Edinburgh is no Picnic

Well it’s been a long, long time since my last post (apologies once again for the lengthy delays in getting them up, but life’s just too damn hectic for this blogging malarky, god knows how people do it day in-day out).

Since that lost post my marathon expolits have taken me north of the border to the beautiful city of Edinburgh. I travelled up with my mum and dad in tow, my wife had chosen this opportune moment to go on a girly holiday, so it was just me and the folks heading to the hilly city.

Pre-Picnic training by climbing the massive Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh

So after a seven hour train journey largely spent guiding Hercules (a little known Spanish football team) to promotion glory in Football Manager (obligatory for every long train journey) we arrived in sunny and extremely hot Edinburgh! We got to grips with the city and did a bit of sight-seeing in the two days before I was due to run the marathon, including an intrepid climb up Arthur’s Seat in boiling hot sunshine without any sun screen! If not exactly ideal preparation, it at least acclimatised me to the hot conditions.

And so the day of the race fell. I got up bright and breezy and walked down to the start wearing my newly fashioned cap and some sort of weird stretchy thing that covers the head and neck, along with two tops in completely contrasting colours simply to keep the sun off my shoulders, I probably resembled something out of Bruno the film excpet without the cool accent.

Once again the race started well and I felt fairly strong for the first half as we wound down the streets out of Edinburgh out to the coast and managed to catch a faint whiff of sea breeze. As this was one long route outside of the city and popping through various suburbs and villages on the outskirts of Edinburgh the run felt very different to London where the crowds are constantly barracking you on, but where we did come across them they were particularly enthusiastic and vocal which was good.

However the heat kept on grinding me down and my pace began to slow as we moved further out into the countryside and started to route around a very posh country home’s gardens.

Start of the Edinburgh marathon in wtih the masses

I found myself constantly in front or behind a pair of Sutton Club runners who were looking to break the four hour barrier which was also my intention. The guy was constantly geeing up the lady he was with and I found his little motivational tit-bits highly useful myself  as my stamina started to fade away. In fact I’d been having phone conversations with my mum and dad to find out where each other were. As the race went on the conversations would get shorter and shorter and one end started to resemble a heavy breather, I should emphasise that that was my end of the line, rather than my Mum’s!

I kept on setting myself mini-goals to try and keep the legs running, but eventually I hit the wall again and had to have a little break. The better news this time was that the rest seemed to have an effect and immediately afterwards I managed to pick myself up again and go a bit faster. By the time we were heading back to Musselbrough, the heat was unbearable and the sweat was soaking my two-top combo. But I was lucky in that I was still in front of the majority of runners who I later found out suffered from empty water stations during the latter half of the marathon as a huge number of donated water bottles and energy gels had been stolen the night before.

I finally came into Musselbrough and after a quick wave to the folks I found enough reserved energy to sprint along the rather springy platform that the organisers had put down on the race course towards the finish. It was another energy lifting experience seeing hundreds of people jammed into the grandstand and cheering people on and gave me the impetus to just squeak in past the four hour mark with a time of 3 hours, 59 minutes and 27 seconds! So it was another marathon down and time for a cheeky pint of tenants to rehydrate myself before jamming ourselves back onto the train to Edinburgh.

There was only a three-week break between Edinburgh and the next marathon challenge which was going to be my toughest to date, the Picnic Marathon held at Box Hill, Surrey. This marathon has been voted the toughest in Britain in previous years and is only held every odd year – presumably to mark the type of runner required. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but as I read the pre-race bumpf I discovered it was the equivalent to running up and down a Scottish Munro, not knowing how high a Munro was I wasn’t particularly concerned by this. Indeed as I said, I was more concerned by the lack of training that I’d managed to squeeze in between the two marathons.

A bit of pre-picnic stretching

The weather was also a concern as the BBC switched between predictions of a scorching 28 through to extreme showers and everything in between. So the day itself arrived and thankfully it was just a warm early twenties. As I struggled through the crowds at Waterloo heading to Ascot I tried to start to psyche myself for the challenge ahead as a bit of dread and anticipation started to drive the butterflies in my stomach around and around.

