Saturn Running Run to Infinity and Beyond 26.75m 2020

It isn't often you get the chance to do a marathon where the start/finish is less than a mile from where you live. I think Saturn Running started running their seven hour timed runs in 2019, but this was the first one of theirs that I had attempted. Also Melanie is doing the last of her ten road marathons required for her 100 marathon club entry in April so this event, with its relatively flat profile was useful training for that event. That event has a five hour cut off, so we wanted to see if we could get close to that on this one.

The downside is that we know the area very, very well as we run the Durham parkrun every weekend we can. The organisers did an enormous amount to work to ensure that the event was not cancelled because of Storm Dennis. The river levels were very high, so I think there were two course alterations to ensure the event went ahead and we were warned that the the course might have to change in the middle of the event if any part became flooded. This was part of the original route

and here are other photos of the river that was very high.

The course that the organisers came up with was an out and back lapped route with each lap being about 3.3m long, so we needed eight laps for a marathon. For those of you who know Durham the route started from the Durham Amateur Rowing Club and went along the river to St. Cuthbert's Boat Club, then turned sharp left towards Green Lane and followed that before turning through the wood in the direction of Maiden Castle. Soon after the old railway bridge the path was flooded so we diverted across Durham City Rugby ground (which was pretty muddy) and came out the new tarmac path from St.Cuthbert's accommodation at Parson's Field. From there to Maiden Castle across Noisy Bridge, turn left and head towards the old railway bridge. Just before we got there we reached the turn around point and headed back the same way. Here is photo from near Noisy Bridge showing the water level

One of the advantages of a lapped course is you get frequent access to your gear and any specialist food and drink you might want. I didn't end up changing anything and just had my own food and drink. However, the aid station had a very good selection of goodies and lots of vegan things. They even had a vegan goody bag at the end.

There were lots of people I knew running this one and it was lovely to see them regularly, an advantage of an out and back route. Melanie ran with Sabrina, who was doing the half, and I soon found the pace too quick for me. I did catch Melanie on the final lap and we did that together. I never get tired of seeing the sculpture on the right

We passed the 26.2m mark at 4hrs 52min which felt good and we finished the 26.75m in 4hr 58min 15sec. Because we had registered a bit late we didn't get a medal from this event, but we got a choice from the left over medals from other events and a marathon pin.

A 3.3mile lapped course which is out and back sounds awful, but it turned out much better than I thought. Not sure I will do another marathon distance one again, but you never know ....