Five To Go Trail Marathon

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On Sunday Ben and I took part in the Five to Go Trail Marathon (aka Stanstead Abbots Marathon). It was the first 26.2 mile race I had run since London last year, so I was a little anxious just before the start! We only realised the night before what the Five to Go actually stood for! It is linked with the London Olympics taking place in five years time, so guess what next years is called!

The race started at 10:15 (delayed 15 mins, waiting for the famous Abi Henderson - who?!), within 5 minutes we were on the towpath of the River Lee. The terrain was pretty easy going with no real incline to speak of and a soft gravel path. At around the 8 mile stage we turned off the towpath and headed out on a loop through a marshy area, it was very scenic but at the same time frustrating as we wanted to heading south to London!

At 12 miles we joined the towpath again and begun the trail south towards the finish at Hackney Marshes. Once inside the M25 the scenery started changing rapidly with more grey, concrete and less green fields! We had some interesting smells on the way as well, with towpath passing a large sewage works and then the London EcoWaste plant! It wasn't all that bad really and once past these it was pleasant enough.

At around the 20/21 mile stage we were starting to feel it, our pace dropped off fairly quickly in the early 20's and the early 8 min 30 sec miles pace that felt so comfortable became impossible! At around 24 miles, memories of my London marathon last year began to flood back and it was case of getting to the end however we could!

Fortunately we stuck together for the entire race and we encouraged each other on to the finish, it might have been a different story had I been on my own.

We finished together in 4hrs 8 mins and looking back at it, we are really pleased with the time because we hadn't specifically trained for this race and we were classing it as a training run, plus we were carrying bags.

The map above is our actual route from my Garmin etrex.

Race Results