Found Out!

Before all the pain!

The start line of a marathon isn't really a good place to be if you haven't prepared yourself properly. Unless, of course, you're just going to satisfy yourself by pootling around the course well within your capabilities. The last thing you should consider doing is setting off chasing a 10 minute PB. That would be silly.

So, when the claxon sounded I took off at 4:20 pace with a 3:05 target in mind (my PB is 3:14). This target was based on the 1:27 I set in the MK Half back in March. This in itself makes sense, but when you factor in that I haven't had a longer run than that since, with a 3 week (4 weekend) holiday in Australia and an extra 3 kgs on the waistline as a result then it doesn't make any sense at all.

Fact is, I was conceited/complacent enough to believe that my residual fitness would carry me through fine. In fact, the CV fitness probably would have but to run a decent marathon you must have the miles in your legs. I didn't.

Despite the years of experience of doing these things I'm still prone to making the obvious rookie mistakes. Things like being on the shoulder of the sub-3:00 pace maker at the 3-mile marker for instance. It was at this point I came to my senses a little and realised that this pace wasn't going to feel this comfortable for too much longer. I backed off a bit but was still ticking over 4:20min kilometres.

My longest run since the half marathon was 10 miles. Predictably it was just about exactly at the 10 mile marker that the wheels fell off.

Rachael was cycling around the course stopping at various spots to take photos and shout support. I decided that when I next saw her I’d step off the course as I just couldn’t see how I was going to run out the full 26.2 miles. It seemed to take ages until she popped up around the half-way point. I stopped and told her that I was pulling out. She told me to man up and get it finished, that she’s seen me in much worse states with further to run and still finish. She also helped re-parameterise the remainder of the run as IM training rather than a race. This helped as it gave value to me continuing. I tried various things to keep going; run-walk was resulting in 6min kilometres, which was hopeless. In the end I settled for the tried and trusted Ironman Shuffle. The kilometre splits gradually started to get better and by the last few kilometres I was under 5min/km pace again. It wasn’t pretty but I dug in and got there in 3:24:54. 

I was disappointed with my time but quite proud of the way I battled for the best part of 16 miles. Once Rach kicked my butt I had to put my head somewhere to ignore the pain and get to the finish line. In the end, I had a well-earned medal, 26.2 miles in the legs, some more experience (that I’m likely to ignore in the future), a nice tan and most importantly – a firm agreement with myself that I’ll not allow myself to stand on the start line of an event under-prepared ever again. The long weekend sessions are key sessions and need to be hit from here on in if I’m going to stand half a chance of getting to Kona.

If you don’t prepare for one of endurance events properly, they find you out very quickly and boy was I found out!!


TTFN!!!