and know so much about them yet hardly or never see them so this made a good change. Also very fitting to see them just before a marathon as they were my biggest sponsor of my 10 in 10 challenge earlier this year so I was able to thank them in person for their fantastic donation. We even had a nice meal in the evening in a pub over looking the docks. Lovely Day!
On to race day. I left the B&B early to get to Faversham for 8am to register & pay! The race is set in a very pleasant rectangular park with a tree lined path around the perimeter. The course was 40 laps of the path. Initially you may think this is going to be very dull and boring but quite the opposite. There were actually several benefits of running so many laps. There were toilets and a drinks station every lap. The drinks station was stocked with water, Vimto, Lucozade, High 5, cake, biscuits and Jelly Babies, fantastic, almost a picnic! There was also a set of volunteers sat under a Gazebo who were the “Lap Counters”. Each lap counter had four runners assigned to them and they counted the 40 laps. It was all very friendly. You got to know your lap counter before the start and wavered at them as you passed each lap. Thank you to Maria for counting my laps. I was even able to leave my own drink with Maria so as I passed her I stopped for a quick word and a drink on several occasions. It was also nice lapping and being lapped as it allowed you to meet every runner several times and have lots of little chats even if they were running much faster or slower than you.
All in all it was a lovely friendly day and very enjoyable. Sid who organises the event says that everyone that finishes is a winner in his eyes so every finisher gets the same trophy. I’ve never won a trophy before in a marathon.
I met some marathon friends Gary & Michael who run at a similar pace to me. I stayed with Gary for most of the race with Michael some distance ahead. For the latter stages of the race I put in the effort to catch Michael which I managed. Another runner got involved in our battle, Karl who eventually pipped me to the post by 5 seconds. This made the race much harder than I planned and gave me a much better time than I planned. I finished in 6th place out of a field of about 60 runners, with a time of 3 hours 22 mins and 50 secs. It was great to meet up with Gary & Michael. I look forward to our next encounter boys!
