Race Report - Edinburgh Marathon 2012

Hot. Very hot. Hotter than the surface of the sun on quite a warm day indeed.

These are the words which followed us around the Edinburgh marathon and the few panicked days beforehand. Forget the abysmal training regime, the injuries, the sleepless night, the fact that our entire running and supporting crew had their minds elsewhere, it was the heat that really kicked us in the face all the way to Gosford House and most of the way back. But what a kicking. What a run. What a day. What a weekend.

Allow me to introduce the players in this story. You should definitely know the Crew Chief by now – she cheers like an American, crews like a trooper and is generally awesome in many ways. You may have heard of Neil Gray: he was a crucial part of my dress rehearsal disaster, he took a cool photo of some surprising zebras, and about a hundred years ago was an international standard age-group sprinter for Orkney and Scotland.  His fiancée Karlie Robinson is his own personal crew – and pacer, as it turns out. Finally the inimitable Alex B Dixon, a man of boundless talent and energy, who was there for my first ever Edinburgh marathon relay back in 2008, and was there for the whole thing yesterday too. In a supporting role was Rebecca Schmidt, herself a marathoner but today acting in a professional capacity, cheering from one of the Barnardo’s stands. Neil, Alex and I were running, and Linds, Karlie and Rebecca were crewing. We were all to be very hot.

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I’d like to write this post purely about the race, but that doesn’t feel remotely possible. Late on Saturday night a mutual friend of us all passed away in sudden, tragic and unexpected circumstances. The shock and devastation sat incongruously, impossibly, miserably alongside a glorious summer’s day and the pre-race marathon nerves. None of us slept well, and in the morning I would have happily traded anything to be waking up without that news. I lay in bed for an hour or so as the early morning light crept into the room, too sad and angry to imagine running a marathon.

But a marathon is what we had signed up for, and no good would come of us abandoning our endeavours. No-one spoke a word of dissent as the early morning preparations unfolded. Perhaps I was the only one who doubted whether we should be doing this. Perhaps everyone did.

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Our plan started to falter immediately. Living just a couple of miles from the start line, I guessed that we could easily call a cab to shuttle us from the flat to the off. Amazingly, one or two other marathoners had the same idea, and as the clock ticked to 9:20 (for a 9:50 start!) there was still no taxi to be seen, evidently busy ferrying others around. We gave a small sigh at our atrocious failure and started to walk there, eventually hailing a cab for the last mile or so, and arriving at the start line with about eight minutes to spare.

Back when I registered for this race, hot on the heels of my 3:49 PB in ‘the race even marathoners fear’, I had optimistically put 3:40 as my target time for ‘the fastest marathon in the UK’. Seven months later, with a wrecked ankle, an aching oedema and having run less than 200 miles in training, I knew I would be nowhere near that so positioned myself at the very back of the London Road start. Neil and Alex, who had predicted finishes of 3:59 and 4:05 respectively, were starting from Regent Road, and it was for this reason that I loitered outside Holyrood Palace, less than a mile into the race, waiting for Neil to arrive. For those few early miles together nothing could have been better. A beautiful day, out for a run, with my mate and 12,000 others, having some headspace to try to unpick the sad events of the past 24 hours. Marathoning isn’t therapy, it’s just time, space, and the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other. Which is what we needed.

We ran to mile three together, already sweating heavily through our factor 50 sun cream, where Neil left me to pursue my run/walk strategy. I planned to walk the first 30-60 seconds of every mile, running thereafter, in the hope of staving off serious fatigue until later in the race. Which sort-of worked. Around mile 5 Alex overtook me too, and I kept him in sight for the next four miles or so, letting him slip away as I walked then catching up to within a few feet on the runs. Crowd support was much better than in previous years, and even early on people were out in their gardens launching sprays of water across the course. No hosepipe ban for us.

Of course, as I’ve mentioned before, at mile 7 or 8 you really aren’t in Edinburgh any more, instead running through small coastal towns in East Lothian. By the time I reached Linds and Karlie’s cheer station in Musselburgh, just before mile 10, I felt good and strong, ready for more. Unpressured by time or racing, I took in the luxury of stopping to chat to them, wolfing down Haribo and reassuring them that the heat wasn’t getting to me just yet. However, the blistering was. Though I had no complaints from my awful ankle, the balls of my feet were starting to blister. At mile 11 I ran into a first aid tent, and with very little haste a well-meaning but possibly rather simple volunteer taped some padding to the underside of my feet. I reapplied socks and shoes, and wondered how on earth I was going to cover another 15 miles on these uncomfortable things...

