1st May 2005

This was my second marathon in three weeks and in hind-sight probably wasn’t the most sensible thing I’ve ever done. This is a most scenic course and well over half is off-road so it’s not one for a PB and the heat on Sunday didn’t make it any easier.

The plan was to get round at an even pace in about 4hrs 15 minutes, which would be 40 minutes slower than Paris and so, probably achievable.  Anyway, I’d done about five miles when two “older” runners caught up with me, I fell in step with them and we chatted about this and that.  

After about 12 miles we got on to how many marathons they had run, one had completed 230 but was a novice compared to the other who had done over 360 marathons. I had been quite proud of my eight marathons but suddenly they felt very inadequate. What I hadn’t noticed was that while we had been talking the pace had also increased and instead of 9:30 miles I was doing 8:30 miles and we reached half-way in 1hr 55 minutes instead of my planned 2:08.

I was way ahead of schedule and the only way to get back on track was to stop, so I did. I stopped at the next water station and walked for two minutes.  I repeated that at every mile through the second half of the race. I got to meet a lot of other runners this way because when I was walking runners passed me and when I was running I passed them.  8 Even using this run-walk process I was still exhausted at the end but managed to finish in 4hrs 11 minutes. 

I saw my running partners in the car park, they had got round in 3:55 and 4:05 respectively.  “It’s the Halstead marathon in two weeks time”.  They said. “And your point is?” I said.

The Stowmarket Striders results are:-

6m Race Results

14m Race Results

Marathon Race Results