Braintree Track Marathon

The build-up to the Braintree marathon had not been easy. It did not help that at no point I felt overly excited about it. The prospect of running one hundred five and a half 400m rounds was not particularly my idea of marathon fun. So I had prepared to get mentally ready and even youtubed about it. When I had felt as ready as ever, the event had been postponed. The infamous Beast From The East had swept through the country and brought ice and snow on that March weekend, when it had meant to happen.Fast forward to the last weekend in May, when it actually did happen. Things got more complicated. I had a plane to catch from Heathrow at 1800 on the same day, had no lift to Braintree anymore, and with a marathon start relatively late at 9:30 I wondered how on earth I could squeeze this all into the few hours that were left. My choice fell to reviving my DriveNow car sharing membership and to try this 12 hours ad-hoc hire of a snazzy Mini, which was parked somewhere in the neighbourhood. Not being a frequent driver and having only a vague clue of how to get to Braintree I solely had to rely on Google’s navigation service.By the time I reached Braintree (in time, thank you Google) my worries had shifted towards running in the hot weather and how little time I have left between the hopefully under 4 hours finish, driving home and getting to Heathrow by 1700 latest. At the registration desk my running buddy Cathy turned-up, super relaxed having spent the night at a fabulous Airbnb and super confident about the event. It did help to take my mind off my worries. It’s always good to run marathons with friends.The event turned out smaller than I thought. I recall they said it would be limited to 80 runners, but I think only 30 or 40 max showed up. And so we started. First the half lap and then a countdown of the 105 remaining laps. It was much more fun than I thought it could be. You had always the same nice and cheering people around, there was a guaranteed water, feeding and cooling station every 400 meter (what a luxury) and running in laps was actually quite zen. I loved it. The biggest challenge was the heat and the fact that there was no shade and you had to run the whole thing in full sun. Towards the last quarter of the race I did utilise the cooling station quite frequently (every lap) and splashed a cup of cold water into my face, next round over my head, then down my back and then over my whole body. I have never felt doing that in a race before. It felt nice.Every now and then your lap count was announced and when it came to lap 100 it felt special to have the last two kilometres been broken up into five 400 meter laps. And so I finished in 3 hours 45 minutes and 56 seconds. I am proud of this time in these conditions, that I felt that over the last kilometres I still did something that remotely resembled running and that I was not completely shattered and depleted when I crossed the finish. I still had to drive home and catch a plane, remember? I got the medal, said good bye to everyone, more quickly than usual (normally I like to linger around), drove home, got my suitcase and then was at Heathrow well in time. A perfect ending of an event that had more than a few bumps on its way. And I even enjoyed it, liked the originality and think I would do it again. Go, Braintree!