With very little shade and having already stopped three times, I thought it best to push on for a few miles and make some good progress. But by the halfway point, clocking around 2:08, I was starting to feel the energy sapped from my muscles and was having difficulty balancing between taking on water and staying cool with it. I did not want hyponatremia for my trouble. But the heat was serious, and I probably saw at least 10 runners being tended to at the side of the road, some on drips, others with oxygen. I counted my blessings and thought of other things. For a mile or two it looked like a haar was coming in off the sea, but sadly it never materialised and we continued to roast in the sun. I struggled to maintain enthusiasm and focus as I passed such delightful landmarks as Cockenzie power station and bland featureless roads, but unconditionally adored the enthused crowd support in the pockets of civilisation, and sporadically remembered why I love this sport so much.

Between 16 and 18 I gradually felt my strength rebuilding, and on one of the switchbacks, impossibly, I saw that Neil was behind me by around 40 seconds. Enthused by this miraculous turnaround I pushed on into the grounds of Gosford House, where I paused briefly to give a TV interview to a woman who told me it was ‘only 6 miles to go!’, which was an outrageous lie. I suspect that I may have been too rude for transmission. Some small respite from the sun came in a wooded path, and it was here that I stopped for a while to help a woman who had tripped over her feet and landed nastily, cutting her knee and hand. I walked with her for a while as she got over the shock. We ambled and talked and eventually she disappeared back into the crowd. I saw her briefly a little later as she sailed past me looking strong and determined. I was genuinely delighted for her.

And from here, it was a struggle. I ran/walked/hobbled/walked/power-walked/ran in intermittent bursts, going as fast as my cramping, popping muscles would allow. I chatted to some people, remarked that it was really rather warm and generally enjoyed the atmosphere and banter. I made a point of running past the bloody awful power station, wanting it out of my sight as quickly as possible, but otherwise chose my pace according to hills, company and the whim of the universe. It felt like it took weeks but eventually, by some miracle, I loped into mile 25 where Linds was waiting for me. Karlie had left with Neil about 10 minutes earlier, incredibly, pacing him to the finish line in her flip-flops. With two bags and two folding chairs to carry, the Crew Chief declined to pace me home, so I jogged as much of the last mile as I could manage before finally turning into the park and the finish line, crossing in a spectacular PW of 4:44:15.

Me, Alex and Neil with our impossibly enormous medals.

Despite the trademark Edinburgh Marathon disappointment of the reunion areas and general finish logistics, we eventually found each other. Neil finished in a solid 4:33, and Alex ran a stonking 4:14. Both will improve massively on a cooler day, and I look forward to writing about their next accomplishments one day soon. We lay on the grass under a cloudless sky and thought about things. After a small period of regrouping, swapping war stories, stretching and admiring sunburn we hauled ourselves up a 900-mile hill to the shuttle bus departure point. We joined the back of a queue of 1.2 million people and eventually got a bus back to the city, and another cab back home. We talked about our day, and our weekend, and what it meant to us. We laughed. We had a lot of food and a small amount of beer, and eventually our day was done. I was asleep just before 10pm.

Never again will I run a marathon without adequate training. I enjoyed this experience and the opportunity to take time over things, and being released from time pressure meant that my head was clearer to just have fun with it. But the constant feeling that I could have done better was nagging me all the way round, if only I had done some training.

Quite separately, painful thoughts affected all of us throughout the day, and in a way I took strength from an ongoing determination to make this whole mad enterprise worthwhile. Neil and I agreed later that if we were going to run a marathon with a lost friend in our thoughts, then we should bloody well do it properly. DNF was never an option.

Happy running, friends. And rest in peace Steven.

Dave


2012 to date: miles run - 215.2, miles biked - 52.2, metres swum - 1150, races - 3

Dress rehearsal disasters

Having decided that the Edinburgh Marathon is indeed on like Donkey Kong, I have spent the last week working on things which will contribute to me not having a completely disastrous experience during the race. With mixed success.

After a decent 10-mile run last Monday, some time on the bike and a touch rugby game on Tuesday, I went to see a podiatrist on Wednesday night to talk about my left ankle issues. He gawped at the nasty way in which I roll my ankle and ascribed the pain to me chipping away at the ball joint with every footstrike. He didn’t seem too disturbed by my plan to run Edinburgh despite terrible gaps in my training and general injury failings, but did point out that an inverse taper would be a pointless exercise, since I could do nothing to improve my fitness in just 2 ½ weeks. Quite the opposite – I risked doing myself an injury which might rule me out of the race altogether. Interesting. He made me a pair of custom orthotic insoles then and there, and I left his office satisfied though £70 poorer.

I took his advice and binned my scheduled runs for Thursday and Friday, focussing instead on the planned course recce set for Saturday with fellow Edinburgh marathoner Neil Gray. We would take the train from Edinburgh Waverley to Longniddry, a station just ½ mile from the furthest reaches of the route. From here we could run all the way back to my flat, totalling something like 14 miles, which we intended to run relatively slowly so as to get a good opportunity to explore the course.

