Tag: Races

Let’s start positively. I’m really proud of the training block I did for this race.

It was truncated, like all my training blocks have been post-Yorkshire Marathon (because I’ve had too many big events to train for); I only had 10 weeks to train for this one after the Bridges to Boundaries Ultra and so started at week 3 of a 12-week training plan.

I followed a Ben Parkes plan as usual. Well, I say ‘as usual’. Last year I ‘followed’ those plans by doing the weekly speed session, long run and progression from the plan and then doing an extra 25ish miles per week on top of that via the three weekly TMBR social runs and then parkrun on a Saturday. I didn’t hit my Yorkshire Marathon goal time due to fatigue on the day and concluded that I must have overtrained.

Consequently, for the Edinburgh training, I tried to follow the plan more closely. It necessitated more rest days (streak saver days for me) so I dropped down to 1-2 TMBR runs per week and made sure to fit my parkrunning and social running into the plan, rather than the other way round. I found this difficult, as it was a disruption to my long-established routine, but I did see some signs of recovery as a result. Over the course of the training, my comfortable pace changed from about 10:30 min miles to 9:30 min miles, and while I found the paces on the tougher sessions very hard, I did generally hit them.

My existing half marathon PB (set at the Great North Run last year, which was a B-race en route to Yorkshire) was 1:55:22. I felt on that day back in September that I could have pushed harder and been closer to about 1:50, but I had made a decision early on in the race that it wasn’t the right day for it. For Edinburgh, I trained for an ambitious 1:45. My thinking was ‘shoot for the moon, end up in the stars’ – I knew I would still be fairly happy with a good PB if I fell a few minutes short.

In the last few weeks of the plan, my primary feeling was that I just wanted the race to be over and done with. This was not a good sign in hindsight, but I had been training for some race or other without a break for a year and a half – ever since Manchester Marathon training started on 1st January 2024 – and I was desperately looking forward to not having to do that for a few weeks. The day to which I was counting down was not the race itself, but rather the day after – when I could finally be free of training plans.

In terms of the taper itself, I felt similarly to the way I did just before Yorkshire: that I was still doing too much hard running and not getting enough rest. Taper science is a weird beast to me, and for years now I’ve been reminding myself ‘it’s a taper, not a collapse’ because I used to do basically nothing during the taper and that also wasn’t ideal. But for my last two A-races, I have not felt like I’m supposed to feel by the end of the taper. I’m supposed to feel fresh and fidgety and ready to run and I just… don’t.

When I was packing for race weekend on the Friday, I realised I only had one serving of Active Root gel mix left in my supplies. I needed three for the race. You can only get it online, so I took a couple of Active Root energy gel packets with me for my second and third fuelling points. I had used these for the Disney Dopey Challenge (as I didn’t fancy attempting to take bags of white powder with me on an international flight) and at Bridges to Boundaries, so they had been tested… but this would end up playing a role.

(Some background context: I am very sensitive to gels. I previously used High-5 and Science in Sport and both of those always made me extremely ill on long runs. I use Active Root nowadays because the ginger settles my stomach; I also take a KMC caffeine gel on the start line because it’s similarly gentle.)

Race weekend. Geth and I did a shakeout parkrun jog at Cramond on the Saturday (I am still collecting data on whether a shakeout parkrun the day before a race works for me or not, but for the moment I am tending towards it). I felt really stiff and sluggish at the start, most likely due to the long drive the day before. I felt a little less stiff by the end, but it didn’t really feel like my muscles were waking up at all.

I hadn’t slept well on the Friday night so had no problems falling asleep at 8pm on the Saturday evening after sorting my kit bag out and getting my pasta in. Edinburgh half is an early start (they sensibly get the half runners out of the way before the marathoners reach the Musselburgh part of the course) so it was a 4am alarm! I was waking up every hour on the hour but that’s standard for such an early start.

We arrived at the start in plenty of time (it was at the main uni campus this year, not at Arthur’s Seat like it had been when we did the marathon three years ago), did a fairly ineffectual warmup jog weaving around the crowds and the buildings of George Square (many weird flashbacks to my uni days) and found a sheltered spot out of the wind for gels and activations. Then Geth and I walked to our separate pens and found ourselves opposite each other on the barriers during the wait for the race start, which was nice as we could still talk to each other. I told myself I’d feel less anxious once I was running. I tried not to think about how impossible goal pace sounded right now.

The race started, and I wasn’t long after the gun (the benefits of being a bit faster these days and thus getting myself into faster pens!). As expected, I did feel less anxious once I was running. The course went through the city centre for its initial miles this year, which was motivating.

