Running

3:16:36 at the brighton marathon today.

Went to brighton with the intention of running 7:30 miles, got talked into following the 3:15 pacer and despite my disasterous out last long run things were going pretty well, had two of my training buddies with me, plenty of interesting people to chat to and fantastic weather for my Brighton sightseeing tour.

Miles 1-6 were pretty chilled, a bit of banter and lots of support was great, heading out of town gave us ur first real challenge we got a bit ahead of our pacer (by about 200m) but there was another one about 50 ahead so we made an effort to catch that group so we had some shelter, things continued to feel good as we went through half way and up to about 18 miles.

At this point my iPod decided it didn't want to work any more but it was no great disaster, and we carried on ticking off the miles by which point I was a little concerned I felt too good and all would come crumblng down around me, but the miles kept ticking along until mile 21, a tight left turn knocked my momentum and it became a bit of a battle to keep up with the pacer and I tried to dig in and keep them in sight for just one more mile, unfortunately at 22 there was another sharp turn and a tiny but very steep ramp and the elastic snapped.

All I could do was just focus on form, remembering that I had 45 minutes to run 4 miles and still get a PB. The next two miles were hard physically, but not too bad mentally, I got to 24 and a bit,saw my support crew and my last running buddy went past, whichw as a bit frustrating, but once we returned to the main road I decided enough was enough and it was time to see what I had left in the tank, and encouraged myself to push with a few choice words. This worked and opening up my gait actually really helped I had my fastest I'm in the last two and caught one and nearly caught the other.

I ended up missing my target by 6 seconds, which given it meant nothing in itself, and I'm actually training for triathlons I'm pretty chuffed!