315 Marathons!
The Clarendon this year will be my last full marathon. Having completed 315 it is time to scale down. Why pick Clarendon for my last big swan song? Well it’s the 10th time running this great event from Salisbury via the old Clarendon Way to Winchester and taking in the famous Farley Mount. Let’s hope it’s not too muddy this year. The first time I ran Clarendon was in 2005 running for Eastleigh running club, my first marathon for the club so I thought I would show them what I could do, 3hrs 26 mins 57 secs and I was very pleased with myself. At the time this was my 12th marathon, my first being London in 1999 which was a charity run for the cot death charity after losing my nephew Michael Rafferty, 10 months old in 1998. London was going to be a one off but turned out to be just a beginning. Clarendon ended up being a regular event, and in 2006 it helped me reach my 50 marathons the week of my 50th Birthday.
Then I decided I wanted to be a member of the 100 Marathon club, so this meant running every other weekend or back to back, and then I got in with VOTWO. After that it was ACC and JCC running 3 marathons over a long weekend starting on a Friday. In July 2012 I had the honour of running with the Olympic torch in Southampton.
The next time I did Clarendon was my 97th marathon in 2012. My times were slowing down now 4hrs 21 min 07 secs. My 100th was Portsmouth coastal in December, me being a Pompey boy by birth. I lost my way a bit after reaching 100, I lost my Mojo, what else was there to run for once you’ve got to 100? I know, let’s go for 150 marathons and by this stage I was doing lots of events down in Dorset with a company called Whitestar running mainly trail events. This was just like Clarendon, lovely countryside, hills and mud. Next time for Clarendon 2015 was my number 144th and my 150th was at spring Larmer Tree in 2016. You guess right. Once I was at 150 I then thought I might as well go for 200. Why not? Sounds good.
Most of my marathons were in the local Sussex and South Downs area. Many companies were putting on events on the downs, Beachy Head, Goodwood etc. Then of course the one in Hampshire from Salisbury to Winchester or sometimes the other way, called Clarendon! Also Portsmouth, Hampshire Hoppit and Andover trail, Southampton etc. Dorset was really my second home for running. I actually ran my 300th marathon in Dorset but because of Covid JCC got moved from March to July. Day 3 always finished at Studland chain ferry because the beach would be full of holiday makers. VOTWO decided we would do it back to front starting at the chain ferry running on the beach because there would be no one on the beach at 8 o’clock in the morning. We ran through Swanage, along the Jurassic Coast through Kimmeridge and finished at the Lulworth Cove, resulting in the last 6 miles being all uphill, on a hot summer’s day, absolutely sole destroying. It had to be done because I had my 300th the following week with friends and family coming to support me. So on my way to 300, Clarendon came in at 4hrs 58mins and 5hrs 11mins.
Once I had completed my 300th I was put on the world rankings list and there are less than a 1000 runners on it so I was very pleased. My 303th marathon was the last time I did Clarendon 2021, 5hrs 45min 28sec.
So I have now decided at almond 63 years of age I have had enough with marathons. This year’s Clarendon will be my 10th run on this event and it will be 315 over and out.
I thank my family for their terrific support over the years, my wife Angelina and my kids Emily and Shaun and grandchild Bella Mae. But I am not going to stop completely. I will just scale down and participate in the shorter events. Maybe next year I will again be on the Clarendon but just running in the half marathon.
The Clarendon is an event that is run by volunteers.