My First 26.2!

I RAN MY SOLO PRACTICE MARATHON in 5 hrs 15 mins, slogging my way round the full Robin Hood course a week after it happened. I felt like Hansel or Gretel or someone fictional following the breadcrumbs except I was on a trail of water bags, Lucozade sports bottles and empty gel wrappers. And rather than a gingerbread house the 'crumbs' were leading me to a lot of physical pain and three slices of cold pepperoni pizza that I'd packed as my post race carb load.

I was really tired and slow at the beginning, sweating like a sweaty thing in a physics exam, got a bit more free after that but slowed down in the middle and really slowed down at the end. Not sure what the bad start was down to - lack of sleep? Listening to podcasts?

At mile 18 I got a stabbing pain in my left ankle that took my breath away. (or more accurately converted my breath to expletives). I was worried but managed to limp it off, then walk it off then run. Mile 19, 'Son Of A Nutcracker!' - same thing. I was worried and started thinking quitting thoughts. But then I carried on, thinking if I could make it past 20, that was where the mythic 'wall' lay. But maybe my quitty ankle WAS the wall. My legs were killing pretty consistently from mile 10, my stomach was doing a low key version of it's own funky dance. but perhaps the wall uses whatever it can feed off to make you afraid enough quit - just like the Monster from It.

The last 7 or 8 miles take took me to a whole new place mentally (both good and bad), and I really had to take it a mile at a time using a different strategy, self talk and reward for each one. Like stopping off at a cornershop on mile 25 to buy the world's nicest tasting bottle of Lucozade Sport (Raspberry!!!) because I had drunk all my fluids (2 litre of water and half a litre of LZS). Oh and I worked out that 'grit' on my face is salt. Actual grains of salt that I have sweated OUT OF MY FACE! So I bought some salted cashews earlier in the 'race'.

Various parts of my body tried to mutiny and declare independence but I MADE IT!

This has been a goal of mine for around 20 years and though there was no one there to see me cross the finish line (in fact there wasn't even a literal finish line) I did shed a tear. As if I hadn't lost enough salt already.

Walking to the tram my legs felt like they belong to someone else, someone who wasn't even the same species as me.

I went straight into an ice cold bath then out with my son to watch Liverpool at the pub.

I may not be able to walk properly at the moment, but at least I know I can finish the Leicester Marathon in two weeks.