I feel like I should mention food here, but apart from eating more and more as my training intensified I didn’t change anything in my diet - apart from eating more biscuits than normal! I did start making notes of what I ate before a long run and found that scrambled egg on toast, one coffee and an orange juice set me off nicely. I wouldn’t consume anything before 90 minutes of running, and then chose a 'Nakd' cashew bar to keep me going.
It was funny after a long run, I would immediately eat a sandwich or something, have a bath and promptly start preparing a full meal. Food was, and to be fair is never too far from my thoughts!
An antagonistic friend of mine recently asked me what I am running from. I associate running with going somewhere, not running from. When I was a child and into my twenties I used a bicycle as an expression of movement: the speed, the feeling of air rushing past my face. I’ve always liked the sense of ‘going’. Now is not the time to psycho-analyse myself, and maybe I am running from something, but I must enjoy being some kind of fugitive, because it feels damn good!
With three weeks to go I knew I was race - fit as I completed 68 mins of mixed training with a smile. This involved a couple of ten-minute threshold runs: these were explained somewhere as ‘comfortably hard’ and that works for me. Even the interval runs 3x (4min interval 2min easy) went well - this is the type I thought could kill me when I first attempted them. Sprint running was never my forte.
All I had to do now was stay well and injury-free for three weeks!
By chance it turned out that a good friend of mine was going to be running the same marathon - his first too. Him and his wife live a lot closer to Bristol than I do, and kindly offered to put me up for the night before race- day. We ate a hearty Lasagne with some London-baked bread. As the night progressed we got less chatty and the anticipation started to kick-in. Matt pinned his race number onto his shirt and I laid out all my bits!
Well-wishes started coming in the night before the race and continued throughout the morning. I was staying in the depths of Somerset where mobile reception is sporadic, which resulted in me being woken a couple of times by my phone buzzing as the airwaves came to life. I read a message from my brother in a sleepy-haze which simply said ‘Jog-on’! We share a harsh sense of humour.
Race Day!
I ate less than I usually do before a long-run, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.
Tracey drove us into Bristol. With a mix of excited chatter and quiet reflection, you could feel the tension in the air. The elusive date of 25th October 2015 was finally upon us, and in less than five hours we were hoping to be calling ourselves marathon runners. Eek.
We joined the throng of people gathered in Queen Square, and soaked up the pre-race atmosphere. Heading to the start line Matt & I agreed that we would start together, but had no intention of trying to stick together throughout - I am not sure we even managed the first mile side by side!
The first eight miles or so were very pleasant - heading out and under the Clifton Suspension Bridge, a Bristol icon. Along that stretch the sun glistened on trees of yellow and a climber could be seen above us on the rock-face. One of my highlights was a booming set of drummers on the roadside: their bangs resonating off the rocks kept spirits high. The route turned back on itself here, so we got to see the front-runners and clapped them by…it was quite reassuring once I’d turned myself, and could see I was ahead of hundreds of people. So far, so good!
The more you run, the more you learn to gauge your distances and times, and can adapt to the race at hand. With this one I didn’t really think about the distance until 11 miles or so, whereas during the half-marathon I would have been counting down miles 12 and 13 with a mild anxiety!
I took my first toilet break just before the half way mark, and I was surprised to still be in Bristol. I couldn’t really tell you where we ran, but we flowed through many a village, and the crowd-support was just amazing. As the miles notched up, so did the number of people lining the streets and geeing us along. You can’t take it all in or appreciate as many spectators as you’d like, but here are a few recollections:
For quite some time I must have been running amidst two men called Tom and Rob. I figured they were local heroes or something, as so many people were wishing them well. The penny finally dropped and I realised that they had their names printed on their shirts! I got a few of my own “go on Stroke Association”!
When walking up a very steep hill in one of the villages, a man shouted to me ‘there’s a bottle of white wine around the corner’ in a thick west-country accent. Priceless!
Who knew Jelly babies were an integral part of marathon running? People stood outside their gardens, and on street corners with offerings of these sugar-fuelled infants
A gaggle of boffin-type looking people were cheering on the runners, one holding a piece of cardboard with a raised rectangle of tin-foil. It read ‘touch here for extra power’. I had no choice!
Kids with their hands outstretched seemed to be everywhere; weirdly like when people want to touch a famous person at a rock show or movie premiere. It was very endearing.
I fist-pumped a stranger!
One of my biggest highlights was on approaching a water-station around 20 miles or so, and I recognised the girl handing me the water, then her Mum, brother and Dad…it was an old mate Paul and his family. As I was in motion, I turned excitedly to say hello and it put a bounce in my step. It turned out that Paul’s daughter’s Guide troop had volunteered to hand out water. It was a great effort from all the water-handlers and race officials. Sadly, I did see at least four people requiring medical attention, and hope they didn’t suffer too much.
We had been warned about the hills, especially a monster at around twenty miles, but there were many and varied. People would be cheering us on saying ‘this is the last hill’, only to be presented with another one, a mile down the road. It got a bit ridiculous in the end.
I have another problem with long-distance running and that is my tendency to stop dead. I have coined people like me ’Stoppers’ and at least on marathon day I discovered I was not alone! Sometimes it’s like I am just bored of running, others it’s some warped psychology where I tell myself ‘don’t stop, don’t stop’ and then I go ahead and stop! I never stop moving, but I stop the momentum. Madness! It’s especially annoying as my general running pace is decent, all things considered. To be fair, my left knee did start playing up around the 21 mile mark, to the point I would call it pain, so that made me stop a couple of times.
On one such slowing-down exercise I met a guy called Paul. He told me I should jog with him as he was working on the basis of run for nine minutes/walk for one. That seemed like a good strategy, but I think I made about 7 minutes before stopping again and Paul called out ‘that’s not nine minutes’. I ignored him, but that is not the end of Paul…
I hope you can sense from my words that this truly was an amazing experience, and as I continue to write this (now a week later) I am just as excited as when I crossed that line.
With about four miles to go, my thoughts fluctuated between ‘I wonder how long it would take to walk the last four miles’ and ‘come on, you’re nearly there’. I often work out percentages when I run, so I would have been thinking ‘you’re well over 80 percent’ which is always encouraging.
I’d say I faffed around between 22 and 24 miles, thinking about my knee, getting annoyed with hills, reassuring myself, being happy it was nearly over, knowing I was going to complete it. Miles 24-26 weren’t bad and I think I ran consistently. That last point-two of a mile however was a royal pain in the arse; short, blind roads. Corner after corner and even some small slopes that loomed like Everest. On the approach to the finish I heard a familiar voice, my marathon-mate Paul saying come on, let’s end this together. We ran together briefly, but I couldn’t keep up.
With around 100 metres to go I saw and heard my brother on the sidelines, then my son, Dad, and Mum who was holding a sign saying “Go Amanda!” After my Wimbledon experience it was great to see them there. Here's my reaction:
