Completing the Kielder Marathon without taking the bus

On Sunday 9th October, I lined up with two friends and another 1,200 or so people for the second running of the Kielder Marathon, billed as Britain's most beautiful marathon. I'm not convinced that beauty is an appropriate characteristic to focus on when describing such an event, certainly it wasn't top of my list during the last 8 miles, which were gruelling, seriously painful, pretty lonely and seemingly unending. Undoubtably, the trail's quality and setting is pretty spectacular and, despite its arduous nature, neither I, nor my friends, gave up and caught the bus, unlike the chap who came in third, only to be found out and then have his story plastered over the national news.

Kielder and specifically Kielder Water, around which we ran, is in Northumberland, a few miles from the Scottish border and miles from anywhere. The area is so remote, it boasts absolutely no mobile reception and some of the darkest skies in the country with even a possibility of catching the Northern Lights, so long as the conditions are right. There was certainly no chance of any Northern Lights action on marathon day, as we lined up in a penguin-like huddle, shielding one another from the ripping wind and constant drizzle.

The photos within the review of a previous edition of Runners World, showed no sign of rain, having enjoyed autumnal sunshine throughout, neither did they give much away about the sort of terrain that required "steep incline" signposts dotted along at000 all too regular intervals. It's fair to say that the three of us hadn't really done our research and had seen the pictures, read that it was around a lake and come to the conclusion that it would be flat and relaxing, in an amazing setting. Oh how wrong we were, about the first two bits at least.

I picked a position a hundred or so yards from the start, having decided my initial target time, of as close to 3:30 as possible, might have been a little ambitious after hearing that the 2010's women's event was won in just under 3 hours by Lizzy Hawker, the recently crowned ultra running world champion having outperformed all men and women in a 24 hour endurance event.

Despite my newly tempered target time, of anything under 3:40, and the immediate 200+ metre climb out from the start, I went off with a spring in my step and completed the first mile in a little over 8 minutes. The next couple of miles were a little quicker still, due to being largely downhill. By mile 3, the field had spread out and we were off the roads and onto the trail.

Coming round about mile 4 or 5, the route ahead was being traced out by a string of quicker runners snaking their way round an inlet, across a bridge, before winding up into the forest ahead. This happened to be a relatively small inlet, unlike some further round the course which could place you tantalisingly close to a point 3 miles, or so, further round, before doubling you back on a long trawl inland. It's fair to say that the trail is seldom flat or uninteresting.

The miles ticked by and the mood was buoyant. I found my pace within the field although discovered the tactics of those around me weren't all like mine. I'd decided to walk the steeper of the inclines and make up time by letting my legs cartwheel down the other side. The tactic seemed to be working. I'd keep sight of runners (well, joggers at this point) making their way up the hill ahead of me and then thunder past them on the downhills and try to keep the momentum going on the flats. I was using gravity and not fighting it, but I could tell the thighs were beginning to suffer as a result.

Around mile 12, just before half way, my legs felt about as punished as they tend to around 17/18 miles on a training run. This did not bode well for the last 7 or 8 miles of the race but there was no point worrying about it, I'd made my bed and there was no way I was going to pull up now.

Crossing the half way point gave the whole pack a bit of a lift and, consequently, the general pace notched up a little. I also realised we'd maintained the spritely start pace and were actually on target for a sub-3:30 finish, but with 13 miles to go, it wasn't time to start counting chickens. Soon after half way, we could see the dam at the end of the reservoir agonisingly close but for a huge inlet ahead of us. Nothing to do but to get your head down and get on with it.

Rounding the inlet and undulating through the forest for a while further, we came thundering down a hill towards a road and could see the dam ahead of us. There was a decent crowd of spectators at this point and a chap on a megaphone reading out some of the runner's names as they came past. My name was read out and this, the crowd, the aforementioned stretch of downhill and the prospect of a long flat stretch of road ahead, the only flat stretch on the course, all led to my pace being ratcheted up yet further. In fact, as I hit the dam and glanced at my watch I was clocking not much above 7 minute miles.

