Dave and I travelled to the vineyards of Surrey to take part in this ‘Medoc’ inspired marathon. It consisted of 15 wine stops – at each you can have a shot of wine, nibbles and friendly chat. The wines were from the area and included Bacchus, Juniper Hill, Surrey Gold, Chalk Ridge Rose and some white sparkling wine and a red. I wasn’t sure how I was going to cope with the intake of wine during a run, but being a true Massey runner, I soldiered on and took one for the team ;-P.
It was an awesome day, there was plenty of people in fancy dress, our favourites being the Spartans, who were loud and really funny – they were taking the hillside by storm, my favourite quote which was shouted at some passing cyclists ‘we haven’t invented the wheel yet!!!’ They kept the laughter flowing especially at the wine stations, the marshals were awesome and into the spirit of the whole occasion, the best station was the rose station, where all were dressed in war time clothing, there was also a band and the marshals couldn’t do enough for you.
There was one lady dressed as a bottle of London Pride, whenever she went through the woodland sections she nearly had her bottle top taken off. There were cows in the way, two of which were getting a bit raunchy!!!!
On the second lap we caught up with a lot of half marathoners who were set off an hour after we were, most of these were just taking part for the wine. This was part of the race which was a bit of a let down as they were drinking copious amounts of wine, leaving some of the stations dry so other runners wouldn’t be able to have a drink – some had huge wine glasses and we were told there were others that actually took whole bottles. These ‘runners’ would not move out of the way when you were trying to run by them and were generally just drunk. It can’t have been very nice for the marshals to have to put up with some of the behaviour.
The last mile and a half was down hill and when we finished I didn’t get the right sized t-shirt AGAIN which was another let down. However, we had cake, Dave had hog roast and I had the veggie option and ANOTHER glass of wine. We then sat on the grass eating and watching the rest of the marathoners and half marathoners finish – some a bit worse for wear.
Although there were some bad points of this hilly, boozy race, these were cast aside by the race as a whole. It is a great concept, a great route, fantastic organisation and definitely one for the Massey’s Crew!!!!
Race Report by Lee Hill