Hi guys,
Welcome to my first blog post and I hope you guys like my blog. I hope to use this blog to mainly talk about running and how it affects me in a positive way so I hope you guys enjoy.
I recently completed the Brighton Marathon on the 9th April 2017 and below is the story how I found the race which I have decided to split into part 1 and part 2. Part 1 talks about the first half of the marathon and I hope to talk about the second half in part 2.
It’s marathon morning and I wake up around 7am looking forward to the challenge ahead. After getting ready I decide to head down to the race start line which was at Preston Park. The race was meant to start at 9:15am. As I left the hotel I could tell the atmosphere was already electric as the place was full of people. The atmosphere just kept getting bigger and better on the walk down to Preston Park and the whole park was heaving. Approximately 12,000 runners from all walks of life had gathered in one area. I was buzzing and quite confident.
By around 9am I made my way to the starting pen feeling excited and it just felt like I wanted the race to start.
As I was in one of the lower graded colour pens, it was around 9:40am by the time I started running.I even got a high 5 from the Brighton manager Chris Hughton which helped to boost my spirits.
As we ran through the city on the first mile, I realised all the positive feedback that had been given to me about the Brighton marathon having a magnificient atmosphere was indeed true. For the first few miles, there was lots of positive shouts of encouragement which I always love on a race. It just really helps. Around mile 3-4 we saw part of the town which was also packed out but I loved seeing Brighton town as part of the route.
As the race continued, we ran towards the sea front along the front of the promenade and then looped back again. At this point I was ahead of the 5 hour pacer who I really wanted to beat because I believed in myself that I could do it and I was reasonably confident with the way that I was running until that point.
The run along the promonade was quite long and once we got to the bottom I saw an extra bit of the course which I didn’t expect we would have to run. Very cheeky!
We were approaching 11 miles now and my legs were beginning to tire a little bit and felt like they were running out of energy. That worried me a little because on my training runs it didn’t normally happen until around miles 17-18 but here it happened really early. I somehow managed to keep going until the half way point which is when I had to stop and walk for the first time. I also had really bad cramp in my legs which I believed forced me to stop and walk. As I saw the 5 hours pacer zoom past me, I knew deep down that I wasn’t going to catch them and the sole focus now was finishing regardless of time.
As this post will probably seem like a mini essay at the end i’m ending the post here but thank you for reading.
Runners Life 