Mersea "Round The Island" Half Marathon

Yet another lovely June day dawned ( yes, I am and always have been obsessed with the weather ) and on the spur of the moment I  decided to enter the Mersea off road Half Marathon, a circuit of the island along footpaths and finishing with a draining five mile run along the beach.

Me and Lady Bong parked up and almost immediately bumped into the legendary biking and running machine Perry " The Cannibal " Taylor. My first words to Lady Bong were " Shit, I was going to take it easy, now I'll have to race". You can't let your mates beat you. Also present was one of Perry's mates, Bob Chapman, a man I think looks and sounds like Dudley Moore ( when he was alive, obviously ).

The starting gun went off and along the beach we went with 350 others. It was bloody hot and before long we were stripped to the waist which resulted in several local women fainting after being overcome with.....desire, lust, I don't know.

Many of the footpaths were very overgrown, which made it difficult to get in any sort of rhythm, but the views and glorious weather more than made up for this small inconvenience. The Cannibal set the pace and I was happy to follow and very quickly we were on to the long straight from Stone Point at East Mersea, heading west along the beach.

We both came in together in a decent time of 1.47, ending an enjoyable morning.