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@Sainsburys_Ed
Brief marathon report from yesterday.
So did the new forest marathon, race reviews said it was flat bar a slow drag of a hill in the last mile, so I trained on mostly flat ground without worrying too much about rolling hills with lots if ups and downs, turns out there were about 3 miles of flat in the whole thing which wasn't pleasant!
Anyway, run was going really well, runnin within myself and within target heart zone and the 2 mile marker came up in under 15 mins so thought I should slow down a bit. Carried on and went through the half marathon distance in 1.41, feeling pretty good, carried on at this pace untill 16.5 miles where I foun a hill that was so steep everyone was walking, struggled up it the kept going ticking along nicely, eating my jelly babies, hit 18 miles at about 2.45 so was still confident about achieving my target time, run I met a little fellow named the wall and literally died. My pace went right down and I did the next 2 miles in about 30 minutes, my knee was very painfully an frankly I wanted to give up, but I let myself walk to the 21 mile marker, had a bit of a think and decided although I'd thrown away any chance of gouge under 4 hours I wasn't going to give up. So started joggin very slowly and didn't stop. All I could think about to get mr through was the lance Armstrong quote about quitting lasting forever.
Got to the last mile and the adrenalin kicked in and managed to run at a normal speed again injuring sprinting the last 200yds.
End time was 4.37 which was devastating, considering at half way I was confident if a sub 3.45.
Things I've learnt: a marathon is long, running once on 6 weeks due to injury is not a good preparation for a marathon, I can dig deep enough to finish the whole thing despite feeling like crap!