27th New Forest Marathon

Sunday 27th September saw the Westgates at New Milton for the 27th New Forest Marathon. To set the scene, I had come out of “marathon retirement” after my humiliating defeat by Lesley at the Cornish last year when she left me for dead. Her plan was a sub 4 hour PB. Neither of us had done a huge amount of training for this race. Nine minute mile pace would get her about 4 minutes under four hours, my target was just to beat her, and my plan was also nine minute miles with three or four slightly faster ones thrown in to establish a buffer.

We stayed in B&B one mile from the start and were in plenty of time and very relaxed. Contrast this with half-marathoners panicking to park up and get to their earlier start with the large car park full. (Their race was in fact delayed by 15 minutes but latecomers weren’t to know that as they rushed around). The day was wall-to-wall blue sky; barely any breeze and it did turn out fairly hot in the sun. Fortunately there were loads of water stations and buckets of water in which to plunge your individual sponge. Well done the organisers, marshals and helpers.

With chip times it was a leisurely trot across the start line. My nine minute mile plan might from one point of view have been optimistic as my longest training run two weeks earlier failed to maintain this pace leaving me walk/running from mile 13 to 18. But for some reason everything felt good at the New Forest and I did the first seven miles at eight-minute mile pace! The sun was out, it was pleasantly warm and everyone seemed in good spirits. As the miles ticked over I deliberately slowed my pace to conserve energy but was still well ahead of my nine-minute mile schedule. As a mental exercise I kept multiplying the miles by nine minutes, then by eight minutes and then feeling slightly smug as I worked out how much I was up on the deal.

A thought occurred to me, if I felt good then Lesley was probably feeling equally good and would probably not be as far behind as I had hoped. By mile 20 I was still about 16 minutes up on the deal. In fact I was enjoying this marathon more than any I had done, and was beginning to think I could get to the finish without walking or worse.

Near mile 24, within about 50 yards this euphoria vanished. I felt so uncomfortably sick that I couldn’t even walk! Solution – fingers down the throat to relieve the stomach! I was really despondent now after such an enjoyable 24 miles. Hastily I tried to calculate time and distance. It seemed I had about 35 minutes to do about 2.2 miles with the threat of Lesley tracking me down! I tried to run but felt too queasy; all I could manage was trot/walk. This was so demoralising and loads of runners went past. Not long after the 25-mile mark Alan Littlejohns caught me up as I was walking, after a few words I was spurred on and ran with him for a while. Then I was sick again, then I nearly died when I thought I heard Lesley’s voice, then I caught Alan – he was now walking. Then he started running again, and the last quarter of a mile was hell. By some stubbornness I managed to finish in 3:49:52. And not long after I saw a very tired looking Lesley cross the line in 3:58:17 knocking a fantastic 8 minutes off her previous best. This also won her first FV50 prize.

For the record I was sick again eight times before my shower, seven after the shower and seven at the kerbside before we left New Milton. About one and a half hours later it was as if someone waved a magic wand and was finally able to nibble some food and sip some water. I think I’ll go back into “marathon retirement”.

Lesley’s bit: Yes I had my nine-minute mile schedule, I even had it typed and stuck to my running bottle. Shame it was too small to read on the day! Anyway, I also stated well, and covered the first three miles in about 25 minutes which was much faster than I expected and I tried to slow down. At 6 miles it was 51.50, but then we reached the first of the two off road sections and the pace did drop off a bit, but was still 2:03 hours at 14 miles. After that it started getting a lot harder. Couldn’t work out the calculations for the pace, but had it in my head that I had to reach 20 miles by 3 hours, but did that allow for the point two miles at the end? Couldn’t work it out so kept plodding on, the scenery was lovely, some shady bits with lots of trees and some exposed bits of open country with grass verges to run on, but very few landmarks. So eventually I started counting paces and finally got to the 20 mile mark at just under 3 hours. The next six miles were a bit of a blur, forgot to look at my watch some of the time and failed to do the sums when I did. There was a jelly baby station at 24 miles but I was too tired to cross the road to it!! I think the time here was 3:40. At 25 miles I could have happily laid down at the side of the road, but pushed on by visualising the last mile of a training run back to home. Was so glad to cross the railway bridge as even in my hazy state I remembered it was just before the last turn towards the finish. Could see buildings ahead, and moments later had reached the last turn and there was Richard, on the floor right next to the finish line. I anxiously checked the clock but it was still on 3:58 and some seconds. Although I was really pleased to have made it under 4 hours I was just too tired to enjoy the moment. It took some time to recover enough even for a shower, and to check the results pages where I found, much to my surprise that I had won a trophy. The time also gets me a “good for age” place in the London Marathon, should I ever decide to do another marathon, but at the moment I’m joining Richard in his “marathon retirement”.

Well done to Jenny Moore who was not only first lady but 7th overall in a fantastic time of 2:57:18.