Things went wrong from the beginning. Driving into Edinburgh, Neil’s car suffered the automotive equivalent of an enormous blood blister and left him on the side of the motorway, frantically changing the tyre. We were only half an hour late to Waverley station, but this made us feel a little thrown off our meagre plan. I had a social engagement to keep in just a few hours’ time – there was little margin for error. As the countryside flew past we realised that our route would take us a very long way indeed. Fear and doubt planted seeds in our minds.

Nothing seemed to go right. We got a bit lost just trying to get to the sea, necessitating an unplanned cross-country sprint across the fairway of Longniddry golf course, eyes to the sky in case of deadly white projectiles. When we did find the coast a cruel headwind beat us back wherever we went. In choosing routes along the sea we seemed to perpetually make the wrong call and veer down pointless diversions or on trails made of loose sand. Neil struggled in the heat whilst I cultivated an enormous pair of blisters from my new orthotics. Neither of us could get anywhere near a sense of flow or settle into a rhythm, and our complaints were exacerbated by the knowledge of one another’s problems. Things looked bleak, and got even worse when Edinburgh’s skyline appeared in the distance. The very distant distance.

Just over 8 miles in I had to make a pit-stop to swap the orthotic for a regular insole as the blister had become unbearable. The slight pain in my left ankle which was the root of my troubles had inexplicably got a hell of a lot worse. As I delved into my rucksack for the replacement insole, Neil stretched out his prematurely tired legs and finished off his water bottle, beetroot-faced and sweating. An air of resignation gradually crept over us both. We told each other that it was time to abandon the run and chalk it up to experience. Neither of us needed much convincing. An exceptionally rude bus driver took my money and we wallowed in our failure as the number 26 bore us back into the city.

Even RunKeeper seemed to be struggling – check out the route it first produced for our run:

2:46 minutes per mile. Excellent.

The corrected version is available here.

Needless to say, Neil and I were a little disheartened by this experience. We had cheerfully thrown ourselves at the course and been found sorely wanting. But as time has passed and I’ve had a little time to analyse what happened, I am less worried about my prospects for the full race. We put on a terrible dress rehearsal, which in theatreland means we can expect a great show (I acknowledge, of course, that this is marathonland and training is pretty bloody important, but shush now). From here on I’ll only be using the orthotics for short distances - as I was told to in the first place - and I’m sure Neil will have plans to address his overheating problem (hint, mate: drink more water).

10 days to 26.2.

Happy running

Dave

2012 to date: miles run - 175.5, miles biked - 52.2, metres swum - 1150, races - 2

1087 miles: my 2011 in running shoes

What started with a broken promise ended with mixed emotions. I knew that my 2011 in running shoes would be the biggest, toughest and hopefully the most rewarding yet, but I wasn’t ready for how it would finish.

Pivoting on the San Francisco Marathon, all my training, racing and writing was focussed on getting into the best possible shape to run one of the most brutal road marathons in the world. My madly overambitious plans to start with the Lochaber Marathon were sensibly sidelined in favour of the usual crop of half-marathons and parkruns in the first half of the year, including a brilliant weekend in Campbeltown for the MoKRun.

My annual tradition of PB’ing in Alloa despite (or perhaps because of) being violently sick entered its third year, modified only slightly this year by a rather more exciting end to the day. But before both of those was the last-minute slapdash effort at the Meadows ‘Marathon’ in Edinburgh, which of course was only really a half marathon, run over seven laps of the Meadows in Edinburgh.  It may interest you to know that the organisers are planning a full length-marathon for 2012, covering a soul-sucking fourteen lap course (details here). You won’t be seeing me there.

San Francisco loomed large and arrived on my doorstep at the end of July. With the miles in the bank, hills in my legs and a Union Jack on my chest I was ready to run the best race of my life, and was rewarded with a hugely satisfying 3:49 PB. I’ve wasted enough of your time already on eulogising about this incredible race – go back and read it all again if you’re interested.

I came back from the USA with an enormous medal and two more goals on the horizon. My commitment to run the Great North Run for the Alzheimer’s Society, coupled with my wild over-commitment to run it barefoot, made for a superb combination of a world-class event and another tough challenge complete. Two weeks later I toed my final start-line of the year, accompanying the one and only Ben A. Nicholson around the Loch Ness Marathon, to complete my fourth lifetime 26.2.

 It was a good year for meeting heroes. I met round-the-world runner and adventurer Rosie Swale Pope in Campbeltown before the MokRun, then elite ultramarathoner Michael Wardian and prolific marathoner Dane Rauschenberg in San Francisco, and finally world 5,000m champion and British Olympic hopeful Mo Farah in Newcastle before the Great North Run.  If you’re interested, Michael and Dane were the friendliest. Rosie was busy at a book signing but very kind. I think I might have annoyed Mo – he was out for a drink with some mates. Sorry Mo.

