So after going to bed and setting 5 alarms to make sure I got up in good time for my morning porridge I had a restless night. Probably a mixture of nerves and excitement but also possibly just me as I quite often have trouble getting off.
So it was up at 6, down for breakfast and a coffee and then out the door by 7:30 after the usual pre-run “precautions”.
As this was my first “proper” race event I did not have a good idea of timings so arrived in plenty of time and spent 45 minutes pacing up and down.
Eventually the race was on. We started just off of the market square in Derby with a walk to the start and then we were off. (With only 2289 runners the wait to hit the start gate did not take long. To be honest I do not remember much of the first half of the run other than the crowds cheering us on which was lovely - I made sure to keep an eye out for children trying to high-5 us as we passed them and gave them a hearty/gentle tap as appropriate.
Around 10k I started to struggle - I had not gone off too fast what was wrong - I had done the distance!! Well what was stated as a flat route turned out to be slightly downhill during the first half and slightly uphill in the second! Having done nearly all my training on the local canal towpaths this came as a bit of a shock to the system. I decided I needed a break, thank you for the kind words on a previous post to enjoy the race this helped a lot. I started to run the flat and try to run some of the hillier bits but then walk the remainder.
In some ways this was good, in another the brain had capitulated to walking the hills. Given that most of the 2nd half was uphill (albeit a gentle incline) this was not good.
Fortunately the crowds and other runners came to the rescue and I eventually increased the %age of run to walk.
As we got nearer to the finish arriving back into the city I knew I needed to finish with a run - around 400m to go whilst running (thankfully) I saw some familiar faces - my family - beams of joy and I just had to go over and high-5 them. Just past them to the finish line of course it just had to go up yet another hill. I managed a bit more of a spirited run down the home straight which was nice to be able to do - and finished - yeah I FINISHED.
My original target was sub 3 hours, as my distance increased I started to believe I could get nearer to 2:30. In the end 2h50(22s). A mixture of pleasure and annoyance - but in a good way. Pleased to have finished my first half after where I was 2 years ago and annoyed because I so wanted to run it all.
Lessons learnt - oh yes!
1) Do not do all training along a canal towpath, just because a HM says it is flat - does not mean that it is
2) Make sure to add some hill repeats into the running routine to improve my ability to cope with them
3) Add some strength training as my form goes to pot
4) Next time do not pick up an injury in the middle of training and leave plenty of time to repeat the middle runs before moving on
So at the moment, I feel rather stiff, happy but stiff. Tomorrow I will probably still be stiff - but I will also be happy. Hopefully by the end of the week the stifness will have abated - but I will still be happy.
Happy Christmas everyone 😉🌲🎁
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NYD marathon race report ! 