I ran close to the dam wall to shelter from the cross wind and kept my head down, determined to maintain the pace. I reached the other end of the dam having clocked what would be my fastest mile of the race, overtaking a number of people along the way. Another crowd was waiting for us at the other side of the dam and that helped me maintain the momentum to take me into the final 5 or so miles.

A half mile further, the crowd was out of sight, my legs were pounding and my energy levels slumped. I felt as if I'd used all my reserves to speed through the last couple of miles, when I'd felt the finish was within touching distance. 5 miles is still a long way and with what feels like no energy, it can seem like an eternity.

I'm loathe to write much about the last 4 or so miles, for fear of digging up terrible memories and making me never want to run one of these things ever again. To pass time, I started to count my steps, 1, 2, 3, 4...300, quarter mile marker passed. Ok, I was running about 1200 paces to a mile, that's a lot of counting, but it did keep my mind off of the pain, sort of.

3:30 was still in sight, but it would take some doing. I managed, somehow, to ignore the pain of my now leaden quads but was starting to be overtaken by one or two folk, who'd clearly judged their race a little better. About a mile out, I knew I had to put in a sub-8 mile to get in in under 3:30. The past few miles had been nearer 8:15, so this was still touch and go.

I raised the tempo and then decided to try one of my flat out finishes from around the 300 metre mark, it seemed to take forever, then I emerged from the forest and could see the finish gantry...up a hill. Thanks race organisers, just what we needed for the final 50 metre push.

I finished the race in 3:29:34, after pulling a 7:30 minute last mile. I was over the moon with that result. Not sure whether I'll be back next year, it took several days before I was able to walk properly again, my legs had taken such a pounding. I'm very happy to have taken part in such a great event around such a unique course and let's just leave it at that!

Course as mapped by my Garmin 310XT

Breaking 1h30 in the Stratford Half Marathon

Anything under 1h40, with half an eye on 1h35 had been the target. Of course, race time predictor said otherwise and, based on my current 5 and 10k times, had me a couple of minutes under 1h30 for the half marathon, but my times have always been relatively slower in longer events, probably due to a lack of time spent on longer runs.

I'd pushed hard in my interval training and tempo runs, but always dropped down a gear or two on the longer runs, for fear of blowing up 5 miles from nowhere. The thought of turning up to the race and running for an hour and a half at under 6:55 min/mile seemed ridiculous. The fastest long training run I'd clocked prior to the half marathon, was at 7:40 min/mile pace. Almost a minute per mile slower.

The Race

As the horn sounded, at the start of the Shakespeare Half (and Full) Marathon, the adrenalin kicked in and, predictable as ever, I sped off way quicker than intended, only to find myself sitting in a group who rounded the first 4 corners of the race to finish the first mile in near enough 6 mins 30 seconds. I'm yet to start a race where I've not gone off a little faster than I'd anticipated, I know I'm not alone. It's partly due to the excitement, partly due to a voice inside you persuading you that of course you can squeeze a couple more minutes off your target time. That and you're feeling fresh, fresher than for any of your training runs, assuming you've tapered, makes it tricky to tune your body into a sensible, and sustainable, race pace.

After completing mile one 40 seconds quicker than planned, I pulled back to around a 6:50 pace, as did many of the folk around me. I still felt very comfortable and thought I'd try and hold the pace to mile 4 or 5 and see how I felt. Having run some long training runs and completed a few marathons, I feel capable of visualising how my body will react over the course of 5 or so miles. Beyond that, it's a little more uncertain. I know when I reached 18 miles in my last marathon, I stepped the pace up a notch as I felt comfortable I could sustain it to 23/24 miles, and get myself the last couple of miles on sheer determination. It worked.

