YYFY!

Dry days- 67
Days of rain- 53

Marathon Day!

Due to the new house I haven't been running this week. However, despite this I was going to take today seriously and approach it properly- I only had a couple of beers last night. I had bought a shower-proof jacket yesterday in Preston after looking at MetCheck. The weather has been terrible this week, and today was no exception. The Doc and I were out of the house just after seven, after I'd eaten mini Shredded Wheat at six and a banana smoothie just before we left. There were no signposts for the Marathon or its parking, plus there were road closures, so it took a bit to find where we were going. The parking mentioned in the booklet for the race wasn't great. One was full, the other had decided it wasn't accepting event parking. We ended up in some backstreet and then walked in the pissing rain to the start.

It was cold, windy and very wet standing around waiting for the gun. After saying farewell (possibly literally) to The Doc I jogged up and down a bit to try to get warm. I had my Helly Hansen long sleeve thermal on, then my Satch T shirt and the shower-proof on top. I wasn't exactly warm like this, so I didn't envy the people huddling under trees in T shirts and shorts. I had said I'd do the run in five hours, so I was in the penultimate wave which took 6:24 to cross the line after the gun. The first five or so miles were past the fire station and Kellogg's and was quite built up. This meant that whilst everyone goes soaked in the continuous rain, the wind wasn't a factor. Once outside the M60 this came into play and the rain became horizontal. I was utterly soaked by this stage, and cold. Between twelve and sixteen miles we zig zagged around Dunham Massey, through country roads with three inches of standing water and then through a park with two inches of standing liquid mud. My feet had been wet before, but by now they were waterlogged and covered in mud. At this point a stop in at the Rope and Anchor was tempting, but I pushed on. At various Marshall tents there were lots of runners in foil huddling for shelter. A lot of people on the route looked very very cold, and many were walking. To be honest, conditions were awful and about as bad as you'd ever want for a long distance run.

24 miles saw me back inside the M60 and a little more shelter, thankfully. At least I wasn't going to get any colder than I already was. After the 20 mile point I felt more upbeat, and managed to up the pace a little. I seemed to be overtaking quite a few flaggers now, including most of the 4:30 and 4:15 pacemakers. My habit of stomping up hills in shite weather was holding me in good stead. I managed to run all the way, and finished in 4:38:59 which was nicely under my 5:00 target and considering the conditions I was quite pleased. The Doc was relieved to see me at the finishing mud bath. She was pretty cold just from standing in the rain. After that we came home to warm up in the bath. So, unending rain and wind. Lovely, I think I'll leave Manchester next time! Although I think I'll enter the London Marathon ballot tomorrow when it opens. And I need to decide on the Preston Guild half vs marathon.

Split times:
10k-  1:05:28
10 miles- 1:44:31
Half- 2:16:36 (Second half- 2:23:22)
20 miles- 3:30:29
Finish- 4:38:59