Speaking of beer...build up to the marathon didn't start well when I fell of the wagon a little bit on the Friday and had a few too many beers but you can't pass up the opportunity for a few tinnies on the train, can you? You can? Oh! Well it was worth it!
Saturday was spent relaxing in the beautiful Scottish sunshine (no, you didn't read that wrong!). At a balmy 24C I was starting to get a little concerned about the weather on race day but the ice cream was providing reasonable consolation. No matter how hot it got it had to be better than last years race where Edinburgh delivered a cracking day of Scottish weather with all four seasons in one day. There was...
...a wee bit of wind...
...some choppy waters in the firth...
...the odd bolt or two of lightning...
...a few small hail stones...
...and a minor volcanic eruption on Arthur's Seat!
OK, so that might be a slight exaggeration but they did close all of the bridges due to the high winds which did not make for an easy run.
The Edinburgh marathon is the second biggest marathon in the UK with 27,695 runners signed up this year (including Fauja Singh who at the age of 101 was running the final leg of the marthon relay - fair play fella, fair play!) . To support so many runners requires 167,525 bottles of water, 9,920m of barriers, 25,000 cones and 250 portaloos! It's also the fastest marathon in the UK so I was hoping that the legs had enough in them for a shot at a PB, with 500 quid on offer if I could run sub 3:20 (fat chance, but worth a shot). Interestingly, the record for the slowest running of the Edinburgh marathon is currently with Lloyd Stott who took six days to finish the race. To be fair to the chap he did do it in a 100lb deep sea diving suit and he did have a case of food poisoning. Can you imagine trying to get out of that suit and to the toilet in time!
This got me interested and with a little help from the T'Interweb superhighway I was able to find some other pretty wacky marathon attempts. Here are some of my favourites...
Draggin' a dragon! In 2006 Lloyd Stott (yes, it appears he is completely off his rocker!) dragged an 8ft dragon around the London marathon course!
In 2007, you guessed it, Lloyd Stott dressed as Indiana Jones and dragged a massive boulder around the London marathon course! What an absolute mentalist!
It looks like next years challenge is going to have to be a good one if I'm going to complete with people like this ;-)
The race itself was pretty uneventful. It was obvious pretty quickly that I wouldn't be able to run sub-3:20 as the legs just didn't have it in them from the start but a PB was on the cards for 20 miles. I slowed a little in the last six miles and ended up over seven minutes away from a PB with a disappointing time of 3:34:27. Unlike the previous week there was no finish line drama (a bit of a disappointment for the spectators I'm sure) and I felt like there was plenty left in the tank so may just have misjudged this one a bit, or more accurately got scared by a little bit of sun and not pushed myself as hard as I could have. On the plus side without any recovery time needed we were down the pub much quicker and tucking into an ice cold Tennents (the drink of kings, or is it Neds, I can never remember).
The 1986 Tennents lager ladies. Pure dead brilliant bit of beer car art, although I'm not sure about Marie's hair! Whoever invented these really was a visionary, why waste valuable drinking time going to art galleries when they can bring art galleries to your can of beer! Genius! :-)
Sunday afternoon was spent in the park enjoying yet more beautiful Scottish sunshine. I don't know who's idea it was but this included a few "sporting" events, including a 100m sprint (where I am not allowed to mention anything about the performance of other non-marathon running participants) and some pretty risque gymnastics (nuff said)!
Yet another massive thanks to Ellie for letting us stay and being such a wonderful host! Also a massive thanks to Lisey and Mikey for putting up with having to watch there second marathon in a week, to Jo for pushing through a stinking hangover to be there and to Madi who was subjected to almost five hours of my bad chat on the train back to London! Seeing a friendly face on the sidelines makes such a massive difference so thank you all!
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