A bit late with the write up and unless you skip straight to the end of it you might need a cup of tea 😀.
As some of you will know I was a bit worried about the logistics I had landed myself with for this event but they all worked out perfectly - as I was assured they would. Arrived at the B&B in Riccall in plenty of time and it was lovely. The Italian restaurant booked turned out to have good food (they had only opened in new premises a few days before). The trial run to,Elvington Airfield worked,well and showed which of the two routes would be the best to take.
Sunday 14th October. Our B&B only had 3 guest rooms and York Marathoners were in all of them so our host very kindly offered to make us breakfast at 0600 instead of the usual Sunday time of 0800 - what a star! Breakfast taken back to the room to prepare my Tailwind and gather the gear. Did I mention it was cold 👍 and raining 🙁.
Into the car and onto the Park &Ride at Elvington. Our previously “recced” approach through back lanes meant we were straight there and parked with no bother or queue, unlike the approach from the opposite direction, to York, boy was that a queue. Dawn was rising so seeing the cars streaming across the airfield with their lights on was one of “those” moments - for me anyway. Out of the car, and not sure if I’ve mentioned this but it was raining quite a bit. Anyway there were loads of buses to take everyone to the start, it seemed like the checkers were making sure tickets were valid but not bothering about times as we got on the bus 20 mins before our allotted time 😀.
Got to the campus and found shelter from the rain until it was time to play the game of “queue for the loo”. To be fair there were loads of them but not all open so had a longish wait, keeping the worst of itoff with my umbrella. By then it was time to squelch for the starting pens. The warm up started and wasn’t too frantic, then not too long afterwards we were awa!
Oh my! IT WAS BRILLIANT!!!
My strategy was 8min run/30sec walk. Well that went out of the window as no way could I walk right at the beginning with all the crowds and slight downhill (I don’t think that was just in my head). Water stops were every 5k so I planned, and stuck to, couple of slurps of concentrated Tailwind, followed by a couple of slurps from the bottles provided. I picked a bottle up at 5k, slurped, and stuck it in my belt ready for 10k. That worked and didn’t feel wasteful. The pace was my happy pace which was slightly quicker than the pace I was supposed to follow but all was good so I deferred the run/walk to 10k, then 15, 21k. Still going well despite being totally drenched and the walk/run started at 30k, judging from the Garmin download.
The support along the way varied from lots to none, especially on the long out and back, to/from Stamford Bridge. This variety suited me. Support from runners on the return leg (they’d already been there, done that) was amazing.
So at 30k began my run/walk strategy as my ktime dropped slightly. 30k in 3-21-42 showed I was going to get there in good time. I was worried about missing the last P&R bus ☺️.
So still going great “wall what wall?” I had a leg niggle at 32k and shook, rubbed, ran it off. But it came back at 36k and wouldn’t go away, so I slowed down and slowed down 😀 what else are we going to do? K39 took 10.50, the next 0.66k took 12.31mins.
It was at 39.66k that I got the surprise (remember the title after all this time) ........
my leg broke.
So the reason for the report delay, and no medal picture, is that “due to unforeseen circumstances” I didn’t finish - sorry guys.
I had my leg operated on on Monday morning (airports will be fun from now on!) and came home from York last night.
So no medal but I do have a scar, and a story to bore people with. Oh, and my Surgeon has a sense of humour - he closed the wound with a running stitch!😂.
Run Rabbit Trail Mix Challenge
I ran a Marathon!!!!
The race I didn't make😥...and a consolation run!🙂🏃🏽♀️
