Royal Victoria Marathon - How we did

This was a family run. My wife and niece ran the 8k, my sister and brother in law the half marathon and I ran the marathon. The performances ranged from better than hoped, on schedule, and a bit behind the curve.

The triumph was the 8k. This was my wife's first race and she had trained for it very conscientiously. On the kitchen noticeboard was a schedule from Runners World with every session ticked off (I am full of admiration of her ability to decide on a course of action and then keep to it). Even so she was nervous and not sure what to expect. My niece on the other hand has previously run races but had done no training. As she is young a generally fit this was not too much of a problem and they went round the course together 6 minutes faster than target time. A big hurrah that got bigger when we found out my wife finished 10th in her age category.

The Half marathon was pretty much to plan (again my sister and brother-in-law are also pretty good at keeping to a schedule). It was their first race at this distance and ran together. Their aim was 2 hours and they achieved 2.01, which is just about spot on. I actually saw them on the run at a point where the marathon and half marathon met, going in opposite directions. They looked to be running strongly and I am sure their next race will see their time drop.

My race was slower than I wanted but as I did not have any great expectations I felt quite satisfied. A persistent ankle problem meant my training had been more about keeping going rather than pushing things too hard and so I knew I did not have the endurance for a strong race. I started with three possible outcomes in mind; If everything went super well 4.15 might be possible, the realistic target was somewhere around 4.30,but the main objective was to keep going. So coming in at 4.38 was OK, actually it was better than that as I felt very happy that I had completed, even if I had been outrun by an eighty year old woman (side note: Betty Jean McHugh set a world record for her age category by finishing in 4.36).

More than getting round I thought I had learnt a number of lessons:

The first was that run/walk (10 minutes run, one minute walk) is a good strategy, which helped, at the very least, to make the first half comparatively comfortable. It seems to be more common in Canada than back home and so it was easy to take the breaks as there were lots of us doing it. When you are fresh it feels like a slightly unwelcome interruption because you feel good and don't want to break-up the rhythm but as you go on you appreciate the breaks and look forward to the change. Dividing the race up into small chunks of time is also a good mental strategy as you can focus on getting to the next break rather than looking at the number of miles till the end. The major problem I had was with the water stations. They did not fit the time schedule. I took them as extra breaks because I am not very good with paper cups but I was always slightly confused by what to do.

So lesson number two is to run with my own drinks. On long runs I normal use a Camelback and find it relatively comfortable. In no way would it slow me down and it would mean I could timetable my own breaks. Using drinks for fuel would also overcome lesson number three: I do not like gels. Because my training runs were not that long I didn't practice with gels enough and the extra I had to take for a marathon were distinctly unappetising.

Lesson number four was about my running style. I observed two distinct ways of moving. My normal style is fairly relaxed, with a forefoot/midfoot landing and looking ahead. The more tired I get the more my stride shortens and I stiffen up until I am shuffling along, striking with my heel, and looking at the ground, which is uncomfortable as well as slow but don't feel I can do anything else. The lesson is to work systematically on extending the time I can run normally in training. When things start to go bad I will have to use a mantra of saying “Relax, relax, ease out” and also “Look up”.
Lesson five is about music – it helped. I used my Ipod from 1 hour 45 and found it a good distraction. I had it on shuffle (which was quite appropriate given my running style) so I didn't know what was coming next and I liked the surprises – who knew that Tom Waites could make you feel good when running?

Lesson six was a reinforcement of something I usually try to do: look around and appreciate the surroundings. In this race looking at the sea made me feel happy and I had no need of the mental trick I sometimes use, which is to picture my home run and imagine the familiar sights of the canal.

The final lesson was about accepting your own performance. Towards the end someone shouted out “You're nearly there now , you can start to feel good” “Not if you have a target” someone muttered to herself rather bleakly. I wanted to try to talk her round but I knew it was futile but anyway she was ahead of me and I did not feel motivated enough to catch her up. But she made me realise that although I was not going to be proud of my time I was going to be proud of having done the race and to me that felt important.