Edinburgh Marathon

...needing runners for was the Edinburgh marathon. How hard can that be? I thought to myself, after all I had completed a half marathon the previous September so all I had to do was double the distance and I would be fine.

I quickly decided then that I was going to go for it, so I cut the advert out of the paper and the very next day phoned the number and agreed to take up the charity place in the Edinburgh marathon.

*****ENTRY*****
...charity place in the Edinburgh marathon which means that the charity paid for my entry as long as I was prepared to meet a minimum sponsorship target which in my case was £500.

If I had entered the marathon by myself I believe the cost of entry is somewhere in the region of £40, which yes I know is quite a lot of money to spend, to put yourself through 26.2 miles of pain.

*****TRAINING*****

You would ... more

Back in January I was reading my local paper and came accross a small advert which read 'Charity in plea for runners'. On reading a bit further I found out that the race that the charity was needing runners for was the Edinburgh marathon. How hard can that be? I thought to myself, after all I had completed a half marathon the previous September so all I had to do was double the distance and I would be fine.

I quickly decided then that I was going to go for it, so I cut the advert out of the paper and the very next day phoned the number and agreed to take up the charity place in the Edinburgh marathon.

*****ENTRY*****

As I said above I got a charity place in the Edinburgh marathon which means that the charity paid for my entry as long as I was prepared to meet a minimum sponsorship target which in my case was £500.

If I had entered the marathon by myself I believe the cost of entry is somewhere in the region of £40, which yes I know is quite a lot of money to spend, to put yourself through 26.2 miles of pain.

*****TRAINING*****

You would have thought that having done a half marathon last year that I would have had a good start with my training, but that was not the case as since I had done the half I had hardly been out for any runs. Cold, wet Scottish nights had not had much appeal for me so most of the time I had taken the easy option and not bothered.

Never mind I thought, I still had the best part of five months to prepare for the marathon. That sounded good but the fact is training for long endurance events like these is never as simple as you would expect. Firstly I was preparing for my wedding and then I was out the country for two weeks in March for the wedding itself.

After this my thoughts were, never mind I still have about three months to prepare, then almost as soon as I started training I was set back with a chest infection knocking another fortnight out of my schedule.

By this point it was April and at last everything was going to plan and I was able to get two good months of training in although that was nowhere near enough. When training you have to build things up slowly or you end up injuring yourself with overuse injuries such as shin splints. The correct way to do it is not to increase your mileage by any more than 10% each week although on my timescale I had to cheat slightly and build up a bit quicker.

All in all my training for the marathon was way below what I should have done, if I ever do another full marathon I will put in a lot more work.

My longest training run was about 13 miles compared to the 20 mile runs that you are supposed to have built up to.

*****THE RUN*****

First of all the Edinburgh marathon almost didn't take place this year. With just a few days to go, the organisers of the race were bailed out by the local council for over £100,000 to cover the cost of road closures on the day. They were also appealing for volunteers, as with a few days to go they were still 200 short of the 1,000 volunteers that were needed for the day. This all means that the future of the Edinburgh marathon is in doubt which is a shame as a lot of money is raised for charity as well as the boost the local economy gets.

The day of the Edinburgh marathon was the 11th June 2006 and the race started at 9am. I was up nice and early to try and get a decent breakfast inside of me and to try and ease my nerves.

The weather didn't help as although it wasn't quite as warm as forecast it was still a little to warm for a marathon, in fact the word at the end was that a couple of the Kenyan runners had not finished the race as it was too warm for them! The website for the Edinburgh marathon states that the normal temperatures for Edinburgh at that particular time of year is around 17 degrees with the race day this year reaching the low 20's.

The marathon started out in Princes Street in Edinburgh which apparently is a new start compared to previous years. It was not as busy as I had expected at the start as some 2,500 runners that had registered for the race didn't take part, whether through injury or the warmer than expected weather on the day.

As well as the full marathon there is also a team relay in which teams of five run about 5 miles each before the next member of their team takes over. One team of note was a group of five elderly men, the youngest of which was 75 years old with the oldest at 95 years of age running the final leg.

I started the race a little faster than I should have done as usual and found myself about 10 minutes ahead of my schedule after about 8 miles. I soon paid for this as at about mile 10 I started to feel a bit drained, not the best when you still have 16 miles to go! Thankfully there was plenty of chances to take on more fluids, as there was 7 water stops and 4 energy drink stops over the course.

By the time I got to the halfway stage I was still on target for my 4 1/2 hour time that I had been aiming for. I had reached the halfway stage in 2 hours 9 minutes so had a bit in hand, although I knew that I wasn't feeling fresh enough to come back in anything like that time.

True enough my energy was at a low on the way back, especially as this was when all the hills seemed to appear and on the way back I had to mix any running I was doing with some walking in parts although there was plenty of people doing the same.

One thing that did spur me on a bit was that everyone from the Edinburgh marathon forum on the Runners World website had arranged to wear green ribbon. This meant that whenever we spotted someone else with a bit of green ribbon some nice friendly encouragement was given to each other.

Once I got near the end I got a boost and running through Holyrood park and seeing the 26 mile marker was tremendous. Only .2 of a mile to go at this point and then noticing my wife and my mum in the crowd cheering me home was another boost.

I got home in a time of 4 hours 51 minutes, which was about 21 minutes behind schedule but just making it home was a big achievement. Getting the medal round my neck made me feel just as good as the winner would have felt more than 2 hours before me.

*****ATMOSPHERE*****

I have to admit to being a bit disapointed with the atmosphere. When I ran in the Great Scottish Run half marathon in Glasgow last year they had a band or a piper at every mile marker to help spur you on. Maybe this spoiled me a bit for the Edinburgh marathon, but the first thing like this to appear in Edinburgh was a piper as we entered Holyrood park at 26 miles or so.

The crowds were also a bit sparser at times in Edinburgh and we could have done with more support to help us round.

One big plus for was that over the last 4 or 5 miles as we ran through some housing estates there were a lot of people out there houses spraying us with sprinklers. That was much appreciated.

*****CHARITY*****

The charity that I was running for was the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. I won't go into what the charity is but if you do a search on Ciao there is a very good review about Cystic Fibrosis which will tell you all that you need to know. My minimum sponsorship target was £500 and at the moment I have passed that and raised £565 although I would hope to raise even more by the time I send the money to the charity.

*****WOULD I DO IT AGAIN?*****

At the moment I am going to stick to doing 10K and half marathon races. If I were to do another marathon I think I would go for a bigger event, I would love to do the likes of the New York marathon and I will also keep applying to do the London marathon.

Finally if you want to share in my suffering log onto www.asiphoto.net and type in bib number 4264 at the Edinburgh marathon part.

 

...less