Lovely location - New Forest Showground. Beautiful at 7.30am with a heavy dew underfoot and the sun just above the treeline.
I set off in the middle wave, 4.00-4.30 and managed to get myself two mins ahead of schedule early on, due to pace paranoia and a few slightly misplaced mile markers on the course.
I was just starting to relax into letting those two minutes drift off -- somewhere around mile 10 I think -- when a woman a few places in front of me went down like a sack of spuds. Another runner was attending to her, but initially it looked like she might be having a seizure, so I stopped to provide backup. It turned out that this was just sobs of pain and shock from a full-on faceplant into hard earth. I hung around for a couple of minutes until she got to her feet and was ready to gingerly walk on.
I was now a little behind schedule. No problem I thought, after that break I can up the pace by 15 sec/mile and get myself back on track. Seems it's not that simple though. I upped the effort level, but every mile there was something, a hill or a water station or a niggle of some kind, and it never quite happened. It's always a worry when you put your foot on the gas, even gently, and there's no response.
There were hills. Not Moyleman hills, but more than I think the organisers had let on. There was also quite a lot of tarmac, on the roads through the heathland areas, and a through few villages. Often roads with traffic, something else I hadn't expected.
Around 15 miles I was feeling it, for sure. I had in my mind that I should feel fine up to mile 20 and then it should start to hurt, but of course this is nonsense because I'd only trained up to 20 miles, and that had battered me to bits. Plus all of my training was on grass, whereas today I'd been largely on tarmac or hard gravel. The pace was starting to slip further.
I took a tumble myself around 18 miles. I think I was trying to ready the damn pace band. Caught a stone with my toe, stumbled and kind of let myself fall, rather than struggle to keep balance and risk straining something. It was a glancing blow, one bloodied knee and a grazed shoulder. I did what I always do, immediately sit up and look frustrated, just in case anyone is watching. A couple of kinds souls stopped to check on me, but I was up quite quickly and did some shoulder stretches to show them how OK I was. I was indeed OK, but walked for a couple of minutes just to loosen everything up again. So I was now well down on the target time. I resolved to not look at the pace band any more, not only because it had already led to my downfall, but also because I now had no chance of hitting my target. Even 4.30 was looking unlikely.
The pace now slowed and slowed, 10 minute miling giving way to 10.30 and 11.00 and 11.30. Walk breaks started. My buddy Chris was supporting me, and he joined me for a few sections on his bike. In between, I recited the periodic table song in my head. His final meeting point was 23 miles, and he cycled in with me from there, providing chat to keep my mind off my legs, and doing a handy advance run to fill a water bottle at the last aid station.
The most depressing thing now was my pace and gait. I was reduced to the dead man shuffle, the awful plod which is no faster than a race walk, but higher impact. It feels, and looks, terrible. I really wondered if this counts as running. If I'm reduced to this, what's the point of actually trying to run a marathon?
Finally we heard distant music, then could see marquees in the distance, and the finish was only a few bends away. My left lower hamstring pinged, and for a moment all I could do was hop, gradually developing this into a walk. I walked through the 26 mile point, and was just able to get a jog back on for the last 50m. I crossed the line with arms weakly raised, a grimace on my face. 4.38 was the time, 18 mins outside my target and 22 mins outside 2017's effort in a lab coat and wig.
Recovery took a while; I felt a little dizzy and after some time threw up all of the water that I'd taken on since the finish. It's fair to say that I've always been proud of my times, and so this felt like a failure.
On reflection, there are a number of mitigating factors:
- more hills than I expected; I never see a hill in my training
- tarmac and hard packed gravel; again, I do my miles on grass or soft woodland trails
- two fall incidents; very difficult to make up the time
- there was nothing in my training to suggest I could actually run as fast as I was hoping; other than relying on the race day pixies, which have never let me down so far but perhaps there's a limit to their magic
- I'm still doing a cut-down version of a beginner training plan -- these are not designed with performance in mind
- two years is still two years -- unless I up my training, I should expect my times to slip each and every year
- I can't up my training, because injury is now the limiting factor
- I think I'd forgotten how hellish the last 6 miles really are, probably because I had such a comfortable run two years ago. I have waxed lyrical on these pages about how the last hour turns you inside out, chews you up and spits you out a broken but stronger human being. For some reason, I thought I had conquered that now, possibly by setting a slightly more realistic target, and that the last six miles would pass by with a few aches and a cheery wave. I could not have been more wrong.
- maybe I'm missing the atmosphere of a big city marathon
So it seems that even by marathon number 9, I'm still making mistakes and learning. It certainly looks like I took things too much for granted here, and got my ass whipped good and proper. As usual, there have been lots of touching messages of support, encouraging me to keep going. While I still can, this is a great way to keep fit physically and mentally. Also, £1400+ donated to Great Ormond Street. Oh sod it, I suppose I'd better do another one next year.
2019 - will one thread be enough for the whole year?
