Brighton Marathon 2013

Hey..... Its been a while.....

So as a lot of you will have been aware I ran the Brighton Marathon last Sunday for Barnardos. This is one of the hardest things that I have ever done so I thought I'd get back onto blogging and go through how I felt leading up to the day and how the run went itself!

Worth running for

The Day Before

As the race was in Brighton and I am not from Brighton, the vast majority of Saturday was spent travelling down there. Now as I'm a bit tight and unorganised I found that the cost of taking the train down would be about £70 each way plus what ever it costs to use the London underground when switching through stations. I then found that I could take the coach down for about £30 return. Being as cheap as I am, I ignored the fact that this journey would now take about 7 hours and immediately booked my tickets.

So after a fairly long day I arrived into Brighton at about 3.30 and head straight to the Brighton Marathon Exhibition centre to collect my race number and to meet the lovely ladies from barnardos. I had a nose around the exhibition and looked at all brands that were sponsoring the marathon. Of all of these the one I must say I was impressed with was the water that was being used. The water came in a fully recyclable pouch that doesn't drip or leak even when held upside down, I know it sounds a bit silly to be so impressed but until you have tried it then you won't understand! 

Clever and tasty!

I was lucky enough to have a friend who lives about a mile away from the start of the race, so I was able to have a fairly chilled night full of pasta and an early night!

The Day

I was up at 6.30 so I could cram in one last bowl of pasta and have a nice easy walk down to the starting line. On the way there, I bumped into a guy called Roger Biggs who was clearly on his way to run as well. We got chatting and I noticed he was wearing a Jacket that said '100 Marathons' to which I said: "O have you run a 100 marathons then?"

To which he replied: "Noooo, I've ran over 700."

As it happens he is the Chairman of the 100 marathons club and this was to be his 742nd marathon, and made me feel a little bit like maybe my 1 marathon wasn't much of a big deal! It was great speaking to him though and he gave me a bit of advice and told me just to focus on finishing for my first one!

I dropped off my bag and by this time they were calling me and my group to the starting line to get going. As I had predicted a finish time of 3:30 this put me into the top bracket and we would be starting the race at bang on 9am.

The thing that struck me as I stretched in starting area was that I wasn't nervous at all, I was keen to get going as I knew this was going to be a long day. The only worry I had was that my low spec Garmin might not find signal before the race started. 9 am came, my garmin locked onto my location and England cricketer Matt Prior started the race for us, giving loads of high fives as everyone rushed past (which we were reminded not to high five him too hard as the ashes were soon). I crossed the starting line with 2 minutes on the clock and my race began.

The Race

All 26.2 Miles of my run

Mile 1 - As you would expect the first mile was a little bit crowded, It also happened to include the steepest hill that we would tackle throughout the whole race. This lead to me having a less then satisfying first mile pace of 7.39 and I blame this for my foolishness later on.... It didn't really help that a few hundred meters in one of my energy gels fell out of my running belt lost forever, much to my disappointment  (This would happen again later though I would quickly pick this gel up and stop using the belt!)

Mile 2 - The pack started to thin, and I finally started to pick up some pace. Pre race I had decided that for the first 10 Miles I would try and run at a pace of about 7.30 minutes / mile. As I had been delayed by crowd in the first mile I decided that I needed to knock the pace up a little bit and I managed to do this mile in 6.47, a fair bit quicker then I had planned.

Miles 3 - 15 - It may sound a bit arrogant to say, but I really did find these miles really easy, the only problem I had was that (as I guessed would happen) I was running too fast. Every time I finished a mile I would think "shit need to slow down a bit or I won't last" yet when ever my pace was reaching the desired 7.30 Min/Mile I couldn't help myself and I would speed up. I didn't get near to the ideal time until the 16th mile, which is where the race began to change for me.....