When my watch buzzed for mile one, I saw that I was a bit slower than target pace. I decided not to look at it for the rest of the race, as it might increase my anxiety. I’m still not sure whether this was a good idea or not.

At about two and a half miles in, after the out and back at the foot of Arthur’s Seat, I could sense that I was more fatigued than I should be and didn’t have the pep that I’m used to on fresh legs. This was exactly the same thing as what happened in Yorkshire and really sent me on a mental spiral for a few miles, as the most important goal for me – and I’d said as much to Geth the evening before – was that I did not want to feel the same way after this race as I did after Yorkshire.

I took my Active Root gel mix at mile three. It was a bit vile taste and texture-wise, as I’d put too much water in the flask. Gel fail #1.

I was generally in a bad mental place for the whole way between miles two and eleven, as the fatigue didn’t let up for that whole time. I kept the effort strong but knew my pace wasn’t what it should be. I was proud of myself for getting my gel packet open while running at mile six (hadn’t practised that during training, had always used my gel flasks!) but regretted it a mile later when I started feeling REALLY sick. Gel fail #2. I didn’t take my third gel (or its accompanying water) as a result, because I just couldn’t face it. Gel fail #3.

I felt a tiny bit better by mile ten because we were approaching the final out-and-back and I knew I’d be able to see Geth coming the other way at some point. When we passed each other, I didn’t have long to go before the eleven-mile marker, which was a good target, as was the turnaround point not long after that.

Unfortunately, the turnaround point was a turnaround into the strong wind! It had been behind us most of the way so not as much of a hindrance as we’d feared during the week, but it made the last mile and a half pretty tough. Frustratingly, mile twelve was also where I felt a bit of strength and adrenaline coming back to me, but it was too late by that point. As I hadn’t drunk anything since halfway, I did end up having a bit of water from the final water station, but that was also too little too late. I kept the effort going for the whole long stretch back to the finish, waiting and waiting to see that final turn. I knew I was nowhere near my goal, but I was sure that I had at least achieved a PB.

I had not.

I stopped my watch on the finish line and finally allowed myself to look at it. 1:56:00 dead. 38 seconds slower than my PB from last year.

I felt the disappointment descend as I walked across the finish area to collect my bag and meet up with Geth. I had given all the effort I had in me under the circumstances of the day, but it wasn’t anywhere close to what I had hoped for, and I didn’t feel it reflected the training I had put in for the race.

A few days later, I am still disappointed. Lots of people have said things like ‘don’t be disappointed!’ but I feel that I’m allowed to be disappointed and to sit with those feelings for a bit. But as ever, I am regrouping and trying to work out what it means for training and goals going forward.

It has certainly taken the shine off the first week of my long-awaited training break – I really wanted to be celebrating more this week – but I think I would have found this week a bit strange either way, as not being on a training plan is really throwing me. I’m sure I’ll get used to it… just in time for the point when I need to get back on a plan again!

I am a lot more anxious about this October’s sub-4 marathon attempt in Amsterdam than I would have been if Edinburgh had gone to plan. I feel that I need at least a 1:50ish half in order for the sub-4 to feel possible. That is now entirely resting on the GNR (my only remaining half before Amsterdam) and I would have preferred that to be a bit less up in the air.

My plan for the Amsterdam training block (this was my plan pre-Edinburgh and remains my plan now except that it’s now a plan with MASSIVE ADDED ANXIETY) is to do the 15-week Ben Parkes marathon training plan but do it a week early, turning it into a 16-week plan with an extra week of taper at the end in order to get more rest in. My theory is that my various chronic conditions (in particular the spondylitis) necessitate more rest than the average person in order for me to feel properly fresh and tapered.

HOWEVER Geth also has a counter-theory (which he admits is a bit out there): that the taper is actually bad for my running because it makes me stiff and sluggish. His evidence for this is last year’s GNR, which I ran during peak marathon training (I’d actually done a 20-miler on the Tuesday and badly gashed my knee during a fall – so I ran that 1:55 with a 20-miler in my legs and a stiff and swollen knee, and still felt like I could have been a few minutes faster on the day!). Given that the spondylitis is meant to be kept at bay by regular exercise (though not always in my experience and I don’t think that particular bit of medical advice really holds at my level of running), it’s not a totally mad theory. This means that I’m now massively anxious that my Amsterdam plan of attack might actually leave me in a worse place.

Another aspect of the Amsterdam plan: given that I trained for sub-4 at Yorkshire and ended up with a 4:16, then trained for 1:45 at Edinburgh and ended up with a 1:56, I have decided to train for 3:45 in the hope that it will get me that sub-4. I’ve looked at the training paces on the plan and they’re very doable considering what I’ve been doing during the Edinburgh block. I’m far more confident about this aspect of the plan than I am about all the taper stuff (let’s just hope it doesn’t all unravel the first time I have to do one of the dreaded long runs with goal pace sections).