A couple of small hills behind us, we hit mile 5 and my average pace was around 6:55. I felt I could sustain this, at a push, so I kept it going. The course had flattened out a little by this stage and I knew there was only one long hill left around the 9 mile mark. We passed through a couple of villages, with pockets of cheerful and welcoming support out along the route, which always picks you up and made for a pleasant middle section of the race.

The miles were passing quickly and soon enough the long drag up around mile 9 was upon us. I slowed a little, focused on the ground a few metres in front of me and just kept the legs turning. The hill wasn't difficult, just quite long and I quickly made up for the slow down in pace on the descent.

I've never done a few hilly courses previously and have never been one to hold back on descents, preferring just to lean forward and let the legs go. The thighs do take a bit of a pounding, but it's a sure fire way to make up for any lost time on the ascents. By the time you reach the bottom, your legs have gotten used to moving more quickly and you find it easier to sustain a higher pace, even when the ground's levelled out.

The mile or so after the descent, I was running a little quicker than 6:40 per mile. I eased off a little through mile 11, having bought my average right back down and, despite my fuzzy running brain, I managed to work out that a quick finish might just get me home in under 1h30.

The 12 mile marker was close to a 180 degree turn down off the main road and onto a track. I checked my watch, which was showing 1:23 something. A little over 1 mile to go and less than 7 minutes remaining. I caught up with the man in front and encouraged him to join me in attempting a quick finish to get in under 1h30. We slogged it out and at 200m to go, I went flat out, realising there were literally seconds in it.

I completed mile 13 in 6:20 and the final 0.1 mile in under 30 seconds, to finish happily in a time of 1h29m56s.

As happy as I was with it, I hadn't set out to achieve this time, it was about 5 minutes up on what I thought I could do, but then you never do really know what you can achieve until you truly push yourself. And that I will keep doing.

Pre-half post

So I fired up the blog and noticed that I hadn't actually posted anything since the 1st January. That's kids for you!

Well, to summarise, I kept the engine ticking over through winter and more recently stepped back into the FIRST 3 plus 2 plan to train up for this weekend's Shakespeare Half in Stratford-upon-Avon, the first of 4 events over the course of the next 5 weeks. The other events consist of 2 sprint triathlons, Crystal Palace and Blenheim Palace and the Denbies 10, a beautiful but hilly cross-country jaunt in the North Downs.

By this time last year, I'd already set my 5km PB and broken my 10km PB twice in the space of 3 weeks. I'm feeling some way off of that over the shorter distances this year, due to lack of speedwork training and general lack of running at points, but I don't feel in too bad a shape for my first half marathon on Sunday.

The target time for Sunday is anything below 1:40, with an outside chance of breaking 1:35 if I'm feeling fighting fit and have managed to rack up a few good nights' sleep, something that's not all that common at present due to our monkey of a 15 month old waking us up every 2 hours!

Statistics for 2010

As it's the start of a new year, I thought I'd pull out the cumulative stats for 2010, at least those I've registered through the Garmin connect website. So here they are:

	Running	Cycling	Swimming	Other	Total
Activity Count	117	73	63	10	263
Distance (km)	1,023	2,305	52	118	3,498
Time (hrs)	87.5	96	20.5	19	223
Elevation Gain (m)	6,364	10,008	-	9,895	26,267
Avg Speed (km/h)	12.0	24.0	3.2	-	16.5
Avg HR (bpm)	149	148	-	-	149
Calories	60,643	29,525	-	-	90,187

Looking at this, a few obvious and potentially interesting observations are that:

• I run at half the speed that I cycle and burn twice the amount of calories per hour
• Despite burning more energy, my heart rate while running and cycling are very similar
• On average I exercise 5 times a week and my average session lasts for 35 minutes

I'm keeping this post short, as December's been a bit of a non-month, exercise wise at least. However, as I'm sure many of use will be saying at this point, January is a chance to put that one right.

As a final statistic of current interest, is that I have put on nearly 2kg during the month of December. Hopefully I'll be able to lose it just as quickly in January!