Thanks to the World Cup this year the Palace For Life Foundation Marathon March was two weeks earlier than usual and took place on Saturday 24th September.
I am writing this the day after and I am glad I only need my hands to type this out – the legs are not quite there for some reason!
This was my 5th Marathon March (to my internal shame I missed the first one) and I can legitimately say it was the biggest and best yet. Over 150 hardy/foolish souls got to Selhurst Park at 7am on a Saturday morning to then spend between 6 and, in my case, 10 hours walking around South London.
This was the biggest march ever and a number of changes had been made this year to make the walk that much more enjoyable – assuming you can describe walking 26.2 miles in a day enjoyable!
For a start, the route had been shifted to a loop around South West London starting and finishing at Selhurst Park, having spent the past two marches walking in a loop around South East London. The new route was much flatter and where there were hills they were much more gradual. It is not for nothing that bits of South East London are known as the South London Alps!
The amount of green space had not been sacrificed and much of the first half of the walk was following the River Wandle. I know parts of the path along the Wandle but even I discovered parts of the river path for the first time. Impressively, the river was so clean that not only could you see the riverbed but there were people fly fishing. I am assuming there were fish to catch as opposed to the abandoned shopping trolleys you would have caught twenty years ago!
The rest of the walk included Wimbledon, Wandsworth, Tooting Bec and Streatham Commons so there was no shortage of green space to walk through. The last bit of Streatham Common passed by the Inkspot Brewery which had a huge beer garden. If I had not had a pressing appointment at Selhurst Park and a medal to collect I would have been very tempted……
The other innovation this year was very clear milestone markers (first five miles, halfway, twenty miles etc.) and each of the markers had a life size photo of various Palace players and Patrick Vieira. It was just too tempting not to use each one for a photo opportunity. Finally at the end of the walk were allowed to go into the first team changing rooms to change out of our walking gear. Safe to say that at my age that will be my only chance to ever use those changing rooms!
As always, it is the talking that gets me through the walking. Doing anything more or less non stop for up to 10 hours is going to get really boring if you cannot distract yourself and talking is the easiest and best way to do that. Of course given that the walk mainly consists of Palace supporters (we did have one brave Fulham supporter on the walk) it is easy to find things to talk about.
After a two year hiatus, thanks to the pandemic, my friends from Sweden, Mikael and Kent had travelled over for the weekend for the march. I met Kent and Mikael during the 2019 march and we have kept in touch since then. Kent has been a Palace supporter since the 1970s and Mikael likewise for over twenty years and they are both big supporters of Palace For Life. For the past two years they have walked their own marathon in Sweden on the day of the Marathon March but finally they were back suffering with the rest of us as we traipsed around South London. It was great to have them back! Making up the rest of our informal grouping was Jack and my old mate Julian Tucker. It was Julian who had talked me into the march after the first one, so he has a lot to answer for!
There is always something new and interesting about each march – for example last year I spent a fair amount of the walk talking to an Olympic medal winner – Martyn Rooney – without having any idea who he was! I was a bit slow but eventually figured it out and Martyn was very good putting up with my ignorance.
This year I learned something about swans! While we were walking in Beddington we came across a swan sitting in the middle of the pavement is a residential street. As we got closer we saw the swan had a bowl of water and a man standing nearby. He explained that the RSPB were coming to rescue the swan. Apparently, is not unusual for young swans (which this was) to get lost on their first flight and a swan can only take flight from water. A bit like an aeroplane they need to get up some speed before the can take off and they need water to get up the necessary speed. The poor swan had somehow ended up a street nowhere near the water and without being rescued it would never have made it back home. It would have been nice to see whether the swan made it back home but we had lots of walking yet to do.
Near the end of the walk we could see a figure in the distance dressed head to toe in red and blue. We had already passed through all of the scheduled feed stops on the walk so I was a bit puzzled as to what was happening. As I got closer I realised it was the legendary Dr. John. Not the musician from New Orleans, but the frequent and erudite guest on the FYP podcast. It turns out John lives not far from the March route and was providing an impromptu final stop. Having a quick catch up with John (and grabbing a couple of the biscuits he had brought) helped me get though the final mile or so of the walk.
Finally, after ten hours of walking and talking we had reached Selhurst Park – time for a medal, a Cronx beer (very nice it was too!) as much lasagne and chips as I could manage. It was job done and time to head home. Another critical amount of fundraising done by the 150 walkers and another enjoyable, but tiring 26.2 miles walked!
It is definitely not too late to make a donation to the 2022 Palace For Life Marathon March so head over to this link.
