New Forest marathon - #107

Plan A - beat 4:09:26 (previous course time)
Plan B - beat 4 hours
Result - 3:47:41, a 22 minute course best

I really liked this race when I did it two years ago, but suffered with a dodgy stomach and ran 10 minutes slower than I wanted to. I wasn't sure if 4 hours was on because it's a hilly course and I only did 3:56 on the flat Vilnius course a few weeks ago. As it was a training run, I decided to run fairly comfortably in the first half and see what happened after that, ideally without too much of a positive split. Ideally, I'd run all the hills and not stop to stroke the ponies.

It was great to see some old friends with lots of 100 clubbers out. I had a nice chat with Dave Lewis (who beat me by 8 seconds, another 1/4 mile and I would have had him) who wondered if I'd lost weight lately. I made some comment about not carb loading quite as often as I used to. I know I'm a fraction smaller at the moment but didn't think it was noticeable, christ, maybe marathons were making me a bit of a porker  After a few foreign races, it was good to be back in a UK race where you see people you know all the time.

My right ITB's been tight for a few days and my hip's playing up as a result. By 15 miles or so, it was pretty sore and by 17 miles I was having a reasonably sized wobble, it was hurting quite a bit, there were more hills, I was hot and dehydrated and low on energy. But that's standard at 17 miles no? I had one of those elevenses bars (not the nice ginger one, the sickly chocolate one) and got half of that down with a lot of water. By 19 miles, I was feeling much better. One of the marshals had told me I was 25th lady at about half way which works two ways. You're not going to get on the podium, no matter how good your second half is, but top 25 isn't too shabby. That extra bit of motivation kept me running up all the hills, even the big nasty one at 22 miles. As I went up, a supporter starting shouting "Whoo, go lady runner!" (there was a lot of encouragement to the girls, we must have been few and far between) but I was tracking down a girl ahead of me and shushed the supporter, pointing ahead of me and putting my finger on my lips. She thought this was hilarious and mimed shooing me up the hill. I passed the girl about two thirds of the way up, she hadn't heard me coming.

I knew it was all downhill from 23 so stepped on it a bit, last 3 in 8:38, 8:26 and 8:15 with the last 1/4 mile at 7:30 pace. I took out 3 or 4 other ladies in that stretch and finished 18th of 150 ladies, sod the legs!

Race notes:
Lovely course, with lots of very scenic stretches and loads of ponies
Loads of water stations, but nothing else on offer
Some great support for a smallish marathon, especially the signs up the hill
Directions to parking were rubbish
It's a bit galling when they have free food for "runners" but all the half runners have scarfed it before you get there. They've only run half the distance too!
The only good thing about the goody bags was the Waitrose bag for life. Has whoever makes those oaty biscuit bars ever sold one? They're in half the goody bags across the land!
Fab 3 mile downhill finish, though it doesn't feel very downhill when your legs are about to fall off
Extra mentions to the men with a Viking warship and the firefighters with oxygen tanks. Very impressive.
And thank you to the marshal at the turnaround point who made me laugh when he pointed at me and said "I'll see YOU at the finish"