Type and hit ENTER

Commonly used tags...

Brighton Festival Brighton Fringe Brighton Pride British Sea Power Cinecity Lewes Psychedelic Festival Locally Sourced Lost & Found Love Supreme Festival Nick Cave Poets Vs MCs Politics Rag'n'Bone Man Record Store Day Save Our Venues Six Of The Best Source Virgins Streets Of Brighton Street Source Tattoos The Great Escape Tru Thoughts Unsung Heroes
  • Home
  • News
  • Previews
  • Reviews
  • Features
  • Food
  • Tickets
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Advertise
  • Home
  • News
  • Previews
  • Reviews
  • Features
  • Food
  • Tickets
  • Contact
    • Contact
    • Contribute
    • Advertise
Features

Brighton Marathon From The Sidelines

Apr 13, 2017
-
Posted by Ben Miller

The strangest thing about the sportiest day on Brighton’s calendar is that the jubilant sense of achievement and celebration in Preston Park is only matched on a completely contrasting day of the year: Pride.

Isotonic fuel and energy gels replace beer, shots and rainbow tattoos for the 42-kilometre run/toddle/walk. You can tire yourself just looking at the map of the route. But it’s undoubtedly a party, even if a communal nervous tension hangs unmistakably in the warm air.

A man dressed as a portly badger, complete with headdress and claws, looks like he might have a hard time keeping cool on a stroll around the park, much less a meandering circumnavigation of the entire city at relatively high speed. Elvis impersonators, various superheroes and centaurs are limbering up, leaving behind a strew of half-empty bottles and abandoned banana skins (swiftly cleared, we should add, by eagle-eyed litter-pickers.)

marathon

As they head to the colour-coded funnels – the runners are grouped into the rough times they think they might finish in – a playlist straight out of Now That’s What I Call Autotuned Music I Never Want to Hear Again blares from the starting point. Gradually, group by group, they go, out onto the main road, shrills and hastily-made placards greeting them from the crammed pavements. By mile 16, near Hove Lagoon, the standards have been set. Long after the elite athletes have fired past, people are either moving smoothly, grimacing or walking. Or combinations of the three.

Someone’s set up a sound system outside their house, from which ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’, a tune you don’t hear broadcast loudly in Hove too often, reverberates. “Any first time runners?” asks a veteran on the next corner through a loudspeaker. “17th timer,” comes the weary reply. “First and last timer,” quips another. “Fair enough,” encourages loudspeaker man. “One off the bucket list, isn’t it?”

marathon

The thing is, you wouldn’t think watching people running down roads would be this interesting or exciting. The huge joy of the occasion can’t be easy to visualise for the runners, either: when you’re on your 20th mile on a rural Sussex hill on a freezing December morning, no amount of knowing that you’ll feel like the whole city is cheering you on when you reach the big day will make it any less tediously rubbish. But in this atmosphere, when everyone is momentarily rooting for each other in a world where terrifying wars might be about to break out, it’s brilliant. And it’s irresistibly inspiring: if you’re a runner, it instantly makes you want to be part of it next year. If you’re not, it shows you what any old fleshy body can do – an uplifting realisation even if it’s your idea of fresh hell.

marathon

The normalness of everyone is striking: in fairness, none of the runners look like they’ve been living the life of Mark E Smith in his pomp over the last few months, but it wouldn’t be unkind to say there aren’t loads of lithe athletes. There are, though, plenty of people who look like potatoes or pears or people who go to the pub most nights.

If you could measure the serotonin levels at the finish – and the athletes’ village is so vast it would be a wonder if there wasn’t a stand at least offering some kind of endorphin tracker – they’d be off the scale. It would take the staunchest of scoffers not to feel some emotion seeing the finishers saunter, stagger or stumble across the line. This is a day for the city to be proud of, its spoils a medal and a severe dose of cramp for 12,000 people. As baffling as a marathon sometimes sounds, it all makes enviable sense watching on. Hopefully badger bloke didn’t boil.

marathon

Brighton Marathon, Sunday 9th April 2017

Words by Ben Miller
Photos by Ben Miller and Xavier Clarke

Apr 13, 2017
Email
Ben Miller
Ben Miller is a SOURCE feature writer and reporter.
← PREVIOUS POST
PINS Review
NEXT POST →
‘They/Onlar’ Review, Fabrica
Mailing List

Recent Posts
  • Two Decades Of Funk Fire With Jalapeno Records
    Jan 18, 2021

    A new compilation celebrates 20 years of funk and soul from world-renowned Brighton label Jalapeno Records.

  • Hansel and Gretel? | Brighton Source
    Hansel and Gretel? Review
    Dec 18, 2020

    A postmodern pantomime with an unrelaible narrator. Outdoors with comedy, dance, camp actors, plenty of fun. On two levels: laughs for kids and jokes for adults

  • Artists Open Houses 2020
    Dec 5, 2020

    After cancelling the May edition, Artists Open Houses tell us what it's like to be back with a December festival that is open to visitors in person for eight days.

  • Cinecity 2020 previewed by Brighton Source
    Cinecity 2020
    Nov 17, 2020

    From the North Laine to Mongolia, Cinecity's lineup is typically eclectic and original this year - catch it before the city's key film festival ends.

  • Macbeth Review
    Nov 2, 2020

    Macbeth in Brighton. One-act play with Scottish Gaelic sounds by This Is My Theatre. Power, ambition, murder, blood. The woods are moving.

  • Lost & Found: Poison Girls
    Nov 2, 2020

    As part of our retrospective series on local bands we look back at the hugely influential and ever-challenging anarcho-punk collective Poison Girls.

  • The Rose Hill | Brighton Source
    Save Our Venues – The Rose Hill
    Oct 26, 2020

    We spoke to the team at the Rose Hill to find out how a series of new creative projects is helping this unique Brighton venue to cope with the current crisis.

  • Spillage! Review
    Oct 19, 2020

    This one-person, one-act play is giddy, funny and seriously entertaining. An odyssey through the madness of corporate pressure on our mental health.

Website developed in Brighton by Infobo
Copyright © Brighton Source 2009-2020
Brighton Marathon From The Sidelines - Brighton Source