zondag 12 februari 2017

2 Rivers Marathon

42.88k
Start 10.21
(Distance including short warm-up)





























I stuck to my plan of setting out with the 4:15 pace group to see how long I could keep up with them. Well, that was certainly a whole new experience for me! There were about 15 of us trotting along and the 2 leaders were the tall skinny types who make it all look so effortless. And because I didn't have to think about the pace or the route, it did somehow feel incredibly easy. I felt like part of the pack and that I would just keep trotting along with them at that speed till the end. I felt like a 'proper runner' in a way that is different from when I'm plodding (or even going, for me, quite fast) along on my own. And, on a purely practical note, having a small herd of taller folk directly in front of me, fair kept me out of the wind. Alas, twas not to be. Around the 19k mark I started to fall behind. I'd had a couple of earlier short fallbacks when I'd been fishing a bit of energy bar out of my pouch (today's plan was a wee bit every 3k) but every time I'd been able to catch up quite quickly when I realised that to do so would get me out of the worst of the wind. But by this point I realised they were getting away from me and I could do nothing about it. Had a wee chat with the follow-up man-on-bike when he checked that I was feeling ok. I swear I saw him roll his eyes when I said I'd run a marathon the week before and didn't know how that was going to affect me today. 

Ah well, rest of the run was more one of my normal Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner screenplays. I was overtaken by some folk and overtook some of them again later. At one point I pointed to my ears as I passed a man and said 'AC/DC' and he laughed. Another one very near the end was obviously not a happy bunny and when I asked what was wrong he said he had cramp (but was struggling on) so I gave him a bit chocolate I'd fished out my pouch and wished him luck. 

I had the tiniest beginnings of a cramp at the very end but nothing worse. I heard that lots of folk had had cramp towards the end - probably due to the cold following wind on the last bit. Nice medal, with an Afrikaans text on the back, which is basically 'Giving up is not an option' in, to Clogs, their funny sounding dialect version of the language. 











Final time, 4:33:35, which is a couple of minutes faster than last week, so I'm quite pleased with that.

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