The last 3 weeks have been full of worries about a whole heap of niggling injuries that I have had (left ankle, both knees, right thigh) and to be honest there were times that I was not at all sure if I would make it to Copenhagen at all but three weeks of almost total rest meant that I was actually not feeling too bad when I got on the plane from Aberdeen to Copenhagen on Friday.
On Saturday Steve and I went out for an easy 2.6km run around the lake outside his house, or at least that was the plan – we were aiming for 6 mins/km but we ended up running at 5:08 mins/km which might have been a mistake….then it was off to the exhibition to pick up my number and have a poke round the exhibits there. We narrowly managed to avoid signing up for the Amsterdam marathon which is for the best as it turned out to be 2 weeks after Loch Ness!
Sunday is all a bit of blur to be honest – the first 30k or so were easy (!!), I was feeling very strong and hitting the targets that I had set – 2 hours for 20k, 3 hours (actually 3:02) for the 30k mark and then it all went wrong – the left ankle injury came back and every step run became very sore – the last 12k took me 50% longer than it should have and by the end of it I was walking a fair percentage of the route which was very disappointing.
On Saturday Steve and I went out for an easy 2.6km run around the lake outside his house, or at least that was the plan – we were aiming for 6 mins/km but we ended up running at 5:08 mins/km which might have been a mistake….then it was off to the exhibition to pick up my number and have a poke round the exhibits there. We narrowly managed to avoid signing up for the Amsterdam marathon which is for the best as it turned out to be 2 weeks after Loch Ness!
Sunday is all a bit of blur to be honest – the first 30k or so were easy (!!), I was feeling very strong and hitting the targets that I had set – 2 hours for 20k, 3 hours (actually 3:02) for the 30k mark and then it all went wrong – the left ankle injury came back and every step run became very sore – the last 12k took me 50% longer than it should have and by the end of it I was walking a fair percentage of the route which was very disappointing.
I got across the line in 4:42 as opposed to the approximate 4:15 - 4:20 time that I was looking at with a quarter of the run to go – can’t be helped though and on the bright side I knocked 1hour and 50 minutes off my previous PB from my ill-thought-out London attempt in 2001 - the way I see it, 2 more runs and I will be at world record pace.....
Running a marathon is an unbelievably hard thing to do and I have huge respect for everybody that ever goes through this. Now – bring on the next one, going to run loch ness in October with a sub 4:30 target and then the Seattle half in November to go for a second sub 2 hour half....
A huge thanks very much to everybody who has supported me and sponsored me through this. When all the donations are in I will have raised about 1500 pounds for Charity and that is a great thing, something that was a source of energy to me at times during the run - sorry for the smug grin in the pic below....….
A huge thanks very much to everybody who has supported me and sponsored me through this. When all the donations are in I will have raised about 1500 pounds for Charity and that is a great thing, something that was a source of energy to me at times during the run - sorry for the smug grin in the pic below....….