I’m not feeling great about things in general. But the best thing I can do during my five-week training break is just try and forget about all of this for a few weeks. Hopefully I can start Amsterdam training with a clearer head as a result.

(And make sure I have enough Active Root gel mix this time…)

I wasn’t really sure what to expect performance-wise from this one. While there’s been plenty of speedwork in my current half marathon plan, I’ve not done much short fast stuff recently – my parkruns have almost all been easyish efforts or part of longer runs for probably the last eight or nine months – and this wasn’t an A-race, just a sharpener en route to the Edinburgh half in a couple of weeks. I had no idea what kind of 10k shape I was in. It was also forecast to be a hot day.

In sum, it was pretty unlikely that I would be able to keep my streak of Sunderland PBs following my 48:59 last year. But I had to try and give it the best go I could.

In recent years there’s been a good number of Benchies doing this race and so it’s always a fun morning out. Friends are a good distraction from starting line nerves!

I started too fast (knew that would happen, it always does), settled by about mile three, resolved early on not to look at my watch until the end as I knew it would just wind me up, was suffering in the heat by the second half and felt tempted just to give up and jog it in so many times… but I stayed steady and never let the effort level drop. Couldn’t manage a sprint at the end so I know I couldn’t have done any better on the day (at least not without risking collapse). 50:22. In the ballpark of last year’s summer efforts so I’ll take it.

Might do another 10k around November or so in the hope that I can still get a PB in the distance this year once I’ve recovered from my autumn marathon. In two minds about that, though. It’s not my favourite distance!

After doing this race as my first ultra last year, I was keen to give it another go – especially as Geth wanted to do it too this time. As such, I signed up during the early bird period just after last year’s event.

What I didn’t realise when planning out my 2024 and 2025 seasons – and this is very much one of those ‘you live and learn’ things – was that doing so many marathon/ultra training blocks in a row, some of them truncated due to the races being so close together, would lead to a massive amount of cumulative fatigue towards the end of the process.

Last summer was the last break I had from long distance training – between Manchester Marathon and the start of training for Yorkshire Marathon I had about ten weeks off, during which I focused on 10k races and counted down the days until I was marathon training again because I missed it so much. I had really, really enjoyed the Manchester training block. I was already a little anxious about spring 2025 at that point, because I knew Edinburgh Half Marathon would be my A-race for the spring and I thought I would have massive FOMO about not doing a spring marathon in 2025.

One of the things I learnt last year was that I don’t really like doing too many B-races during a training block, because it gets in the way of my plan and means I have to move runs around. As such, knowing that in the early stages of 2025 we had both the Walt Disney World Dopey Challenge (a long-delayed bucket list trip for Geth) and the Bridges to Boundaries Ultra, I planned out two truncated marathon/ultra training blocks following Yorkshire Marathon: a twelve-week block for Disney and a nine-week block for B2B.

These shortened blocks meant that I didn’t really have time to recover from the last big race and build back up – after a week or two, it was straight back into the super long runs. I had overtrained a bit for Yorkshire, leading to disappointment on the day despite a PB; by the time we were into peak training for Disney, I was finding it necessary to cut a lot of the long runs short, and I found the longer Disney races to be harder work than I would have liked. I was generally happier with the B2B block as a whole than with the Disney block, as we did some good recces and I was able to sort out some longstanding issues.

However, I was becoming very aware that I barely even remember what it feels like to have fresh legs. I have been pretty much solidly marathon/ultra training for over a year now, and while I was feeling invincible for most of 2024 – the result of finally being able to run and train properly due to being effectively medicated for my ankylosing spondylitis after over a decade of suffering with it – this is most definitely no longer the case. The fatigue is real.

As such, going into the Tyne Bridges to Boundaries Ultra this last weekend – while I wanted to enjoy it as a day out with Geth as much as possible, and I did feel unexpectedly calm in the week leading up to it – I was really quite looking forward to it being over so that I could enjoy five months of NOT doing super long runs. I most definitely do not need to worry about spring marathon FOMO anymore. I will cheer my friends on at spring marathons over the next couple of months with no envy in my heart whatsoever. I am absolutely delighted that Edinburgh half will be my spring A-race, and I can’t wait to get stuck into some proper speed training for it once I’m properly recovered.

But this last Saturday morning, I still had one last very long run to do. And, despite all the fatigue, I still hoped that I could do it a tiny bit faster than last year.

