Edinburgh Marathon at Olympic Pace
So we can give ourselves a pat on the back, we finished the Edinburgh Marathon in a blistering fast, 5 hours and 3 minutes. Yup, endorsement-worthy stuff. No seriously, the time was crap could have been better but the experience was amazing. Considering the fact that we changed our target time from 4 ½ to 5 ½ hours on the morning of the marathon (just to be conservative) and that we hobbled the last three kilometres, we actually didn’t do too badly. I’m really chuffed.
The only “oooops” of the race was that they ran out of water at several watering stations. Crisis. It was a scorching hot day, the type we usually experience in Durban except without the humidity. Now Jem and I are used to this type of weather but the poor Scots are as familiar with 30°C temperatures as we are with the history of Tartan. Competitors were dehydrating and crashing out alongside the road waiting for the Ambulance. Sensing the urgency of the situation, spectators started serving the runners water from their own homes which was really sweet. Besides that one catastrophic error, the rest of the race went off smoothly.
By some fluke of nature and much to the irritation of Jeremy, I was able to walk and contend with pavements and multiple staircases in the days following the event. Lactic acid and micro-muscle tears are horrible pain-inflicting things which usually take 2-3 days to flush out of the system. Epitomising a text-book case of this was my very own, precious, marathon-running husband. The way he slowly bent down to pick something off the floor or the manner in which he eased himself into a car could easily have been mistaken for a male experiencing a phantom pregnancy. Initially it was hard to watch and then it started to get funny because my friend Amanda also developed a muscle spasm and suddenly I felt like I was managing an old age home. An outsider looking on would have been somewhat entertained watching me assist two otheriwse healthy-looking adults up a flight of stairs. It was funny though. Actually it was bloody hysterical.
All the aches and pains dissolved eventually and we swore that we’d train properly for the next marathon…
More on Scotland to come!
Ha ha very funny…..
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