The weeks before the race:
I stopped drinking alcohol the week before the race. I think you’re supposed to stop a little earlier than that, and next time I probably would just to see if that made a difference. I made sure I ate plenty, and tried to eat a bit more pasta and rice. I wasn’t too well in the weeks before the race, I had a funeral to attend in the week of the marathon, and seemed to come down with some kind of cold or tiredness type bug. I made sure that I got plenty of rest to try to get rid of the bug as quickly as I could.
I did my last long run about 2 weeks before the marathon, and after that did shorter runs of 5 or 6 miles, cutting it down to 3 or 4 miles in the week before the race. I started to get quite nervous at this point, but going out for a run every so often did really help with this.
The day before the race I made sure I didn’t do too much walking. I was staying in Edinburgh so went out for a nice dinner and made sure I got taxis everywhere.
The day of the race:
I woke up very early, so watched some TV. I was really nervous. In part, it was the not knowing what a marathon would be like. And in part it was also a bit of fear of letting myself down – I’d trained for over 6 months and didn’t want to waste that.
I had a normal breakfast and headed to the start of the race with my other half to meet my parents at the start. Thinking back now I can remember how scared I was at this point, but having family there was a big help. None of them are runners, and I think they might have been a bit nervous too.
The race itself:
As ever, once I started running I stopped being anxious. It was a fairly flat route, which I wasn’t prepared for. A lot of my training was off road in the Peaks, whereas this was on road along the coast. This was a mistake, as my feet didn’t take very well to it and after 10 miles I could really feel the impact of the road. And while running up hills is tough, you also get a break going down hill, which you don’t get on the flat. So if I were to do this again, I’d check out the course gradient and do at least one training session a week on similar ground.
I kept checking the miles off, and with each one took the approach of ‘Well, that’s one less mile to complete’. I can’t really say that I did much thinking beyond thinking to the next mile marker. If I were to run another marathon, I’d really study the route more so that I knew where the turning points were. Visualising where I had to get to would have made it easier to push on to the next milestone.
I managed to run a bit quicker in the last mile, and finished in 4hrs23mins. I was pretty pleased with this result. Of all the things, I was pleased to see my family at the end as running for that long on my own did get a bit tedious. I did chat to people along the way, but it was general small talk. If I was to do another marathon, I’d probably want to see if someone else wanted to run it too. It’s a long time to spend thinking about the next mile, and a bit more conversation along the way would have been very welcome.
