Asics Greater Manchester Marathon

My job often requires me to work long shifts. But even on the longest of them, I don’t have to wake up before 6am. So it came as something of a surprise that I’d already been awake for a good twenty minutes when my alarm went off at 5.50am this morning. But I suppose pre-race nerves are not to be messed with.

The trip to the race village went smoothly, much to my relief, and was partly shared with another runner who hailed from Scotland – in fact, very near where my Granddad lives. I love how friendly people are around big races like this. I suppose when you’re all sharing the pre-race jitters, it’s nice to talk it out!

I spent the last hour before the race trying to work out how many times I could queue for the loo, whether or not I was about to be sick, and hoping I wasn’t losing too much energy shivering. When the starting gun went off and we finally started moving, I was more than ready.

I’d chosen to run with the 3hr29min pace group – partly by design (I was aiming for a 3hr 30min finish) and partly by default (they were standing right in front of me when I reached the start). The group’s plan was to go off at a faster pace to allow for a fall off in the second half. I wasn’t sure how sensible this all sounded, but as the pace didn’t seem too awful, I decided to give it a chance.

The result was this: I ran most of the race at 7:46 pace, which felt far more comfortable than I expected. When we passed the half-marathon point in 1 hour 43 minutes, I still felt good. And when we hit a short downward hill a few minutes later and I found myself pulling ahead of the group…I decided to go with it. I managed to hold that pace, or thereabouts, until just after the 20 mile mark – further than any training run I’d done.

And then it started to hurt. The last 6 miles were painful. My legs felt heavy, my knees were screaming, and it was all I could do to keep going. But by that stage, you can slip into countdown mode. Six miles is, after all, just a 10k run. And then you can tick off the miles; I don’t consider a 5 mile run to be a ‘long run’ these days; our social club runs are around 4 miles long; I can run 3 miles home from nights; even my shortest taper run was over 2 miles; and I can always run 1 mile…

If I’d been able to breathe a little more easily, I would have burst into tears as I crossed the line. 3hours, 27 minutes, 20 seconds from the gun. A new PB, a London (and Boston) qualifying time, and better than I’d dared to hope for.

Manchester did herself proud with this race. The community support was great – lots of cheering, high fives and bowls of jelly babies. I really enjoyed the course: it has a lot of out and back sections which means you get to see the front runners zoom past, and then the boost of knowing you’re not too near the back! It was well organised, everyone was friendly, and I’d definitely come back.