February 2012

[marathondan]

Sunday - 9 laps around the field for a total distance of 14.4 miles. I got out of the door at the relatively sensible hour of 8pm, togged up in woolly hat and ski gloves. After a decent snowfall the night before (and the resultant morning of dragging the kids around on a toboggan) conditions were now still and sitting around zero, with a full moon high in the sky and 2-3 inches of white stuff on the ground.

The roads were pretty clear as I trotted down to the green, but once there, the trails were anything from lightly compacted to non-existent, so a lot of the time the snow was reaching up to the ankle line of my shoes. Grip was obviously terrible (I don't own any offroad shoes) although at least, unlike mud, the stuff doesn't stick. But every step needed extra effort to control direction, which felt like the equivalent of a couple of extra miles.

The temperature was pleasant enough; only towards the end did I feel any sense of cold creeping into my bones. A faint mist gradually settled over the course of the run, but with the moon on full power, and the reflective ground, visibility wasn't an issue.

The Marathontalk interview was a remarkable chap who had a heart transplant at the age of 38, and then 20 months later ran his first marathon. Apart from the incredible positive mental attitude needed to do this, the most remarkable thing for me was his revelation that a transplanted heart doesn't receive brain instructions about how fast to beat. He went through three HRMs before working out why his heart rate always remained at 98 throughout his runs: it seems the surgeons are able to connect up the plumbing, but not the electrics. Apparently his heart does respond to adrenaline, so he has to run the first couple of miles really hard to get the adrenaline up, then the heart starts beating fast enough to deliver enough oxygen to complete the run.

As for me, the snow was taking its toll on my legs, and I finished in two and half hours, a plodtastic four and a half hour marathon pace. A long way off where I need to be, but exeptional circumstances I think. Glad I got out there and bagged this one.