Yorkshire Marathon

If I had to give you two really unhelpful tips about how to run a successful marathon, they would be:

1. Don’t get injured and spend the last six weeks of your training plan sat on your arse.
2. Don’t do it in a howling gale and torrential rain.

If the unorthodox training finalé hadn’t darkened my feelings enough, looking at the weather forecast certainly enveloped me in a big black cloud. It seems Storm Ashley had taken it upon himself to visit York right bang on the first four hours of the Yorkshire Marathon, bringing downpours and gusty winds., two raindrops on the forecast and the windspeed in black. The only consolation was that if I could keep going for four hours without developing an injury, drowning or being blown away to Scarborough, then I could finally dry off in the sun. I almost wished that I had stayed injured!

But obviously I hadn’t spent a week’s wages on physio and done a million heel raises just to drop out because of weather, so I found myself shivering on the start line wrapped in a Sainsbury’s bin bag (everywhere in York had sold out of ponchos) with a local DJ desperately trying to jolly the unfortunate subjects along as we blew around the university road. I was raring to get going, not because I was looking forward to putting in a spectacular performance, but because I just wanted to warm up.

There are two ways you can approach a marathon when you know your training isn’t quite adequate. Firstly, you can find a slow pace and do your best to stick to it the whole way round. This is what the experts recommend. It has never worked for me, if I start slow, I just get even slower. Therefore, the other, less orthodox method was the one that I took. I decided to set off at the pace I really wanted (5 hour pace) and get as far as I could, then switch to a run/walk and hold on for dear life.

The first 10 kilometres were actually quite enjoyable. It was only raining a bit and the wind was behind us. I found keeping with the 5 hour pacer was very doable, although not quite as easy as it should have been. I enjoyed running through the town and didn’t trip on the cobbles. A woman complemented me on my lucky bra. Spirits around me were high. By 8k my left foot started to hurt a bit, which made me panic and pull up and prod it, before remembering that my body always hurts and sometimes it needs to be ignored. After this the 5 hour pacer started to get away from me a bit, but this was fine, I had known that I was never going to keep up the whole way and she was only just slightly edging off into the distance. I was pleased with my 10k split of 1:11 and resolved that I would do my utmost best to keep running with no walking until halfway. I figured if I could do this and get there in 2:40, everything could go completely to pot in the second half and I’d only need a brisk walk to finish sub 6, which after all was what I’d wanted when I signed up.

I got to halfway in 2:38 and then everything went to pot.

Nothing was injured but everything hurt. Well, everything hurt except for my left calf. It was definitely time to start the run/walk timer. And if this wasn’t bad enough, the course changed direction and suddenly I was running into the wind. The rain decided it was the perfect moment to get heavier. This was about to get a whole lot harder, I realised.

I was disappointed to see there was no photographer at halfway as I wanted to recreate, or even better outdo, my misery “jelly snake” photo from Brighton 2018. Fortunately I had my phone with me – I never usually run races with a phone, but I had thought I might need it to call a cab if I dropped out (“or the Samaritans” said Rob) so I whipped it out and took the following shot, which I hope conveys my tredipation at the inclement conditions to come. I would have taken more but I didn’t want to risk it getting waterlogged. I headed out on to a bleak, windy A-road, the corn nodding towards me and nothing to see, not even a sheep.

Next came the part my friend Cal had warned me about, the Out and Back. “But I like out and backs!” I had protested. And indeed, I had enjoyed the out and backs at the Herts Half and Surrey Half (when not injured), seeing the faster runners fly past and then waving hello to my slightly faster friends, then cheering on those behind me… This was different. It seemed that the weather had just whipped everyone up and put them back in a random order, a never ending conveyor belt of soggy moving participants. None seemed to be proceeding particularly quickly, even those who were keeping up with the 4:something pacers. I, of course, was moving even more slowly. My pace was positively glacial In normal circumstances I can run/walk at under 8 mins/km and walk solidly under 9 mins/km. Now my run walk was headed towards 10 mins/km, with my legs feeling like an extremely badly oiled collection of body parts that had been hastily thrown together and sent to contest the marathon. The “out” was into the wind but down the hill, there were at least seventy mile markers to pass before we unceremoniously turned round a cone. By now there was so much rain in my face that I was spitting it out, my gloves were so wet I had to take them off and put them in a pocket making a giant protrusion that ruined my photos, and just as the icing on the cake, there was a huge accumulation of water at one point which was impossible to avoid without thoroughly soaking my socks.

“Back” wasn’t any better and the only punctuation was a photographer at the 30km mark which forced me to stop grimacing for a few seconds. An actual smile was beyond me, however.

About a week later the course left the out and back and the weather actually started to change. It was pretty cruel at that point to see how it might have been, plus my sunglasses were smeared from the rain and I had nothing dry on to clean them with. At this point all I could do was think of maths, how slowly could I proceed without falling behind the six hour mark? Fortunately, I had enough time in the bag to walk the final hill and then put on a final “sprint” which was actually considerably slower than my usual half marathon pace and get a flying feet photo. My finish time was 5:50:02, one hour and one minute off my previous time at Brighton 2018. But it really didn’t feel like the triumph that sentence implies.

In truth, I think my Yorkshire Marathon dream was over the second I tore my calf. It changed from a victory lap to trying to salvage something from the wreckage, and the weather just cemented the effect. There was such a huge mental disconnect because my last long run, easily plodding to Broxbourne with the sun in my face, to standing there in that bin bag weeks later not knowing whether I’d even get beyond the first kilometre. But given that I can’t change what life throws at me, I’m not sorry that I did it and I wouldn’t change any of the things I had control of. And unlike after my last marathon, I’m not saying never again. In fact I have already booked Hamburg Marathon 2025, and the thought of that, coupled with the money I raised for the Brain Tumour Charity helped me keep going in those miserable sodden moments. I’m giving it another go, and will continue to until I get under 5:30, or develop some kind of medical condition (such as death) that makes this unfeasible.