Classic challenges: Now, it feels like there’s an artisan baker in every town. The Great British Bake Off is back, and this time it’s got something to prove.
The Médoc Marathon is a slog, but it does offer runners a few wine breaks along the way
Flap, flap, flap. I could hear him gaining on me. The worst part of running a marathon is the inevitability of being overtaken by a giant prawn. Flap, flap, there he went again — not a crustacean, this time, but a man wearing flippers with a giant bowl over his head. I’d have minded less if this hadn’t been the second time — I’d only got ahead of him again because he had stopped to drink a glass of red wine: claret, to be precise.
My protocol with running is that I don’t drink on the actual day of the race (until the race is over.) When it comes to the Médoc Marathon this makes me the biggest killjoy ever. This is a run for athletes and gourmands possessed of the most formidable of constitutions. The route — through vineyards and around châteaux — is punctuated by wine pitstops: trestle tables heaving not just with different kinds of bordeaux but also oysters, steak, foie gras and other rich food that you would normally go out of your way not to put in a jogging stomach.
Joe Fattorini, presenter of ITV’s The Wine Show, took part in the 32nd Médoc Marathon, a year ago. Fattorini is no running flake: he had previously completed four marathons, three of them in Ironman races. “They come off the back of a two-anda-half mile sea swim and a 112-mile bike ride. Unfortunately they weren’t really helpful. They lulled me into a false sense of security. I thought it would be an easy jog. I suffered a bit.”
A bit? After crossing the finishing line, he ended up on a drip. “I thought I’d lost him,” says his producer cheerfully. Fattorini explains, “I had agonising, buckling-on-the-floor cramps. I thought I’d walk them off but after an hour I was worse. I went to the medical tent where I had the worst 40 minutes of my life: boiling, crippling cramps with my legs rippling under the skin as a brilliant GP and a fireman called Francis massaged them. They put two drips in me. They were squeezing the bag. Apparently that’s not good.”
It wasn’t just the wine that had done for him, but also the fact that the Médoc Marathon is traditionally run in fancy dress. The year I entered (running on an injury, I completed only half the course) the theme was A Space Odyssey. There were people running 26.2 miles wrapped entirely in foil.
Others, dressed as aliens (complete with gigantic papier mâché heads) were in skintight all-in-one bodysuits which caused a bit of a performance when nature, or rather a couple of bottles of wine, called. And, yes, as in the scene from Monty Python’s Marathon for Incontinents, where competitors constantly peel off into the trees, I did see a lot of men dashing into the vineyards to relieve themselves. Yes, expensive vineyards. No, I won’t tell you which ones.
For the 33rd Médoc Marathon which takes place in a couple of weeks’ time, the fancy dress instruction is 33rpm records. Fattorini ran his 26.2 miles dressed as “Obi Wine Kenobi” as Matthew Rhys calls him on The Wine Show. “It was a pretty faithful copy of Alec Guinness in Star Wars in 1977. I was melting after two kilometres. Apparently it weighed about 10 kilos when I took it off.”
It always strikes me as odd that the French, whose fashion sense we revere, should be so into fancy dress, but they take it very seriously indeed. The event is a carnival with an infectiously upbeat atmosphere.
For anyone who loves bordeaux it also offers incredible back-door access through the grounds of châteaux and their vineyards. You jog between rows of vines. The wellknown Médoc pattern of gentle gravel rises, with the best properties perched at the top, is all too clear when you are slogging up them. And then there are the wines. I can’t drink and run so saved my first taste for a glass of Château Pichon Longueville Baron, just after the 11-mile [18km] point, and stopped soon after (and in case you think that’s feeble, running on a bad leg turned out to be such a terrible mistake that I couldn’t so much as run across a road for a year afterwards).
This was also Fattorini’s first alcoholic refreshment of the course: “I was with the ultra-runner Jamie Ramsay. He had just completed a solo, unsupported run from Vancouver to Buenos Aires.
“He’d done pretty much a marathon a day for 364 days. But he hadn’t had a drink in over a year. Montrose was another highlight and Lafite-Rothschild. At Lafite we met a group of young English runners. They reckoned they’d had enough, were rather dismissive of the place, and asked if Lafite was any good …”
With so much stopping for a drink, times for the Médoc Marathon tend to be on the slow side, to put it mildly. Fattorini, who has run marathons in 3h 40m, finished this one in 6h 27m.
There is a reason that this race proudly calls itself “the longest marathon on earth”, but it might also be the best.
I went to the medical tent where I had the worst 40 minutes of my life: boiling, crippling cramps with my legs rippling under the skin.” Joe Fattorini, presenter of ITV’s The Wine Show