Marathon week! A fair-sized gang of us from FRR travelled up to Boston (Lincolnshire, not Massachusetts) for the festival of running, with most of us running the marathon and Steve the half. A bunch of us had booked an Airbnb close to the town centre together, and went up on Friday afternoon. We were conveniently close to the Moon Under Water, so headed there to meet up with some others who were staying elsewhere for dinner and slightly more pints than intended. Then on Saturday we did a leisurely parkrun before some of us heading back to the pub for second breakfast/lunch (but no beer this time). Then we all piled into the Stump and Candle, so everyone (even Glen and I, with our lack of interest in football) could watch the Ipswich/Norwich derby. Some beer was drunk, but only Guinness 0.0 this time. Most of us couldn’t be bothered with cooking, so returned later to the Spoons a third time for dinner.
The race started at 8am, so there were lots of early nights had on Saturday, all hoping the weather forecast would miraculously change from force 5 winds with force 7 gusts (it didn’t). Then an early start for everyone to get breakfast and make all those nervous extra trips to the toilet, but at least we only had a five minute jog across the river to the start line.
I started with Holly, and we ran the first 23 or so miles together, which made for a much more enjoyable experience. The initial 11 or so were with the wind behind us, but then once we’d started heading back in there were some pretty brutal headwinds in places. Fortunately the route was fairly winding, so it wasn’t just a solid half marathon into the wind, and I think most of us managed to keep the pace up much better than we’d expected. I certainly did a better job in the later stages than I did last year in London, when the problem was heat rather than wind. Holly’s knee started hurting with about three miles to go, then she got a stitch, and insisted I shouldn’t wait. At that point based on my average pace I was still more-or-less on target for my original optimistic 3:30 target, but that was clearly never going to be possible with the majority of that average made up of the early miles on fresh legs with a tailwind. I knew I was pretty much guaranteed a PB by that point though, which was motivation to try not to slow too much, and I even found myself thinking “well this proves I should be able to go under 3:30 next time if the conditions are better” in the last mile, which is a bit early to have already gone back on the traditional “never again”! I wasn’t far off, crossing the line in 3:31:07 (Holly wasn’t that far behind in the end). A surprising number of us came away with PBs, and Neil and Ryan both had great marathon debuts. Then, once everyone was in, those of us who weren’t travelling home on the day hobbled back for showers and yet another visit to the pub – this time with no reason to limit the number of beers!
