Running diary June 2006
“Never run a marathon without adequate training; it hurts!”
Sunday 11th June 2006, Edinburgh marathon takes place. I awake with a headache and feeling slightly ill. Probably dehydration, and a bit of nerves because I know I haven’t done anything near the proper training for running a marathon; lots of three milers, some six milers, and a couple of half marathons in the preceding months is not the recommended preparation. I also had a couple (a few) glasses of wine the previous night to calm the nerves, probably not the best pre-race preparation I could have done but no-ones perfect.
I grab a cup op tea and make a bagel with banana on it for breakfast. Unfortunately, my stomach won’t allow me to eat more than one bite of the bagel so I make do with the cup of tea for breakfast.
My girlfriend Mhairi drives me into Edinburgh and we park on George Street, then walk down to the start of the race on Princes Street. On the drive through, I have to ask Mhairi to stop talking because my head hurts, a lot, and every word I have to listen to exacerbates the pain. Concentrating on anything other than trying to control my headache seems to take monumental effort. When we get to the start of the race I’m amazed by the buzz of the festival atmosphere around us. We see the elite runners that run around 2hrs 15mins completing their warm ups (warm ups that would constitute a full workout for us mere mortals). I do the obligatory ‘hug the knee towards the chest’ stretch, even though I know it’s not what I should be doing, and that’s my warm up complete. The heat, noise, hunger, nerves, and my complete unpreparedness for such an event must be getting to me because I’m starting to feel a bit nauseous now.
Looking around we see lots of happy faces and a few real nervous ones that look like they’re in over their heads (this instantly makes me feel a little better to know I’m not the only one). The time to start is rapidly approaching so the runners gather in their time pens. I try to get further back in the crowd but get jostled into 2.30-3.30, which instantly starts a panic within me as I as know that even if everything goes well, I’ll be closer to the 4 hour mark, if I’m lucky. The runners waiting in the mile long queues for the toilets (3 portaloo’s supplied for the 9,000 entrants) start to look really worried. You can see their faces contort in a mixture of ‘miss the start of the race’ panic and bursting bladder sensation. I need the toilet myself, but my killer headache is masking that sensation well enough for me not too bother going.
‘The sun is shining, the weather is sweet’. Well it would be, if you’re sitting in a beer garden with a cold one, but not so sweet if you’re running 26.2 miles. The temperature is rising and the sun is beating down, it’s going to be one of the hottest days of the year so far. I’m already regretting having shaved my head the night before.
Mr Ron Hill takes over the microphone and counts down to start the race… and we’re off. I run along Princes St and up Lothian Road with no pain appearing, which was a relief because I hadn’t done any of the flexibility work I had promised myself in the weeks running up to the race. The first five miles go by pretty quickly and without too much incident but by mile six the usual pain in my hip flexors appears. This was the very reason I’d promised myself I was going to do lots of stretching as part of my preparation, but I never did, and I was about to pay the price. The pain was here with twenty miles to go, excellent. The next 3 hours is hell, a mighty battle takes place within my mind. ‘Keep running’, ‘don’t slow down’, ‘ignore the pain you wuss’, ‘c’mon ya big girls blouse’, a barrage of self-deprecating thoughts that got less and less humorous as the miles increased.
Quite a few runners pass me by but in the latter stages I manage to pass some myself. To be fair, most of the ones I pass have heat stroke and have collapsed, or about to collapse with heat exhaustion.
Mile 24, and the guy running in front of me staggers to the left before his legs buckle. I manage to catch him and tell him to sit down. He looks through me with a ‘thousand yard’ stare, he doesn’t have a clue where he is. Luckily a marshal is nearby and I shout for assistance before I continue my own personal struggle into penultimate mile.
Really in need of a drink now but all the water stations are behind me. Just want this to be over, energy levels are real low, wishing I had managed to eat something in the morning. I see a guy at the side of the road handing out jelly sweets. I remember people saying that this was commonplace in distance events and they made a difference to energy levels when your body is this depleted. So I gratefully take the jelly baby and start chomping. Unfortunately, the lack of saliva in my mouth made it really quite difficult to swallow and as it got stuck in my throat, for a split second I thought I was going to choke (mental note – don’t try and eat anything when the inside of your mouth feels like sandpaper and you don’t have a drink to wash it down). Death by jelly baby 1/2 mile from finish line; what a headline that would have been.
The cheers from the crowd down the home straight helped me lean forward a little which increased my momentum to the finish line. Only problem was I couldn’t really control the muscles in my legs, so stopping was a bit of a problem. I crossed the line with the clock showing 3 hours and 35 minutes. I staggered past the goodies table and collapsed in a heap on the ground. Mhairi came to congratulate me with video camera in hand and film rolling. There was a few choice mutterings from me and she put the camera away then helped me up and walked me to the car. It blew my mind that some people were jogging home or jumping on bikes and peddling off into the distance. I must admit, it did make me feel better to see lots of other jelly-legged participants who had been crippled by their ill preparedness. My mind was instantly filled with thoughts of how well trained and ready I would be for the next one so I wouldn’t be one of these wibbly-wobbly creatures again. Next year it will be all about the preparation, too much pain involved to take it lightly ever again.
After the race, I went home had an ice bath which helped a little (I think). For the following week, I staggered about wincing in pain and laughing at myself every time I would go off on a tangent and bang into a wall. Balance is relatively difficult without muscle control in your legs. The stairs in the house suddenly became a frightening challenge offering nothing but struggle and pain.
So, that was my first marathon experience. I’ve completed a couple of others since then, and for each one my preparation was slightly better than the one before, but to be honest, not what it should have been (I’m a slow learner). I could have convinced myself not to do that first one for so many reasons, but I’m glad I went out that morning and did it anyway. There was lots of fear and pain involved but it was still a positive experience in the end, and one that makes me smile when I look back at it. We will always come up with a whole host of convincing excuses to protect ourselves from uncomfortable situations (we are wired to do that), but at the end of the day we will never progress unless we step into our personal unknown and make ourselves deal with it.
