Mersea Round The Island Multi Terrain Race

25 June 2017 - By Brigid Wallen

Seven Witham runners toed the start line for the annual Round The Island race: Pete and Vicky Riley, Gerry Greenwold, Tony Smith, Ross Silverton, Dawn Shilling and Brigid Wallen.

Ask anyone who has run it and they pull a funny face and tell you how tough it is! I’m sure the weather conditions must play a huge part as although it was challenging, especially along the beach, we were very lucky today as it was at least 10 degrees cooler than last week and last year it was wet and windy.

The start is on the beach. The runners make a charge trying to find the best route, avoiding the slippery seaweed and looking for the compact sand. After a mile of beach there is a short stretch across the causeway then onto the sea-wall for approx eight miles until you turn back in towards the beach area again.

Hitting the wind for the last few miles and another stretch of beach made the run in hard work but it was a great event and we all agreed we would be back to run it again.

This year there was an add-on (hurrah 😀) as a section of the sea-wall had collapsed so we had to divert out and back. This bumped up the distance of the run to around 13.5 miles depending on your Garmin – other GPS devices are available….

Finish times to follow although it is worth mentioning that this was one of Dawn’s 12 in 10 half marathons. Despite the extra distance she managed to improve her finish time from last year by around 13 minutes. Well done Dawn.

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