When I was at University I was quietly training for a marathon but then on a long run sustained a pretty severe knee injury which held up my running for a while. It was a long time before I got back in to proper long distance running, about 10 years to be precise.
Inspired by my parents (both of them!) I've always tried to keep up my fitness, mainly through running. I ran a lot while I was at University, sometimes running around the perimeter of Hamilton, it would take about 3 hours.
When I moved to Sydney I ran to and from work but didn't ever get in to much of a routine or run any big distances.
When we moved to London, it was hard to get in to a running routine for the first couple of years as I had a 1 hour commute on the train to and from work, and worked pretty long hours which didn't leave much time for running.
However, when I changed jobs I found I was able to run home from work which made it possible to get in to a good running routine. The short run home from work from memory was about 13k, I also had options to extend the run with one route getting up to around 22k.
As I wasn't 100% sure I'd be able to get the training done without injury I didn't really tell anyone I was training for a marathon until I was already doing 30+km training runs.
At this point I'll just leave the rest of the blog to an email I sent after the marathon...
I've been doing a fair bit of running for the past year and late last year figured if I could keep up the running and continue to extend the distances I ran, eventually I might get to a point where I'd be fit enough to do a marathon. With Dad committing to doing a marathon this year I didn't need any more inspiration than that to see if I could do the same.
So when we got back from the wedding I began to step up my running, without really changing my lifestyle too much. I only ran 3, sometimes 4 times a week, generally with a long run on the weekend when Jackie was working and running home from work twice a week (between 14 and 22km depending on the route).
I'd scoped out the options for marathons over the year, a lot of marathons "sell out" ruling out most of the big name marathons, however the Copenhagen marathon looked like a possibility, with a flat course, open entry and no pressure on the number of places meaning I could leave it relatively late to decide if I wanted to enter.
On April 16 I completed the online application (still no firm commitment as payment wasn't required), and on April 17 I went for a 35km jog which went quite well and capped a week in which I ran 97km over 4 runs. So we booked flights and accommodation and I arranged to pay the entry fee. Training had to be taken a bit more seriously now!
A light training week followed with just 2 runs, it was about this time I invested in a new pair of shoes, allowing enough time to wear them in and get several training runs done with them.
The following week, 3 weeks out from Copenhagen I ran home from work twice and then did my 35km run again, a bit slower this time to make sure I felt I could do another 7km.
It was about this time I started having pains in my right foot, which I'm quite certain was a result of walking 2km every day from station to work in my flat work shoes, so highly unfashionable but necessarily I started wearing running shoes to work.
I started scaling back my runs from now and taking care of my dodgy foot. I felt I could cover the distance so long as nothing went wrong but my main worries were now related to getting to Copenhagen - european airspace has been intermittently closed due to volcano eruptions in iceland. Also I wasn't so sure I'd registered properly as I hadn't received my start card in the post which I required to pick up my number and chip.
The final weeks I was a bit nervous and excited, I really just wanted to get on and do the run. As the day got closer I got more nervous about my ability, quite unsure whether I was underdone.
Anyway, to cut to the chase, the volcano didn't cause a problem, I had no issues picking up my number and chip, I ate and drank all the right things before the marathon and had a good nights sleep the night before.
I was still pretty nervous about whether I was going to be able to do it. So while I wanted to wait until having completed the marathon before calling Dad to surprise him with the news of my achievement I put in an emergency call for some last minute advice, which reverberated in my mind all the way around the course, "don't go out too fast", "make sure you're able to talk, everyone else will be puffing around you but make sure you can still talk" "late in the run all those people puffing will be walking". And it pretty much worked.
I started out steady, making sure I stayed behind the 3:45 pace setters. There were supposed to be close to 14,000 people running the marathon, I think more like 12, 000 started, either way it was a lot of people and it was quite crowded, the course unfortunately took us through some bottle necks which was a bit frustrating, at one point where the run looped back on itself I realised that there were far fewer runners just in front of the 3:45 pace setters so at around 18km I think, I set about passing the pace setters, which resulted in a much clearer run, which made it a lot easier to run faster, for the next 20km or so I don't know how many people I passed, many of them walking, but it was certainly a lot and I was feeling great.
Jackie got a great photo of me at 29km, feeling very chipper and this continued for quite some time, as every km went by I was beginning to wonder how long it was going to be before it started to get tough. It wasn't long before I found out, I got through 35km easily enough, it was at this point that I realised I'd never run this far before but was still feeling ok.
It was around 38km where I started thinking that it's only 4km to go and that pretty much means I'm there, right? Then I thought about Martin Crowe, on 299 against Sri Lanka. And watching the 'From Cloth Cap to Helmet' video where he describes how he'd mentally figured he was at 300 already, and then whoops, he's out. So I realised, 1k at a time, don't get ahead of yourself.
I was definitely not keeping up the pace I had for the previous 20km and I think I did a couple of 5:40 kms at this point, which was a lot slower than I had been doing. But I realised that I was still passing vast amounts of people who were walking or not moving at all. Sure a few people were passing me but I was still in good enough shape to keep running. I came down to the final kilometre and was struggling to muster a final spurt but in the 500 or so metres of the finishing shoot, with all sorts of Danish cheering which made no sense to me whatsoever I was able to put the gas on, passing a couple of poor souls getting helped to the finish by the military! I was in such deep concentration that I didn't see Jackie, although she got a couple of great photos and was cheering profusely.
Coming down the finishing shoot with my hands in the air, the Danes might have been worried that I thought I'd won the bloody thing but I had such a huge sense of achievement that I really did feel like I'd won on the day.
It was quite sentimental, and the whole run I was recollecting with fondness supporting Dad running marathons when we were younger, it felt odd to be on the other side, now doing the running.
Jackie was amazing support, not just during the run but leading up to the day when I was getting stressed and nervous. She made sure I ate the right things and was well hydrated and she was there, cheering and screaming at all the points we'd agreed before hand, telling me I looked good, which in fairness I think I probably was considering, even time for a quick kiss on route, all the runners around me were very jealous, as were all the other supporters of course! And she was there at the end, not flinching when I gave her a big sweaty hug and a kiss!!
My final, official time was 3:40:15, much better than I'd ever dreamed I could have done. Apparently my half marathon times were 1:50:48 and 1:49:27, placed 2306 out of 9141 finishers.
I'm now hoping to do the Berlin marathon in September, although as all open places for that have been allocated I'm going to try and run for a charity to get a place.
So yeah, that's the story there.
Going to Paris next week to watch French Open which should be good.
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