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| "Go careful out there folks!" |
THERE was a runner in flip-flops, a runner saving a drowning
man, and runners lost on a remote sea wall. There were even a few snakes knocking
about.
Welcome to Saltmarsh75!
The event more than lived up to its promise as the newest
and wackiest event on the running calendar in Eastern England. Around 100
heroic figures wound their way, sometimes painfully, up 75 miles of the Essex
coast via its myriad estuaries and marshy inlets. Some ran, some walked, some
were attached to dogs.
Many finished their ordeal wide-eyed, telling tales of
remote, silent stretches of sea wall where they didn’t see any other form of life
for aeons. Luckily the sun shone
brightly otherwise all those war-time pillboxes, abandoned Land Rovers and other
mysterious remnants along the Dengie Peninsula would have seemed downright
spooky.
The silence was broken only by the cries of seabirds
and puffing and wheezing of the weary travellers, but there did come a point when
the sound of female swearing filled the big Essex sky. In the Dengie nobody hears
you scream, but this incident happened over the water near the vast metropolis
of Tollesbury. Tiptree Road Runners’
very own Jo Roblin is not cowed by a marathon or a triathlon, but when it comes
to snakes crossing her path, decorum and restraint goes right out of the window. Her sudden surge of leg speed when the ‘anaconda’
made its appearance was unprecedented.
Jo bravely foiled the evil snake, but in the hero
stakes it would be hard to top the efforts of Adam Richardson, another Tiptree runner. Adam popped up at various places throughout
the two-day event, playing a support role to girlfriend Maxine, who spent an
awe-inspiring 20 hours and 33 minutes on her feet in order to finish. Adam’s presence
at a spot near the Goldhanger checkpoint was particularly apposite – for here
he saved someone from drowning!
In case you think I’m overdoing the hyperbole, I am
assured the story is true. The man who narrowly avoided a watery grave had in
fact gone into the water to pull his dog out of danger, but got into
difficulties himself. Growing more tired by the second, he was unable to pull himself
out and Adam swooped to the rescue, hauling him clear of danger. Apart from being
wet through and exhausted, man and dog were apparently none the worse for the
adventure. Now Adam is one of our club’s most promising runners, and by all accounts
a decent carpenter too, but his skill-list definitely doesn’t include swimming
(like many a runner – we have heavy legs, you know), so his actions were all
the more praiseworthy.
Not quite as heroic as Adam were the quartet of lead
runners heading out of Steeple at the start of Day 2 of Saltmarsh75. This group included yours truly (it’s a
bloody long time since I was in a leading pack, I can tell you). Convinced we
were supposed to head along the coastal path to Maylandsea (for that’s what it
says on the tin), we nonchalantly ignored our written route instructions and
made for the sea wall on the edge of the Blackwater estuary. Wrong.
This section had been deemed unfit for human passage
by the race organisers and they’d switched the route. Which we would have known
had we read our instructions, of course. In our defence, encouraging us on our
way was an old chap who looked to all intents like a race marshal, but turned
out to be plain old Joe Public (or it might have been Fred Bloggs, I’m not quite
sure).
The lack of a hi-vis jacket on his person should have made us suspicious,
but the way he waved his arms and pointed us towards the sea wall meant we had
no reason to suspect he was any of the following: (1) the local village idiot;
(b) an over-enthusiastic ex-traffic cop; (3) a race saboteur; (4) a daft old
trout.
I suspect the best explanation for his actions is the
one from an academic source – deep in the bowels of Essex University – from where
another of my club colleagues, Paula Rothero, has posited the theory that the
man was in fact a personification of cartoon character ‘Wile E.Coyote’. Some of you will recall that Wile was the
feckless creature in the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoon shorts, the
character who constantly tried and failed to foil the progress of Road Runner (‘beep
beep’). See what Paula is getting at there?
Anyway, those of us who ran Saltmarsh as mere minions
in a relay team are now genuflecting in wonderment at the achievement of the
brave 39 master athletes who managed to cover every single mile of the 76.35 over
two days - especially club colleagues James Haskey-Jones (8th) and
Tracy Harrington (10th and first female).
Congrats also to organiser Roy Read and his team. Saltmarsh75 was long, it was tough, it was thoroughly
mental. But it was undoubtedly a big success.
* Rob
Hadgraft’s five published books on running are now available as e-books for
Kindle at just £4.99 each, in addition to paperback format. Use
this link: Rob
Hadgraft's running books on Amazon or, alternatively: www.robhadgraft.com
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