Mike Wardian (after winning the SF Marathon)

Mo Farah

I was delighted to publish articles in Runner’s World UK again this year, reviewing the Alloa Half Marathon, the MoKRun and the San Francisco Marathon.  RW has a readership of almost 400,000, which, as I’ve said before, is almost as many people as read this blog (pfft!).  I very much look forward to publishing more in future. It was also a joy to watch this blog's readership grow and diversify - thank you for sharing it as widely as you have, it means a great deal to me.

Perhaps best of all was watching others achieve and succeed. It was a pleasure to run with my brother the day of his wedding, a delight to see that my sister completed her first 10k, an honour to accompany (and eventually be beaten by) Ben Nicholson in his first marathon. I took a Dalmatian and her owner to the top of Arthur’s Seat. I trained with future marathon world champ Megan Crawford, when she slowed down enough for me to keep up. I even coaxed the Crew Chief out on one or two occasions. I ran in Scotland, England, Portugal, California and New York, covering a total of 1087 miles and wearing out two-and-a-half pairs of running shoes. Here are the final stats:

miles run: 1087, parkruns: 6, races: 6, 

miles biked: 159, metres swum: 1225

I had a great year.

Except the hernia bit. That was shit, and still is.  Not long after the Loch Ness Marathon I started experiencing a great deal of pain whilst running.  By early November it had become unbearable, so I hastened to my GP. She thought it was probably a hernia, and ordered a surgical consultation (which still hasn’t happened, by the way).  In the meantime my running has dwindled to almost nothing, and at times it seems genuinely impossible to think that I have trained for and completed two marathons and four half marathons this year, as well as a few hundred miles on the bike. At times, genuinely, I can barely walk.

Swings and roundabouts, eh?

Happy New Year

Dave

2012 to date: miles - 3 (painfully)

Identity

It is a blog cliché to start a long-overdue post with an apology for not posting more often, but here it is: I’m sorry. Thing is, this is a blog about running and runners, and recently I have done much of the former or felt like one of the latter.

Almost two months ago I headed out for an easy five-miler along the river, when, as so often happens in such circumstances, I ran into trouble exactly halfway through the run and, consequently, when I was as far away from home as I could possibly be. A deep, dull ache gripped around my mid-section like a vice and tightened, making every step agonising. It was as if I was wearing a cummerbund of misery and pain and gross inconvenience. I paused a moment, almost winded by the shock of the pain, and decided to walk instead. But walking was even more painful, so, with great effort, I forced myself into a pitiful, laborious trot and headed for home.

The pain lasted for days. I’ve run two marathons this year and barefoot half marathon – I know a thing or two about pain – but this was by far the worst. I ached when I walked, stairs were agony and I could barely put on a pair of socks without wincing. This was torture. I live an active lifestyle: I walk to work most days, two miles each way, and am used to putting in anything from 15 to 50 miles a week running, as well as some time on the bike, too. I am rarely still. I fidget and pace and meander. I’d sooner walk than get a bus and rather sprint than miss a train. But this new injury put paid to all of that, or rather, made all of that hurt like hell. I even stopped walking to work - the discomfort made me nauseous.

Since then the pain has never been far away. Every run has been the same; starting well but deteriorating rapidly, the dull ache growing until I couldn’t take it anymore and ran for home as fast as my confused legs could carry me. My GP had no answers but plenty of scary words, like hernia, appendicitis and ‘surgical consult’. The fact that my injury only kicks in during a run seemed to annoy her – she suggested that I run until it hurts then present myself at A&E. An absurd notion. My physio decided that my back was to blame and spent an hour systematically demolishing it, to no noticeable effect. I’m still waiting for that surgical consult, by the way.

So I’ve been running horrendous, pathetic miles. 10 miles a week. Then seven. Then five. Last week just two; the kind of miles that I am ashamed to put in my training diary. The kind of miles that make me embarrassed to look at this blog.

He looks happy.

And so we reach identity. What is a runner? To me the only criteria have always been that you run because you love it, because you know what it means to have adrenalin surging through your veins as you haul yourself uphill into driving rain, because you have no shame in beaming and whooping and laughing as you hurtle down a snowy hill, because you get to the end of a long run beaten, battered and broken and triumphantly glowing with the sense of accomplishment you deserve.

I haven’t felt any of those things for weeks.

If you’re fit and well, then please, for goodness sake, go for a run this week. Somebody should.

Jog on

Dave

2011 to date: miles: 1077, parkruns: 6, races: 6, miles biked: 159, metres swum: 1225