Cold Christmas to Good Easter Marathon

Home, clean, fed and still feeling knackered after marathon number 1 of the year. The Cold Christmas to Good Easter Marathon on paper looks like it shouldn't be so bad. It's described as a trail run going from Cold Christmas in Hertfordshire and finishing at Good Easter in Essex. It's not that hilly, just nicely undulating. So why was it so hard? Firstly, for a trail run there was a distinct lack of trails. Now I'm not saying we were running on roads, there was a distinct lack of that as well. It was certainly cross country, but this meant following water logged field boundaries, and at times crossing soft, squidgy mud right across ploughed fields. It was about -1 degrees Celcius at the start, which meant the ground had a general covering of thin ice. So as we ran across fields we'd break through the crunchy ice to the soft squidgy, water logged earth below to find freezing water which in turn would find feet within running shoes.

The course of the marathon wasn't marked, it required each runner to self navigate by following written instructions on four sides of A4 paper. I've done a few marathons like this now, and I have to say that I'm not a particular fan of this type of race. I do them out of necessity, as they tend to be cheap, which helps keep the cost down when trying to do many marathons in one year. Trying to run and read instructions certainly slows you down. It is also way to easy to somehow miss a section of the instructions and read an instruction a few lines further on and then convince yourself that you are at that point and to turn right when you should have turned left. I found myself going wrong about three times. First time I was on my own, and realised I had gone wrong after about 400m, I turned round and found myself catching up with a group of four runners who had been behind me. I went past the group and shortly afterwards went wrong again, but not by much. When I caught up with the same group again I decided to stay with them. However, even as a group we all collectively made a few minor errors later on, especially a we started to tire. At times we stood for a minute or two at certain points to double check that we knew where we where, and where we had to go next.

I also had a couple of other minor mishaps. At one point we were running down a tarmac road towards a ford. We were aiming to cross a small footbridge beside the ford, but as I approached I discovered that the road was covered in black ice and found it impossible to either stop or change direction. I had to decide between falling on my arse or running into the ford. I decided on the latter, and I can confirm that the water in the ford was deep and freezing. I had to put up with cold, squelchy feet for quite a few miles after that. Then towards the end of the marathon when I was really starting to feel quite fatigued I miss-judged the height of log lying across the path. I jumped it, tripped and landed face down in the mud. At least I wasn't hurt.

Some people raved about how scenic the route was. We did pass through a few pretty villages, and we also ran past a massive Henry Moore sculpture in the middle of a field, which was quite nice to see (apparently he lives nearby). But for the most part the route either followed field edges around farmland or crossed ploughed fields. I find that after 26 miles one field starts to look like another, and so wasn't particularly inspired by the scenery. But it was a nice day, we had lovely blue skies, and the company was good. The organisers also laid on food at the finish, so I filled up on chili, rice pudding and cake before leaving for home.

I guess I should mention my time, which was 4 hours 1 minute and a few seconds. This had me finishing in 8th place. I would have finished in under 4 hours if it hadn't been for the few deviations I made.

At the start in Cold Christmas

Passing the Henry Moore sculpture

26 miles of mud later