Abingdon & Brentwood marathons

For the first time in 80 marathons, I couldn't blog a race last weekend. Abingdon was horrible because it was so blinkin' cold but more so because I hurt as much after the finish as I did after my first few marathons. Waking up in the middle of the night because your legs are so painful isn't something that's happened since Hastings in 2008 (setting aside the 10 in 10 ) and the thought of putting myself through that 10 more times was enormously depressing. It also seemed inappropriate to be moaning about a horrible race after so many people, and Mark in particular, had had fantastic marathons, there's nothing worse than someone tainting your achievement by whinging about how miserable they are.

As a result, I was dreading Brentwood. It's off road and the paranoia has started to build that I may get injured between now and the 100th. There have been a few people who've had to get through their last few marathons on injuries and it's not appealing; however, with so many people going out to Malta, the pressure is considerable. I'm also slower off road and wasn't looking forward to 5 hours of shuffling about in the cold. What I expected to be fairly flat, nicely smooth gravel packed paths turned out to be a mix of slippy grass and muddy trail, barely any of it flat, and two long hills on each of the 12 laps. Thank god for the laps, 12 is a perfect, many divisible number to break it up all manner of ways, and it actually felt like a 12 mile race, with each mile being really quite long.

It was lung-shrinkingly cold again (proved by a bit of a coughing fit post race) but the sun was out on a few stretches, which made the frosty grass fairly greasy, contrasting with the ever increasingly churned up mud on the woody sections. Road shoes meant a lot of sliding around, but it was worth it to avoid vile trail shoes (anyone want a filthy, no doubt mouldy, very much unwanted pair of Innov8s?). Lovely to see deer in the park, particularly the buck that crashed out of the bushes and bounded across the path in front of me in the woods. Also very lovely in the last 2 laps to see Mark turn up after his cross country to provide cheers and spur me on through the last few miles.

Having set off at a sedate pace, I was able to run all the hills to the 8th lap, then walked just the top section of the steeper hill, it was quite reassuring to see I could get up them, albeit very slowly. I have a very sore ankle from a totally unnecessary ditch we had to cross and inside of the right hip flexor from the hill running and had no thought of placing at my plodding pace. So when I got to the brow of the final hill, with about 100 yards to go, and one girl just ahead of me, it seemed only right to pick off one more place if I could. I sprinted past her and pipped her to the line by about 2 seconds. With 4'31, it was a very pleasant surprise to be presented with a trophy for second lady but I felt rather guilty for swiping it from under t'other girl's nose right on the line. Sometimes it's worth turning up to races with a small field, you can do better than you expected.