So yesterday was the Winter Enigma Marathon at Caldecotte Lake.
I got a lift to Bletchley from Kaz on Sunday and she took me to my hotel at Furzton Lake. I pretended to be someone else and checked into my room. A lot easier than I thought it would be. The man on the desk remembered me calling last week and telling him that I would be checking in under my name rather than my partners, which was what the room was booked under. He also remembered me telling him I was going to run a marathon the next day ;D which was quite funny cos I dont remember telling him that, but I was taking lots of painkillers when I rang ;-O
I chucked my stuff in my room and then we went to the hotel at Caldecotte where we met Foxy, Davey Green and Sally. There were lots of other runners too dotted about all eating chips!!! So a couple (!) of pints and a burger later I wobbled back into my room tweeted some bollocks and went to sleep.
The alarm on my Garmin woke me at 2am. It took sometime to work out what it was. I got up and pressed a button. Went back to sleep.
2.10am it went off again. I got up, turned the lights on and worked out how to disable the alarm. Drank quite a lot of water. Went back to sleep.
7.30am got up, had porridge and tea, got myself dressed to run. I put lots of vaseline where the band on my sports bra goes. At 8.45 I was picked up by Jon E and Andy N and off we went to Caldecotte.
Met lots of runners, the usual suspects and others. A guy was there who has just got the world record for number of marathons in a year .... wow!
Usual low key start, about 60 runners so not too congested. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do timewise here, it was a bit of a last minute decision and I hadnt run well at XC. So I just went along at what felt comfortable. Turned out to be 8.45s or so for the first couple.
Well I knew where I was until I got to 2.89 miles. My Garmin then played some sort of victory tune and informed me I had won.
I had reached my goal of a workout of 300 calories. I dont know WTF it had got that from, I wanted it to record my mile splits for a sodding marathon thank you very much! So I arsed around a bit and eventually reset it to go from zero and carried on.
I knew my pace would drop, the garmin issue was neither here nor there, I know I am not in the right form to sustain sub 9 minute miling for a marathon, and I will live with that for the time being. So I decided what I wanted to do was beat my time from the xmas enigma (4.10 something).
Around 8 or 9 miles in I knew I was having chafing issues. I thought about stopping to sort things but once I am running on my own and I have a rythym I just dont stop so I figured it would go away. Or the pain in my legs would take over or something. (that seems so reasonable when you are running)
Anyway, I ran alone the whole way for the first time in I dont know how long. I concentrated on not letting mile splits go too far the wrong way, and how cold it was in the wind (icy). I finished in 4.07.47. So mission accomplished.
I went to get changed and I was alright until I took off the black tshirt covering the white top underneath. It did indeed look like someone had stabbed me. Made me feel a bit sick.
I'm typing this, sitting very upright at my desk wishing I could find one of the 5000 pots of sudocrem I have.
But I am happy to have done marathon number 1 this year AND to be happy with my performance. I am not going to be where I want to be in terms of that until the autumn, but........for now, it'll do.
HAPPY NEW YEAR :))))))
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