Even after over 200 marathons, each race is still different, has a story and often has an element of the unexpected. Manchester marathon this year was no different and had more of a story than most. With good weather and a flat fast road course I was expecting an uneventfully fairly fast run. A friend called Terry asked me to pace him for a 3:20/3:25 finish, I obliged and planned for an even fairly fast paced run but not near my limits. How straight forward could that be?
The sunny weather was lovely, at first I met up with a few Astley & Tyldesley Runners near the start for a team photo, which was nice as I usually miss these.
Sadly the race didn’t start well for me, after only 1.5 miles something unexpected happened, while dodging through the busy crowds of runners I stepped on something, it felt like a stone but I never saw it and went over badly on my right ankle. Not a good start! It had me limping and gritting my teeth for about half a mile before the pain subsided and reduced to a bearable dull ache.
I paced Terry up to 15 miles but from half way I could see he was struggling to continue with the paced he wanted. At this point he offered to let me go ahead so feeling pretty good I thought I would push on and try to get nearer to 3:15. I felt a bit guilty leaving Terry but knew I had probably done all I could. For a few miles I was flying but then the niggle in my right ankle from my early stubble started to aggravate me more.
Recently I’ve been supporting Yuk-Lam with her new keep fit exercise regime by doing sit ups, amongst other exercises which have been making the top of my legs feel tired. During the final quarter of the race I could feel fatigue in the tops of my legs which got progressively worse (I think I’ll have to stick to just running). So coupled with my sore ankle I sadly slowed, finishing time 3:22:53. Still this isn’t a bad time but for this course and conditions a bit disappointing for me. Sometimes these marathons don’t go as planned, it is part of what they are. I just hope my ankle injury doesn’t curtail my running for too long as it is London in 2 weeks time.
As for the event itself, Manchester Marathon just keeps getting bigger each year. This year there were 10,000 finishers which is really impressive and with thousands of spectators lining the route, the atmosphere was brilliant. I’m going to rank it second best city marathon after London in the UK. The course is very flat offering the potential of a fast time which is probably one of the many factors louring runners to this race. As I’ve grown up in Manchester I’m proud to see this race is doing so well, I think a large city like Manchester deserves and should be hosting a large city marathon event. The start was once again on the fully closed duel carriageway of Chester Road which makes for a really massive race start with plenty of room for the many thousands of runners and their spectators. The finish this year had moved to outside Lancashire County Cricket Ground under a large finish gantry with the last few hundred yards lined with hundreds of loud spectators cheering, what a great finish.
Even though out on the course everything was brilliant, like the spectators and the water stations, not everything went right. I’ve heard complaints from many runners who used the baggage facilities saying it was very disorganised, some taking hours to collect their stuff. This is really bad, it is the last thing you want when you are very tired and have just finished running 26.2 miles. There has been apologies from the race organisers and assurances they will put it right next year. I hope they manage this or running numbers will seriously drop and I’d hate that to happen to this great race. I’m just glad I left my stuff in the car! Come Manchester let’s get it right in 2017!
