Groundhog Track Marathon - Let's Go Round Again!

My improvement throughout the four days of Quadzilla followed up by three PBs in the three ensuing weeks at Reading Joggers Winter Handicap (7.85 miles cross country), Bramley 20 mile race and Reading Half-marathon had put me in a confident mood.  I remarked to Mandy before I left to drive up to Telford that whatever happened it was going to be a PB.  This was probably a bit foolhardy as the marathon is an unpredictable beast and you can never be too sure it will go to plan, but go to plan it most emphatically did!

I picked up multi-marathon legend Martin Bush (fast approaching his 700th marathon) and we enjoyed a delay-free journey to Telford Athletics Track, arriving well before the 9am registration was due to commence, which meant a relaxed build-up to the event.  The day had dawned greyer, colder and windier than expected so I went with a long-sleeved base layer and gloves, set up my music player and strolled to the track to catch up with the various familiar faces going through their final preparations.

This was going to be a run by feel rather than governed by watch watching, taking things nice and easy until I decided it was time to charge.  Looking at the splits provided by the official timing company I'm amazed at how consistently I was lapping given my lack of attention to the matter, it just shows that allowing yourself to go at a naturally comfortable pace with no conscious input enables the body to do what it needs to do.  There were a couple of laps which took a little more time due to deciding to remove my base layer and then faffing with earphones, and at one point I walked for about 50 metres to take on fluids without choking but it was all going very smoothly.

As I approached halfway I started to think about when I would commence the 'sprint' for the tape.  Initially I thought 80 laps would be a good point, a full-on 10k effort at the end.  I then convinced myself that I could be braver than that and settled upon 70 laps.  A couple of minutes of contemplation reminded me that one of my new rules in running bravely is to start the sprint at a point before I am fully comfortable with the idea.  60 laps it was then!!

Laps 61-70 were comfortable; official data shows I went from about 2:18 lapping during the first 60 to about 2:01. Laps 71-80 started to hurt a bit, slipping to around 2:05, 81-90 were hard work, dropping from 2:10 to 2:15.  I held on at 2:20 laps until lap 96.  Of course I wasn't at all aware of these times as I hadn't yet looked at my watch, I was just counting up the laps and trying to stay focused on the running.

It was at about this point that the negative voices in my head, the familiar self-doubt, started to make more noise:  'Your right hip is hurting with all this constant turning left, no point in injuring yourself for a fast time, just back off and coast home'.  I managed to shrug that one off, I've had worse in training runs and carried on with no problem, it would have to do better than that.  'You're feeling nauseous now.  What if you throw-up on the track?'  Mmmmm, that would be embarrassing!  But no, I wasn't going to be sick.  Come on, what else have you got?  'Remember how you passed out after the Paris marathon?  You're feeling a bit like that now.  Your head is spinning.  You're going to faint right here on the track if you don't stop running'.  That was a tough one to deal with.  The data shows these laps were around 2:25.

With 6 to go I looked at my Garmin for the first time.  3:45:xx.  My first sub 4 was well and truly on.  Time to focus.  The head-wind on the back straight seemed stronger than at any previous time in the race, it was as if I was barely moving, although I was overtaking people.  I kept telling myself to keep the cadence high, to get each foot back up off the ground as quickly as I possibly could.  I started to worry about whether I had counted properly, I'm usually very accurate, but that was a lot of laps to count!  With 2 to go I checked again.  I was definitely going to do it if my lap count was correct.  As I completed lap 104 the timekeeper said; 'last lap number 52'.  The relief was immense.  The tightness in my legs disappeared and I raced around the final lap to finish in 3:58:49 with a negative split 2:01:07 - 1:57:42.

Official splits (indulging my inner Statto);

Lap 1 (600 metres) 3:29

Laps 2-10  2:15, 2:14, 2:15, 2:18, 2:17, 2:15, 2:11, 2:13, 2:15

Laps 11-20  2:19, 2:17, 2:16, 2:13, 2:16, 2:18, 2:20, 2:37, 2:46, 2:19

Laps 21-30  2:20, 2:21, 2:19, 2:19, 2:19, 2:21, 2:21, 2:18, 2:19, 2:20

Laps 31-40  2:18, 2:18, 2:20, 2:21, 2:20, 2:41, 2:17, 2:17, 2:18, 2:19

Laps 41-50  2:23, 2:21, 2:20, 2:21, 2:27, 2:20, 2:19, 2:18, 2:20, 2:15

Laps 51-60  2:14, 2:13, 2:14, 2:27, 2:16, 2:17, 2:17, 2:18, 2:28, 2:15

Laps 61-70  2:00, 2:01, 2:03, 2:01, 2:00, 2:03, 1:56, 2:01, 2:01, 2:03

Laps 71-80  2:03, 2:07, 2:06, 2:03, 2:05, 2:07, 2:05, 2:09, 2:09, 2:07

Laps 81-90  2:10, 2:12, 2:13, 2:17, 2:16, 2:17, 2:15, 2:16, 2:16, 2:14

Laps 91-100  2:19, 2:17, 2:21, 2:21, 2:20, 2:24, 2:24, 2:26, 2:28, 2:27

Laps 101-105  2:25, 2:28, 2:30, 2:24, 2:01


8th March 2014  Groundhog Track Marathon  3:58:49  #30