Portsmouth Coastal Marathon

After leaving the revels of the Tewkesbury RC party a bit early on Saturday for a very early start next day to travel down to the Portsmouth Coastal Waterfront Trail marathon, both Angie Sadler and Phillip Howells were rewarded with successful finishes - although with rather different performance standards.

It was a cool and foggy day, but without the heavy rain of 2015 and with no wind this was probably the best weather conditions for the race which is now in its 7th year and has grown from small beginnings to now attracting well over 1,000 entrants. Running in what she describes as probably her best run of the year, Angie completed the flat, but interesting and hard course, which was a mixture of sandy and pebble beach, coastal paths, country tracks, fields, paths and not much road, in a scintillating 3-38-17 for a fine 198th place overall, 18th lady and 3rd female vet 50.

Phillip had to be content with finishing just outside the formal time limit of 6 hours, but still with an accredited finish time in 6-07-21 for 991st place out of 1,014 finishers after a few health issues meant a prolonged stop at the last check point. However marathon finishes number 152 for Angie and 209 for Phillip were marked up with one of the biggest finishers medals each you are ever likely to see!