Mile 16 - Many of you will be aware of the wall, at mile 16 I did not hit the wall, I did however get sight of it. I started to feel tired and I knew I needed to make sure I was regulating my water and sugar intake well. I had now become aware of how hot it was (I was so happy I'd opted for just a vest without my usual base layer) and that some of my joints were rubbing a bit. I did finally start to slow down here and dropped below 7.30 min/mile for the first time, so I was now nearly following my plan!

Mile 18 - This was the first worrying mile. I knew that my charity Barnardo's had a cheer station at this point so I knew I would be getting a few individual shouts of encouragement, and as I came round the corner to see them my pace shot up. According to my garmin I was hitting a 5.00 min/mile pace for this point and its not surprising that I felt a pang in my right hamstring. I panicked and slowed down and the pain went away, I wouldn't be trying any more bursts of speed again.

Mile 20 - This is where I hit the wall. I'd been trying to mentally prepare for mile 20 for a long time, I'd run up to this in training but never gone past it. I don't think it helps that so many runners talk about how horrible the last 6 miles are, and at this point the thought of not finishing hit me. Luckily I'm fairly stubborn so I battled on.

Mile 24 - This was my worst mile, and I'm not even talking about the time it took me (over 10 minutes!). This was where everything went wrong, first my left calf went a bit tight. No problem I thought I'm hitting the pain barrier. Then the right hamstrung pipped up again, a sudden shooting pain shot through my leg and I had no choice but to stop. My first thought was that I'd pulled my hamstring and I was forced to sit down, at this point I heard a lady in the crowd  shout "O No! Is he OK?". When I sat down I realised that this was just very bad cramp, however every time I tried to stand up the pain returned and I couldn't move.

All I could think was "I don't care if I crawl I need to finish" but with over 2 miles left I wasn't sure medical staff would let me. I decided to gamble and try and sprint it off, as stupid an idea as this is it worked, and after spending about a minute on the floor I was on my way again.

Miles 25 and 26 were uneventful but all of my previous problems were niggling and I felt that if I stopped I wouldn't be able to start again so I just powered through. The only note worthy thing was that at mile 25 my garmin warned me of low battery, I found this pretty distressing as I was clearly only doing this to get the marathon achievement on Strava!

Mile 26 most likely bull shit

The Home Stretch - When I entered I watched the virtual tour of the course, where they reminded runners not to sprint this last bit, and I can assure you I was not able to sprint, I was just doing everything I could to cross the line. I practically fell over the line, collected my medal, a bottle of water and a banana and collapsed in a corner. The time as I crossed the line was 3:24, so I knew that I'd managed to beat my target time, even if I didn't know my exact time. Luckily my Garmin had just enough battery to get me over the line, it would have ruined my day a little bit if I had been unable to analyse my run and see where I went wrong!

DONE

Post Race

I filled my freebies bag with as many bottles of Gatorade and power bars as possible and headed towards the "post race beach party" that was being held for the charity runners. I got into the tent, and this is the closest I have ever been to getting pampered.

I was lead to a chair, handed a can of Kopparberg and some chocolate a few moments later they got me onto a massage table and gave me the best rub down I have ever had in my life. I'm pretty sure I proposed a couple of times to the girl treating me. Naturally after about an hour and a half of relaxing with the lovely people in the Barnardo's tent I grabbed another gift bag (I had about 3 over the weekend) and headed straight to the pub to try and numb the pain!

The next day was hard, it took me a long time to get out of bed, and I did get laughed at a lot. Both of my legs had seized up and anything that wasn't within arms reach was dead to me. It was this point where the idea of a 7 hour journey home wasn't that appealing. 

Overall Thoughts

This is something that I've talked about doing for about 5 years now so I'm really pleased to have finally done it. Despite that fact that this hurt me a lot, I think I'd like to keep going until I hit sub 3 hours at least, and I imagine that by then I will have caught the bug for it. When I do it again there will be things that I do better.

I will do some longer runs.

I will pace myself better.

and I will beat my record.

I'll leave with this picture taken not long after I finished where I am clearly not happy at all.

Don't be strangers.

Rich x