Fleetwood marathon

There was an inauspicious start to the Fleetwood marathon: I arrived in dire need of breakfast but there was nothing to be seen. The next door leisure centre had a cafeteria however, so off I went in hope of a round of toast and a cup of tea, to find three vending machines. Vending machines do not sell anything resembling proper food and Fleetwood at 8.30am on a Sunday morning is bereft of a functioning caff, apart from a MacDonald's in an out of town shopping centre. Low blood sugar loss of temper was increasingly close when I placed an emergency call to my mum to deliver take away breakfast. I felt very guilty that not only had I dragged her all the way to vile Fleetwood early on a Sunday but that it was also a truly miserable morning. So it was that I was stuffing down a barely chewed but very tasty MacD's egg, bacon and cheese muffin and a hash brown 20 minutes before the gun went. My digestive system is fairly robust but this did ensure a cautious start for first 2 miles. Happily, it worked fine and I didn't need any other energy at all during the race. All those recommendations to have porridge 2 hours before the race, then a sports drink 30 minutes before, no need. Just find whatever greasy bacon sandwich you can get your hands on and start out slow. 

As for the start, have you ever seen that penguins game on iGoogle? There are a bunch of penguins shuffling aimlessly around a small box and when you move your cursor, they all turn as one and shuffle towards it. Move your cursor to the opposite side of the screen and they all about face and shuffle back. The start was like that. There was no line as it had been covered by sand, and no banner as it would have blown away, but noone knew which direction we were going so there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with the speedy ones having to shove down the sides to get to what they thought was the front. With very little fanfare, the Mayor set us off. They could have at least given him a chair to stand on, noone saw him. 

We set off through Fleetwood which is a total dump with a lot of care homes, a lot of run down small factory buildings masquerading as the set of a Guy Ritchie film, the Fisherman's Friend plant and a ferry to get the hell out of there. Nowt else. The route was unfathomable on the map with lots of loops and a few zig zags but the bulk of it from 7 to 23 miles was on the coastal path, a concrete sea wall. Hence no cover. It was blowing a gale inland that morning so there was no cover from the elements on the exposed coast so when we got round the turn at 7 miles we were full into a monster headwind. It was slap into your face, blasting sand at you in every direction, so much so that I was running with my right arm over my face but still had to screw my eyes up so much that I couldn't see where I was going and earned 10 years' worth of wrinkles in 26 miles. As for all those expensive microdermabrasion treatments they flog on Harley Street, save your money and come to Fleetwood. All exposed skin was stripped red raw by the sand blasting. 

The water stations were ridiculously stretched out in this marathon at 3, 7, 13, 16, 21.5 and 24 miles. Two 6 mile stretched between stations is way too far especially when you've got a gob full of hurricane driven sand and you've had a very salty breakfast. I was quite traumatised after less than half way, it felt like I'd done 10 rounds with Mike Tyson and was totally battered and exhausted. What made it worse was the mental fight to keep going, at no point could you stop concentrating on maintaining some sort of straight line or not getting knocked over or blown into the wall. 4+ hours of deafening white noise torture from the gales was also very unpleasant. I like the quiet (in my office, you can usually hear no more than the airconditioning and tapping on keyboards) and this was brutally and unremittingly noisy. 

There were some surreal distractions from the louring skies and boiling brown seas (yes, the sea is brown here because of all the mud washed down the Morecambe estuary) - running underneath the Blackpool illuminations was an odd flashback to childhood trips. One evening every September, we'd crawl along the prom in the car and one of us would be sent out to the chippy to get the round in. Traffic moved so slowly, you could get served and back to the car and it had only moved 50 yards. Today, we passed the Jolly Roger, Doctor Who, a haunted house, Humpty Dumpty, plenty of Buddhas and a bizarre Roman temple complete with centurion. No doubt he was after the Vestal Virgin peering coyly out of the window. 

After several miles of slogging into the wind, I was a bit fed up of running what felt like 8 minute miles to achieve 12 minute miles, so I walked 21.5 to 24 with some good company from a multiple marathoner on a mighty impressive challenge to run 223 maras in memory of his nephew and another similarly impressive bloke running his first 10 marathons all in one year. I couldn't bear the shame of walking the last couple of miles so ran those for a shame-inducing time of 4'42. Those heady days of effortless PBs and serial sub 3'50s seem a long time ago.