Brighton marathon - #101

It wasn't a very auspicious start when I missed my train out of Victoria, the Boris bike got me there with 10 minutes to spare but I couldn't find a docking station, and the one I eventually found was full. The nearest one was a 5 minute walk away. I wasn't too fussed as it gave me time to get a cup of tea but it did mean I missed a few people at the start. It was the first outing for my 100 club vest and the occasional reaction was wonderfully positive, especially the people who said something along the lines of "blimey!" when I went past (of course it could have been something else entirely they were commenting on). It made me feel like it really was worthwhile, and I had a few people comment on how young I seemed to be to be wearing it. 

Bit of a Where's Wally pic, but this is the best one of me in my vest that I didn't have to pay £25 for

The plan was to run the first half at 8:20 - 8:30s, then the second half at 8:00s. The start of the race felt very fresh and comfortable but sticking to 8:30s was proving near impossible, having to bounce up and down a lot to keep the pace down. It was also quite tiresome having to be so glued to the garmin, I was checking it 2 or 3 times a mile and it was doing my head in a bit. I think I would rather have run this one to feel rather than to pace, but it was an experiment, and progressive running had worked for the Finchley 20.

The first half was in 1:48, only 2 minutes faster than planned, so that was fine, but as soon as I tried to accelerate it felt difficult. I got to 16 ok in around 8:00s but had to stop for a loo break at 17, no chance of waiting another 9 miles. I'm not really sure what went wrong after that. It was ok to 19 and Fetchpoint which was fabulous, thank you Fetchies, but I was feeling a bit drained and heavy. After that, my rhythm went out of the window, had to tie a shoelace at 20, got a bit hot and grumpy around the power station (I do still like this bit), had severe CBAs. A pacer would have helped. By 23, I knew I'd run the last 3 in about 27 minutes and knew the support would really help too. The time wouldn't be what I wanted but it would be sub 3:45.

Just after 24m however, I saw a runner on the verge of collapse. I'd already lost my PB so felt I should help her get to the next St John's, along with a chap called Jon. She was pretty much delirious, made no sense whatsoever, and was staggering around in any direction other than forwards. Not in a good way. But there were no St John's until the finish so we had to part run, part drag, part coax, part bully her over the next 2 miles, sometimes pulling her by her hand, or pushing her from the back, or occasionally jogging backwards in front of her to get her head up. The spectators quite liked that. It would have been much better to leave her with a medic, she was bad enough that she should have stopped and any further back it would have been the best thing to do. But she was so close to the finish and there were no medics about and I didn't want to leave her. She did manage to run the last 400 metres to the finish and pip a very sweaty looking Chewbacca to the post. I had to apologise to him for making him a target - "you CAN'T get beaten by a bleedin' Chewbacca!"

I have mixed feelings about it, on the one hand, I couldn't have left her as she looked so bad, but on the other, more selfish side, I do feel like I chucked away a half decent time (it could have been 13-15 minutes faster). Not very gracious really.

By the time I got to the pub my mood was pretty grumpy (not helped by having seen the last person I would have expected to see, and who had been extraordinarily unpleasant on our last encounter, and by being bashed into by dozens of spectators, Brighton does need to sort the finish out), only to be cured by large applications of alcohol. Nothing to do with being disappointed and having low blood sugar or anything. The wine was terrible, the burgers were fortunately a lot better than the uncooked veggie sausages and there was no outdoor space (we'd probably had enough of the sun by then) but enough people turned up to make enough noise to empty the rest of the pub. Next stop, the Chandos. Just 26.2 miles to get there.