The Collins family went up to the Lakes for the weekend. We do like it there and stayed at our favourite B&B in Ambleside. On the Saturday we spent the day in Keswick, enjoying the pleasant market town and had a picnic near the jetties on Derwent Water.
I was very disappointed with the weather on the race day. I was hoping for something much drier and hoped for some sunshine, more for the family who would be waiting for me in Coniston whilst I ran. I don’t mind running in poor weather but must admit I would have preferred better!
Last year the hot sunny weather had made the testing course even harder with dehydration being the main problem but this time the awful wet weather caused different problems. Dehydration was no longer a problem but the wet and the mud made the already difficult terrain very hard going in places. Especially during the latter stages of the race when your legs get tired and heavy and it becomes very difficult to negotiate the extremely uneven rocky, surfaces, puddles, streams and deep mud.
The main marathon had started at 9am but there was also a marathon challenge which started at 7am for the slower runners. By half way I was starting to catch the slower of these runners and as I passed them I offered words of encouragement, I know they aren’t as fast as me but I respect the effort they put in and how long they had been out in the rain to complete the challenge. At about 18 miles I passed one such runner and again offered words of encouragement to be shocked to hear a reply “Hi Malcolm! It’s Miserable Bleeder!” This is his name on Facebook , I wasn’t expecting this reply and it made me laugh.
Not much further on at about the 19 mile point the runners had become very thinned out and I was running on my own. I was climbing a pretty steep hill and could hear a thudding sound. For a moment I though a runner was catching me from behind, then I placed my hand on my chest and realised it was the beat of my heart under the strain of the hill which I could hear. I have felt it on many occasions when running hard but have never been in such a quiet situation that I could actually hear it.
Like all my recent marathons I ran the whole race with a very even pace and was very pleased how I felt at the end and that I had run the course faster than last year in 3 hours 53 minutes and 1 second.