As expected, I didn’t sleep well the night before due to anticipating the 4am alarm. I was waking up every hour on the hour and gave up attempting sleep at 2:30am. Geth was similar and so we had no problems being ready for the 6am drive to the race HQ at the Cycle Hub. (Registration closes at 7:45am for an 8:15am start but it’s a little harder to get a parking space if you arrive after 6:45am, and I prefer not to have any stress about getting parked!).

We gradually got registered, had a second breakfast, met up with fellow Benchies Clare and Ed and got our packs and numbers on. It was a much colder start than last year and so we made good use of the warmth inside the café! We made sure to stay towards the back of the pack on the start line so that there would be no temptation to go off too fast.

Geth and I ran together as planned and kept a steady pace for the first eleven miles to the Wylam checkpoint. I had a few wobbles during this section, first because there was a route change I hadn’t anticipated (the ‘updated’ GPX file I had downloaded from the website the day before the race had not in fact been updated from the 2024 route) and secondly because the fatigue was kicking in already and I was genuinely worried I wouldn’t be able to finish. However, as we approached Wylam, I felt much better, as our first planned extended walk break was coming up.

Ed overtook us at this point – we had a banana with him at Wylam and never saw him again!

The next six-mile section from Wylam to Stocksfield is a mixture of fields/trails and tarmac, so we walked the former and ran the latter. The last two miles to Stocksfield is all road – and is a really depressing endless-feeling bit so we planned to run it all to get it over and done with! – but I did need a couple of walk breaks on that part as well as I was getting very tired. We had a good reset at the halfway checkpoint at Stocksfield Cricket Club, at which point Clare caught up with us.

I felt a bit stiff setting off from Stocksfield but the fields provided a good excuse to walk for a bit. The path through Prudhoe was a bit more runnable and by that point I had decided on quarter mile on-off intervals for my run-walk strategy, as quarter miles felt manageable for running and I knew that if I continued with ‘see how you feel’ walk breaks I would just end up walking the whole way back! Back at Wylam for checkpoint 3 we filled up on bananas and cola and geared up to count down the last eleven miles. I wasn’t sure at this point if my walk-run strategy would hold, but we continued onwards.

The final stretch actually proved to be my favourite part of the day. We were back and forth the whole time with Clare (who was doing a great powerwalking pace) and various others, so it was a lovely chatty experience, and I felt strong enough to keep my quarter miles going for the whole stretch. We had heard at checkpoint 3 that we’d be taken back over the Swing Bridge rather than the Millennium Bridge for the final half mile along the Quayside – which I was delighted about, as there was an event going on at the Baltic (south end of the Millennium Bridge) that apparently involved people chucking paint about, and I did not want to be anywhere near that! For the final (34th) mile, I suggested to Geth that we could run the last half mile and a bit to get to the finish, and my watch happened to tick over 33 and a half miles just as we came off the steps down from the Swing Bridge. It was a lovely final stretch of running along the Quayside, with the Cycle Hub getting closer and closer.

We finished in roughly eight and a quarter hours, which is a quarter hour slower than I did it last year. I wanted to be faster, but it’s okay. I felt much stronger than expected during the final stages, and I’m really proud that I kept my strategy going rather than fading to a deathmarch. We collected our medals and celebrated with Clare as she came into the finish area – it was a first ultra for both her and Geth.

A few lessons learnt on this one, besides the much larger overriding issue of doing too many marathons and ultras in a row. I spent a little too long in the checkpoints this year – ten minutes longer than last year in total, according to my moving time logs (so my moving time was only five minutes slower, not 15!). I need to plan my run-walk strategies beforehand, as I felt so much stronger and happier when doing specific intervals rather than ‘see how you feel’. A positive lesson was that I finish stronger when I fuel more frequently, so that might be something I take on board for fast marathons as well.

A larger lesson that has encompassed both the Disney and B2B training periods is that Geth and I are not really suited to doing long run training together. I am not hugely slower than him in terms of our standard distance race performances, but my natural easy training pace is much slower than his and so it’s not really been possible to find a pace that’s comfortable for both of us. This has been frustrating and upsetting at times and I think we’re both looking forward to doing separate training again for our next couple of A-races.

Geth is keen to do Bridges to Boundaries again in a couple of years’ time to try and get a faster result, but I think I’m done with this one. I suspect I’ll return to ultras again one day, but at the moment I feel it’ll be many years in the future.

Edinburgh Half Marathon next, then. I’ll be attempting a considerable PB and hopefully continuing the long process of putting the horror of 2022 to bed. For this process, I’ll be following a training plan much more closely than usual, which will involve basically halving the usual weekly mileage I’ve been doing for the last year or so. This will be a real shock to the system, but I welcome it. My body needs a break from the long distances, and I need some time to myself to partake in occasional other hobbies that aren’t running.

