Progress wk14 and RACE

This week saw only a couple of easy 5 milers to keep the legs ticking over.

Race day, Dumfries Marathon Sunday 19th March 2006, provisional results 3 hrs 39 mins 13 secs and 75th place out of 180, a bit slower than intended.

1st mile or so at 7:30 pace, a bit quicker than planned, not a good idea, managed to slow it to the planned 7:50 pace from miles 2 to 7, mile 8 pace slowed going up the hill, didn't like that, indication that maybe this pace is a bit too fast. More of that later.

The next 2 or 3 miles are downhill, back to target pace without any noticable effort, but mile 12 too fast at 7:30, caught 4 or 5 people over these miles, too early to start that nonesense!

Next 3 miles at target 7:50 pace.

Miles 16 to 21 pace gradually drifts through 8:00 and on up to 8:30, working too hard, getting stressed, and people passing me now.

Just after the 21 mile marker sudden and severe cramp - had to stop twice within 10 yards and stretch, lost about 3 mins to plan, therafter shuffled in at around 10 min mile pace - couldn't go any faster.

All in a good race, only a minute or so down on the PB run from my last marathon in London 4 years ago.

Will I run another? who knows, but some lessons would need to be learned, even with the more balanced programme used this time the target improvement of 8 to 10 mins is probably too much with the same mileage. Instead of the target pace of 7:50 possibly 8:10 would have brought me home in one piece, remember it is a marathon, hindsight might have been a wonderful thing.

Scenic course, pretty flat, hills at 8 miles and 23 miles plus a few undulations in between, nothing serious.

Race organistation excellent with feed stations, water and orange juice about every 3 or 4 miles. Collected energy drink sent out to mile 12.

Weather was good, cool, no wind, some weak sun and one short light rain shower in the 2nd half.

Hopefully I can carry fitness on to this years real races on the Hills...