I arrived in Dorking to be met by my parents and we trekked up the road to join the other 99 nutters willing to pay for participating in what could be up to 7 hours of masochism. Before the start the race organiser further upped the ante by stating that the marathon was actually tougher than it had been previously advertised, joy! Before the official start it was customary to sing a hearty version of God save the Queen, and as I am not exactly an enthusiastic monarchist I had to mumble a few of the bits where I was less sure of the words, before starting off on a slow jog up what felt like a very long hill. I was expecting tough, but this was a ridiculous start.

God save our.....

We winded down into some steps, which felt like they were steps designed for giants, as you had to take two steps just to get down one. However even this was a pleasurable relief after the long climb up the first hill. Unfortunately what goes down has to come back up and so there was then the challenge of climbing back up the steps. I took heed of the advice and walked up the steps as I imagined if this was only just the start there might be a fair few more hills yet to come.

Unfortunately this prognosis was correct and the route looped up and down for the next six miles before heading back the way it came. At one point I unfortunately got lost along with another group and ended up adding about 1/2 a mile to my run, surely this run is tough enough without adding additional challenges.  I headed back to the starting point just behind a very enthusiastic older runner who was putting most people to shame with his encouragement and chirpiness but he thought we were on for a sub-5 hour finish at the pace we were going, indeed I reached the start within 2 hours 20 minutes and still felt strong at that point. I even managed to run up little parts of that massive hill again. Unfortunately following that it all started to go wrong. As I was going back down the stairs I suddenly went dizzy and thought I was going to pass out. I was lucky in that I had just found my friend Paul along with my Mrs and her sister. After a brief stop trying to get my head back together I tried to carry on walking but as soon as I did my head would start to spin and I couldn’t get my legs to cooperate. I managed to make it back round the mini loop where my friends and family were waiting but broke down at a marshall’s point just before the returning climb up the steps. I can’t describe the emotions that I went through at that point. I was simply gutted and broke down in tears while stuffing my face with jelly babies on hand from the marshall’s stand, it must have been a beautiful sight!

Almost half-way and still smiling - not for long though

Time then seemed to just stand still, but I must have been there for about half an hour trying to get as much sugar and liquid into my system as I could. I gave a (slightly less than) spirited attempt to try and climb the stairs and Paul joined me on the climb up and then managed to run a further couple of miles to get to the 16/17 mile marker but the prospect of a further 10 miles to go simply left me devastated and I knew that it wasn’t going to be possible to finish the picnic. I ended walking back up a hill and then disconsolately back down to the start feeling like absolute sh*t. Everyone tried to console me by saying that it was stupidly tough, but hey there were a lot of people who were still going and I just couldn’t believe that I’d blown it. A post race couple of pints didn’t even lift the spirits as I stared at my consolidatory half-marathon medal, and so my thoughts turned to what I could do to make up the now missing seventh marathon.

After a good night’s sleep the steel in my stomach returned and I was resolute to make amends for the pitiful performance the day before, and spotting a nice week’s break in my calendar, I promptly signed myself up to the Nottingham marathon in September, and therefore can still achieve my original goal. However I’m also hopeful that one day I’ll be back for that blooming Picnic, although this time, perhaps with a bit more training on that kind of level!

Signs of the times - stating the bleedin' obvious

Since that disastrous Saturday I took a week off to indulge in excess of pretty much everything a runner shouldn’t excess in at Glastonbury (largely cider and viva espana red wine – not good for the innards), but this week training is back up and running. The next run is now only a couple of weeks away in Hertfordshire. I still haven’t actually seen the course for this one, but as it involves map reading there’s a good chance I’ll be running further than 26.2 miles!

Ok, best leave it there for now. I’ve got a few photos up here for now, just because I wanted to get this posted, but there are some better running ones to come.

Thanks again to everyone’s that’s kept in touch, and that’s continuing to sponsor me. Hope I haven’t let you down by not doing the Picnic, the challenge is still just about there, and let’s just call that one a training run shall we? Particular thanks to the British 10k 4! You know who you are! See you at the start line at Picadilly, you all have an advantage over me in that you won’t be tired and hung over from the joys of an Oasis gig, so no bragging when you beat me!