Simeon Whiting writes:
Someone recently introduced me to the idea of type 2 fun. Type 2 fun is when something is hard at the time but actually kind of cool when you look back at it. Type 1 fun is brilliant at the time and still brilliant afterwards. Type 3 fun is just bloody horrible and that’s all there is to it.
Whatever kind of fun you think it is, there’s no denying that Escape From Meriden is a unique experience. About 300 runners gather in Meriden, the geographical centre of England, on a Friday night in November. On the stroke of midnight, you all have 24 hours to get as far away as possible; whoever gets furthest, wins. Rob and I have a track record for finding unconventional races. As soon as we heard about EFM, there was no question that we were going to do it.
Half the fun is in the preparations. Distances are measured as the crow flies, so there’s an art to planning a straight route with few hills to slow you down. Obviously, there’s nothing as namby-pamby as route markings, so it’s also best to choose a route with simple navigation. Oh, and no aid stations either, so you’ll have to get a friend to meet you in the occasional lay-by with a flask of tea and a banana sandwich, or research 24-hour garages on the way.
The concept of Escape From Meriden is that it’s a prison break. (Hence the mug shot with this post.) There are prison guards to menace you at registration, along with ‘fortune tellers’ who’ll tell you exactly how far you’ll get. (Except our fortune teller wasn’t much good. All we got from her was advice that one of us should wear a white dress and a prediction that I’d meet a lesbian who’d give me a sword. I’m still waiting for that.) There are ways to take the prison-break concept further, too. For a small fee, you can purchase an orange prison jumpsuit for your escape and even chain yourself to another runner for the duration of the event. It’s not uncommon for EFM runners to be waylaid by the local constabulary for a little chat about what on earth they’re doing.
In the week before the race, all the chat on the event socials was about the weather forecast. One adjective kept coming up again and again: biblical. There were jokes about fishing waders, canoes and building an ark. Even hardened race veterans admitted to panicking. Driving to the start, the rain was so torrential I could barely see the road ahead, even with the windscreen wipers on full speed. Type 1 fun was looking unlikely.
At the start, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. Things were looking up. At the off, my worries about the next 23 hours and 59 minutes melted away; Rob and I had a plan and it was all in our hands now. We followed a phalanx of orange-clad escapees down Meriden High Street and off towards the A45. We chatted, fueled and splashed through puddles. Before an hour had passed, we were pootling through the centre of Coventry, acknowledging the applause of revelers just ejected from the pubs.
Unfortunately, this was the high point. What followed was just grim. Our route plan was excellent in avoiding hills and sticking to a more-or-less straight line. But because of that, it was frankly dull. Combine that with darkness, cold, relentless rain and articulated lorries bombing past us at 70mph and you’re left with a prospect that makes staying on the sofa with a bottle of wine feel really quite appealing.
Things got worse. Five weeks post-marathon, Rob thought he was fully recovered. All the evidence suggested he was right. But his legs chose tonight to betray him. By the 15 mile mark, his hip flexors had seized up and running was becoming an ordeal. This meant more walking. But walking was obviously slower, which meant we got cold. The sight of a McDonalds sign on the horizon lifted our spirits for a few minutes, until closer inspection told us it was closed.
We slogged on. We donned gloves, warm hats, extra tops. We struggled into waterproof trousers, which would probably have looked hilarious to anyone watching from a passing car.
We staggered into Daventry just before 7am. It was still dark. It was still raining. We were hungry. Rob’s legs had abandoned him altogether. Both of us were nearing sense of humour failure. Salvation came in the shape of another branch of McDonalds which, mercifully, was indeed open. Gorging on sausage and egg McMuffins, shivering, grumbling, it soon became clear that our escape had come to an end. If we’d really wanted to, we could probably have death-marched another 10k to claim silver medals. But honestly, in God’s name, why? So that was how it ended: soaked to the skin in Daventry McDonalds. From my perspective, definitely type 2 fun. If you ask Rob, he’ll tell you it was type 3.