The Essex Way

I was meant to be running the Great North Run today, but made the difficult decision to postpone my entry as I wasn't ready in my training. As I've run a Half before, I knew I couldn't just wing it, so knew this was the most sensible thing to do. SO. I decided to spend the day walking a marathon instead. It's something I've wanted to do for a couple of years, and finally got round to doing it.

The Essex Way runs 82 miles from Epping to Harwich, and I made a 26.2 mile route from Aldham to Harwich, dragging Greg along with me. Or that was the plan at least. Things started off well; infact for the first 13 miles, everything was going swimmingly. The sun was shining, we were averaging 18 minute miles across beautiful farmland, orchards and countryside and were thoroughly enjoying ourselves. We'd had a couple of hiccups with wrong directions, but quickly righted our path. Then the erratic signposts just vanished, and our basic maps let us down and we ended up doing a 5 mile detour around Langham. I have no idea how we strayed so far from the path, but as we did, the rain started pouring, the aches started setting in and our spirits sank. Luckily I'd borrowed a friend's Garmain watch so we could keep track of the distance, or we'd have had no idea of how far we'd walked. Once we got back on track, the fun of it had disappeared and we just wanted to finish the damn thing! We had a couple more unintentional detours (they seriously need more signs along the route!), but eventually hobbled home in 9hrs40mins; and I'd say nearly an hour of that time was taken up with 'where the hell are we' map reading stops. With all the detours we fell short of Harwich and actually finished in Mistley, so sadly missed out on the 'End of the Essex Way' victory sign! My Mum kindly came to pick us up, bringing a flask of tea and the feeling of taking my wet trainers off in her car was amazing. We spent the night at hers, nursing blisters and falling asleep in front of the fire, but feeling victorious!