I woke up feeling surprisingly fresh and the 30 minute walk down to the start eased my legs up to the point where they felt absolutely fine. My right ankle was a bit tight, and has been for a while now, it's linked to the old tendonitis injury from April where my foot collapses inwards and strains the inside of the ankle. Taping it up helps a bit, so it was all go for today. It was strange being back in a big race, shoving through the crowds to get to a reasonable start position and all the ceremony of marquees and music and a compere talking absolute rubbish. Quite uplifting though. By the time we got going, I knew it was going to be a good race, and my mood was stay on top of the world for the next 4 hours.
The first mile or so was with Dave who is well and truly over on the dark side and hooked on marathons now (he had a blinding run), and Olly and Sharon who were doing the half and who got a fair bit of good natured abuse for slacking off. At the top of the hill by the castle after about 1.5 miles, there was a wonderful descent, it was fabulous to open out and fly down it. This wasn't going to be a cautious run, I was just going to run how I felt (as long as that was at least 9 minute miling). I caught up with Richard with whom I ran a fair bit of Windy this year, and we spent the next 10 miles together, having a good old chat. We were particularly taken by the show pony runner, in the tightest compression top imaginable and high stepping along with his arms aloft like he was in a dressage compeition. It was a shame I got busted while doing an impression..... Richard told me off a bit for speeding up at about mile 11, hard to avoid when the half marathoners start picking it up in their final miles, but we stuck together to give them a panto style boo when the route split.
Almost immediately, I both lost Richard and my garmin gave up. It was telling me to delete old laps and inviting me to press enter, which I thought would delete the old laps. No luck, it had stopped counting both the distance and the time so I had to turn it off. It was a bit of a worry, I didn't know how reliant I had become on the Garmin and suspected it was "very", and now I didn't even have a watch. 13 miles to go and the only thing I could do was run at a comfortable pace and hope it was fast enough. Scientific eh? I asked whoever was around me at every few mile markers for a rough idea of the time but that wasn't quite accurate as it had taken a few minutes to get over the start so we were all on slightly different numbers.
Luckily, I was having a great day, feeling fresh with no pain and really really enjoying it. On days like this, it all comes together, you just feel invincible, like you could run for days (guess that what I'm training to do!) and like you're running on air. I had a bit of a chat to a few people, a guy running with his future son-in-law, a guy running for Multiple Sclerosis, a few of 100 club guys, I like hearing everyone's stories about their running, all these very different people with a shared interest. At about mile 19, you get to Holme Pierpoint, a long stretch of water used for regattas, which could I suppose be a bit boring. I loved it however, you can see for miles and it was brilliant spotting all my mates in front and behind me. By the time we got off the water, I had a cracking runners' high and probably looked a bit mental - bit of a hill, woohoo! bottle of water, woohoo! speakers playing new order, woohoo! friendly marshal shouting you're looking good, woohoo! Only 4 miles to go, woohoo!
Given I don't have another marathon for two weeks, I thought it was about time to put my foot down and really nail a sub 4, and going off the various times from other runners' watches, I was looking at about the same time as yesterday. Sub 4, woohoo! Shut up Naomi, you're just getting annoying now.. I was a bit tired in the last few miles and had a rather sore big toe (which turned into a giant blister, nice) but kept it together to cruise along the last bit of embankment and pick it up a bit over the last few hundred yards to cross the line in a gun time of 3 hours 52, exactly the same as yesterday.
The last three races have been 3 hours 51, 3 hours 52 and 3 hours 49 (chip time), that's 8'49, 8'48 and 8'46 pace per mile respectively, just extraordinary. It would appear the legs are quite happy at about 8'45-8'50 pace, with or without the garmin. So that was a sub 8 weekend, 7 hours 41 in total and two sub 4s so I'm absolutely delighted, especially given how enjoyable they've been. The question is now, could I do that for another 8 days? Definitely today, I'm feeling full of energy and bouncing off the walls, and probably tomorrow. Beyond that is less certain, but with massage and proper rest and nutrition I'm feeling much much more confident about the TiT.
Long straight stretch of tarmac = one happy runner
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