Trail Marathon

This weekend I traveled to the Southwestern coast of England to a little peninsula called Portland. It's connected to the mainland by a thin stretch of pebble beach called Chesil Beach, the same Chesil Beach where Ian McEwan based his famous book by the same name. My book club read the book last year, so it was funny to end up running across it, and discovering that the beach itself mirrored the hardships in the novel.



I went to Portland to run my first trail marathon. It was hosted by Endurance Life and it started like this...





We ran over cliff tops and bounded through muddy puddles on the edges of 200 foot drops. The scenery and difficulty of the trail made it so an I-pod was not only unnecessary but forbidden.




Because of the rough terrain the race took me more than five hours to complete, and it made the Florence marathon seem like a walk in the park.

It was the hardest thing I've ever done, at least physically. It was beautiful and rewarding... so much so that I think I'll do it again. February 21st in South Devon.