Monty’s Marathon

An early start: Monty, Vanessa and I were on the road before 6 am, heading to Brighton for the marathon. The traffic was much better than I expected, so we arrived at Preston Park with plenty of time to kill before Monty’s start time. The park was relatively quiet at first, so grabbing a nice coffee and a bacon sandwich was easy. Before long, the sheer scale of the event became apparent as nearly 20,000 people congregated at the starting area: mobile reception simply gave up, and excessively perky music blared from speakers across the park.

Monty’s race started well, but our logistics went awry shortly after that. I headed off to find parking closer to the finish line while Vanessa walked to the seafront to watch our boy at various points around the route. With the understandable road closures, it took me till midday to park and walk into the city. The weather was beautifully clear and sunny, cold at first, but it became very warm by lunchtime; too warm for many of those running. Poor Monty did very well, but after 21 miles, he had to pull out of the race with heatstroke. Thanks to the Volk’s Electric Railway along the seafront and Google Maps, I could return quickly to the car and dodge the road closures as I drove to collect him.