2021-10-06 | Blog 004

In retrospect, my weekly milage should have been a lot higher before even starting this plan. This could have been achieved by taking the previous training block more seriously/pushing myself a bit more. The biggest fault of mine, however, is skipping strength and conditioning sessions. This has been a problem of mine for years though. I even suffered achilles tendonitis a few years back and didn’t keep up S&C after it healed. Stupid! Additionally, I only did about a quarter of the abs/core sessions… S&C is something I’m going to have to work into a permanent fixture of my week, future marathons or not.

Week of the marathon: I felt pretty good on this week. This was a light week of running. When I was out, the 4:30/km pace I was aiming for felt super easy so my confidence for the big day (Sunday) was high. If I was to change one thing on this week it would be my diet. I’d read that I’d need to take on some extra carbs in the days running up to the race, I took this an excuse to start eating considerably more for the entire week. I think this hurt my form as I actually felt a bit chubby on Friday and Saturday. Next time, I’ll stick to the usual diet until 2 days out.

The Marathon

Day before: The weather forecast for Sunday had been looking terrible all week. Luckily, the forecast seemed to change this day and predictions changed to reasonably dry but still quite cold. This relieved a lot of anxiety and I slept very well.

Marathon morning: The Loch Ness Marathon requires a shuttle bus to the 10am start line as the course is essentially a straight line (i.e. not a loop). This means arriving to the meeting point in Inverness (where the finish line is) around 7am. This all adds quite a bit of complication, I’d think circular marathons would make for a much better start to the day by avoiding all this.

It was, quite literally, a freezing cold start to the morning. There was a thin layer of frost on the car when we (my dad) left the house c. 6:40. The runners arrived off the shuttle bus at the start line around 8:45. I queued for the toilets to try squeeze out what I could, shall we say. I had to abandon this plan as it got to 9:30 and I was still not close to the front of the queue! After a quick urinal trip, I jogged on the spot and stretched.

This is where a lot of improvement could be had. Firstly, I should have had a banana 30 minutes out as I would later cramp. Secondly, I really wish I got to the toilets as I would later have to use the porta-potties around the halfway mark. Thirdly, there was no space to jog to warm up, maybe other events have more space.

On the plus side, my dad gave me a bin bag and one of his old t-shirts to wear on the start line and keep warm/dry. I ditched these a minute before the gun went off. These worked a treat as I would have otherwise worn my running jacket and ended up too hot. I’d recommend this tactic.

The marathon itself: Note that my target pace was 4:30/km. This works out as a 3:09:53. I took this to mean I had 5 minutes to spare if I needed to use the toilet on the run, or needed more time for the last few kms.

The marathon, 0km – 20km: Checked my pace on my watch fairly regularly. The first part of the course was a lot of descent, some of it quite steep. I sort of “let myself go” on these sections, not braking. I was a minute up on my goal pace at the 10km mark, and about 30s up at 20km. I think this is where I went wrong. These descents gave a sense that I was on pace, but really I’d given my ankles a fair beating speeding down the hills. I’d pay for this later on.

20km-30km: I was desperate for the toilet around the half way mark so ended up about a minute behind after using the facilities. Otherwise, a little behind pace for these kms, I wasn’t worried as I thought I had the 5 minutes to play with.

30km-37km: Some nasty hills sapped my energy. I stopped checking pace and just settled on finishing. Switched my Garmin screen to show distance remaining, rather than distance run/pace.

37km-42km: Constantly checked the remaining distance. With 7km to go, I said to myself “that’s just a 5km ParkRun, plus 1km either side for warm up and cool down”. Let me tell you, that was the most agonizing ParkRun I’ve ever done in my life. I’m used to glancing at my watch and 1km has passed since the last check, for this period it was more like 0.1km… I start picking up my heels to get a bit of speed back and I feel cramp up my right hamstring… These are hard kms. Eventually, I got into Inverness and people were on the streets cheering all the runners on. This really did help!

42km-end: I spotted Mum and Dad cheering me on. I picked up my pace ever so slightly as I “sprinted” over the line.

Summary

In summary, I definitely went too quick in the first half and ended up hitting the wall in the second half. I don’t entirely blame myself for this, the course is a very steep one. That said, I should have taken it easier. And I could have also tried to train on hilly routes but that’s easier said than done, living in Glasgow. I could maybe take public transport out somewhere hilly and run back home for future training.

As soon as I crossed the finish line, I thought I’d never do another marathon. But already I’m thinking about another and wondering how much I could improve if I used all this experience. Maybe another marathon is in the cards. For now, I’m taking the next 2 weeks off running entirely, and 2 further weeks off of any serious running.