John McLaughlin’s Marathon Training

Well, it is all over – and despite my knee injury I managed to finish in just over 5 hours, I’m not sure exactly how long it took me as I forgot to stop my stopwatch!  The official results are meant to be on the website today, so I can find out then.  The good news is it is now my marathon personal best

I got to the start at about 8.30 and said goodbye to Helen and Rory, and then joined the 1000’s of other runners (13500 marathoin runners and 1000 relay runners), I eventually found my starting pen and did some light stretching while waiting for the start of the marathon – the sun was already rather hot.

At 9am the marathon started, 9:07am, I finally got across the start line and was off on my first ever marathon adventure.  I was quite distracted for the first few miles because everytime my right foot hit the ground, I was convinced I felt pain in my knee, after the first mile I took a deep breath, composed myself and decided to just enjoy the atmosphere, and I have to say what an atmosphere, the crowd support was absolutly amazing.

I was very relieved when I got to 5 miles and had no pain in my knee, I was almost exstatic when I passed the 6mile marker and still no knee pain, it looked like the stretching and massage had worked, and better still I was on course for a finish time of approx 03:45.  At about 9.5miles I passed my team of supporters (Helen, Rory, Kenneth, Mary and Susan) and was really enjoying myself despite the heat, but then with the 11mile marker in sight, disaster, my knee gave way and I had to stop, I tried running again, but it was just to painful and I was so tempted to just stop and walk back to where Helen was.

But the strange thing about the marathon, people I had never met before and am neverly likely to meet again, started asking if I was alright and telling me to keep on going, so I did.  I decided to get to the 13 mile and treat the day as a half marathon, but while hobbling along to the 13 mile marker, I soon discovered if I walked for a while, I was then able to start running againand while the initial 10-15 steps after walking were incredably painful, if I was able to just grin and bare it, the pain soon went away and I was able to run another mile, mile and half before the pain forced me to stop running and I had to walk again, I decided to keep up this cycle of walking and running for as long as I could as I really wanted to finish.

The knee pain and heat made for a very long and sore marathon, but it was worth it, the feeling of joy as I crossed the finishing line was just amazing, I had done it, I had just finished my first ever 26.3mile marathon, I was so happy.

I must just comment on the crowd and the weather.  The crowds lining the route were absolutely brillant, and the school choir at the entrance to Holyrood Park to the heavy metal band at Longniddry, the mobile radio station and the guy outside a pub belting out some great tunes, the atmosphere was just amazing.  Also the people who were standing in the front gardens just pointing their garden hoses into the street was also appreciated as it was incrediably hot, but a very big thank you has to go to the families that were running in and out of their houses with jugs of water – especially as several official water stations had run out of water!!

So would I run another marathon? oh yes definitely. Would I run another marathon, if I knew I was carrying an injury?no, probably not.  Its now time to rest for a while before I start preparations for the Wycombe Half Marathon in about 6 weeks.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 9:32 AM and is filed under Edinburgh Marathon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.