Ill Concieved Plans Poorly executed

How not to run a marathon

It takes time to train for a marathon. I know this as I have read the books, followed the training plans and finished a couple in a reasonable time. Only a fool would run a marathon at 10 days notice. Especially if it was after a month or two of intermittent running that had been dogged by a rather persistent and painful groin strain. I was that fool. In my defence it was the London Marathon, which as we all know is hard to get a place in and I had trained up for a marathon in February but had had to pull out of owning the aforementioned injury. In other words I should have said no but managed to talk myself into saying yes within a nanosecond of the offer arriving. With 10 days to prepare there was only one thing I could do, Taper. I'm really good at cutting down on the training regardless of whether there is an actual event coming up or not. This time I would arrive at the start line fully rested. Not that I had a choice.

The start arrived unsurprisingly quickly, for the previous five days I had been asking the Gods and the Met office to arrange an overcast day with maybe a bit of mist or drizzle and seasonal temperatures. Not a chance, the unseasonable heat wave continued on and marathon day was going to be hot. I don't really do hot being firmly of North European descent. This was not good. I arrived in plenty of time to queue up to use the loos and have a nice cup of tea before being herded into the start pens. This was it not turning back now; I really was going to start the London Marathon. We moved as one to near the start line. Waited for the gun and then waited to start running. I was off on another stupid twenty-six point two mile adventure and this time I knew it was going to hurt.

I had a plan. It was a very easy plan, run steady, run slowly and try to keep all the splits even. Take water at every other water station and drink the whole bottle. If I'd only just finished the water by the time the next station came up, ignore it. If I was offered sports drink, decline, it does strange things to my insides, but offers of jelly babies would be gratefully received. If it started to go the way of the pear then walk, but whatever happened I would run over the finish line. I didn't say it was a brilliant plan but it was enough to go on for now.

The first half went well, I ambled along at my usual pace and took in the sights and sounds. Pubs with music pumping out, bands at the roadside, clog dancers, little kiddies cheering everyone on. It was great; I was part of this yearly high-speed sight seeing tour of London. I get quite emotional when I'm running a marathon but this was something else. Somewhere in a tunnel in docklands it started to go wrong. I don't hit the wall in the traditional smack in the face now you have to stop and die sort of way that I've heard it described. It's more of a slow leaching of energy from my legs until they just stop. There were some toilets; any excuse in a crisis, so I stopped. I had to reduce the weight of my bladder anyway. I am sure someone told me never to use the toilets, once inside the foul odour assailed my senses, I managed to do the business before emptying my stomach as well. I didn't really feel like running after that but managed a semi stagger though the tunnel and into the daylight. Docklands is a bit of a blur; there was a lot of walking and a lot of talking to myself. There were jelly babies from the crowd and there was sports drink, followed rapidly by cramps. It was hot, there were people passing out at the side of the road and some very sweaty and extremely smelly people were passing me, I was beyond caring by now. The course double backs on its self so that at about 20 miles you pass the halfway point, I started to feel a little better here. My sprits where buoyed by seeing the state of the people still coming to the half way mark. Now I know that you shouldn't revel in others discomfort but I had the feeling that they were looking at me and asking themselves if they would look that bad on the way back. The recovery of sprits lasted until the 40km mark; just beyond there I remember thinking "it's only 2Km, how long can that take". Well if I'm in a dehydrated and totally knackered state it takes about 19 minutes. I did run over the line, in fact I ran the last 400 meters but I'm sure that anyone in the crowd who knew me would have though I'd aged considerably.

My time, 4 hour 43minutes and a handful of seconds, Now I know the difference that training makes, about 1 hour!

Would I do another one at such short notice? What do you think?