Vilnius marathon

Some time ago, it seemed like a good idea to use marathons as an excuse to visit lots of places I wouldn't ordinarily have gone to, ie. an excuse for a lot of weekends away. Flights were cheap, short haul journeys swift and painless, small European cities charming and dirt cheap. Sadly, in these times of high commodity prices, flights are not a total bargain (still cheaper than visiting my mum near the Lake District by train), short haul journeys are a total pain in the arse if you fly through Luton or Heathrow and the euro has priced most of us out of EU cities. On the positive side, they're still charming, especially as the tourists can't afford or be bothered to go there any more.

I've run Nottingham a couple of times and fancied a marathon somewhere different this weekend, and the choice was Wroclaw, Tallinn and Vilnius. I can't remember why we chose this one, I think it might have been the cheapest and didn't involve running around a traffic cone. Or so we thought, there was one turn around a traffic cone, repeated 4 times, policed by a chip mat and a bloke in army fatigues lying in the bough of a tree looking supremely comfortable and half asleep. The sod.

So we ended up in Lithuania, and it's quite nice really. The local dishes are terrible and makes you wonder just how bad the food was before they had any money but the city is rather sweet, full of crooked streets, ankle turning cobbles and millions of churches. Saturday is definitely wedding day, we saw a lot of shiny puffy frocks that you wouldn't want to wear near a naked flame. Maybe love is in the air, as we walked along the banks of the river, the Lithuanian for "I love you" and "I love you too" were planted into opposite banks with flowers. The effect was dampened slightly by all the broken glass about and the scary looking down-and-outs dangling fishing rods into the river.

I wasn't looking forward to Sunday's marathon in the slightest and because I was avoiding thinking about it so much, overdressed on autopilot purely because it was a bit nippy at 9am. Two layers, capris and Mark's gloves were huge overkill especially by the finish when it was pretty damn hot and the freebie tech t-shirt that acted as a second layer chafed a big gash under my arm within 5 miles. I had to carry it the rest of the way which made me look like I had a giant pink boxing glove on.

The race was quite nice, 4 laps of a loop down the river and around the town with plenty of company from the other races. The relay runners were generally shit, each leg was 10.5km but hardly any of them seemed to be capable of running the whole lot without stopping. I passed one walking about 6km in. In the full, there were a few ladies knocking around at my pace and a 100 clubber complete with cowboy hat I didn't recognise who turned out to be an American, running about my pace and told me to call him Cowboy. Seemed a bit familiar, but I suppose you should respect local customs. My strategy was to have a solid training run and ideally pick up the pace each lap. It didn't really happen. My pace felt very comfortable for the first half, to the point where Cowboy said "Jeez, you're so quiet, I can't hear you breathing!" I lost him after some time and started to pick off the odd lady but only because they were falling behind rather than because I was speeding up. It was the usual put more effort in to maintain the same pedestrian pace.

I'd hoped to speed up in the last lap but I was too knackered and dehydrated by then, the water stations were spaced really poorly and only gave you a thimble of liquid in each cup. Fortunately my pacing meant no walk breaks were needed and that my pace didn't slip too much. Sub 4 was a bit tight though, I managed 3:56:56. To be honest, the 3:30 seems impossible at the moment. It was enough for 7th lady of 28 (about 250 runners in total, it's not a girl's game round these parts). After the Cyberman style walk back and a shower, we'd cleverly booked into the spa to which our apartment was attached. A light massage was blissful, it got rid of just enough soreness without making you chew the pillow. A calm dark room, no sweaty kit, loads of fluffy towels and no smell of liniment were far from a brisk rub down in a gazebo from a chatty physiotherapist. I got the better deal than Mark whose "herbal ball" massage seemed to consist of hot towels being slapped on him. His paper g-string made me giggle too.

It's now 4pm and I have been awake for 14 hours due to the obscenely early flight where I sat next to a giant Russian-looking man who seemed to gradually expand and fill more and more of my seat as time passed. His forearms were bigger than my biceps and I wouldn't have been surprised if the girth of one of his thighs was as much as my waist. He snored too. I was too scared of him to elbow him in the ribs so just had to push Mark towards the aisle. At least if I stuck behind him through security, I wouldn't be the one having my bags searched.