Really quite excited to get into the short stuff again!

After I did the Valentine Half Marathon last year, Geth was keen to do the couples’ relay, which is part of the same event. It’s a 10k relay so each partner runs 5k. We are absolutely not in 5k PB shape at the moment due to too many marathon and ultra training blocks back to back (plus, you know, winter), but were excited to give it a go.

It’s a Run Nation event, and Run Nation events are always a bit chaotic. It was very unclear from the pre-race and on-the-day communication whether the first leg relay runners (me in our case) were supposed to start with the main 10k wave or not (we finally had confirmation that we were about 10 seconds before the race started). During the whole of my leg, I had no idea whether I was supposed to run into the finish funnel at the end or back up to the start line. It turned out to be the latter, but it wasn’t clear what to do there either; Geth and I both ran over it sort-of-together in order to ‘pass the baton’, and I went over to the finish to grab my medal and goodies and then to wait by the funnel, counting relay numbers.

We both did well for our current running fitness – I did about 24 minutes, which I hadn’t expected to be close to, and Geth about 22:30 – so we were really happy. The results have been a bit bumpy, error-prone and delayed since Sunday, but at the moment it looks like we finished in 46:41 overall, 11th place out of 19. It was a fairly fast field so I’m pleased with that! Looking forward to finding out my individual split, hopefully later today.

It was a lovely morning out, with lots of other Benchies running in the event or supporting, and it was really nice to do something different and get a faster race done in the middle of all this slower long-distance stuff. Excited for my shorter races in the spring post-ultra now!

It’s the fourth and final day of the Dopey Challenge… and while we always planned to take the pace easy today, a marathon is a marathon and it’s always hard, especially when it’s the fourth day of racing in a row!

It was cold again this morning and it got colder during the first few miles. We were taking a walk break once per mile but I found this section the worst, as the cold was making me lightheaded and it was just long boring road again.

Once we got into Magic Kingdom at about 10 miles and the sun started to rise, I began to feel better. The fatigue was really kicking in and so I now needed two walk breaks per mile, but I was able to keep this pattern going for the rest of the race (which surprised me, as after yesterday I thought I’d be solidly walking from 20 miles if not before).

We did visit a few of the parks, but again most of the route was road in the middle of nowhere. Disney is big! I found this quite hard, as the parks were good for distraction and the road bits very definitely were not.

We worked hard for a sub-7 finish, which is my second slowest marathon ever. This challenge has been so tough and I’m really proud that we’ve got through it.

From the start, I treated this challenge like a multiday ultra. What I have learnt from it is that I won’t be doing any multiday ultras in the future! It was an incredible experience and I do want to come back to Disney for other race weekends before too long, but my Dopey is most definitely one and done.

Onto training for the next race now. But I do need a week or two of recovery to start with…

Day three of the Dopey Challenge, and now the hard work begins! While 5k and 10k are comfortable daily distances that we do all the time, a half marathon and a full marathon on back-to-back days constitute the real challenge of this event.

It was much warmer this morning (16ish degrees Celsius, which is normal for Florida nights in January) but it rained heavily while we were waiting to start, so we felt just as cold as the last two mornings! Should have worn a plastic covering – a bit of rain never normally bothers us at that temperature but it hits differently here for some reason.

We took the half marathon very easy, but I am starting to feel extremely fatigued from the cumulative race days. It’s not just the mileage but all the rigmarole around it (runners who do races will be very familiar with this). I am a bit anxious about the marathon as a result, but we’ll take it as easy as we need to, with lots of walk breaks.

It’s the final day of the challenge tomorrow… but in terms of mileage, we’re not even halfway there yet!

Day two of the Dopey Challenge saw us running the 10k!

Knowing the logistics made it easier, and we were a bit more prepared for the cold conditions this morning. The race itself went by fairly quickly again – once you get into Epcot there’s a lot going on to distract you – but I don’t really feel in race shape despite the training. Christmas has left me feeling sluggish and overfull and I felt a bit ill for the first couple of miles today. Hopefully I’ll feel better for the big two races over the weekend, especially as we’re planning a more restful day today.

For day three tomorrow, it starts to get a bit harder, as we press on to the half marathon…

Here we are in Disney World, Florida, for the first day of a race weekend that’s been years in the planning!

Geth first started talking about doing the Disney races in 2019, when I did my first London Marathon and he spotted the RunDisney stall at the London expo. At first, he wanted to do the Star Wars Stormtrooper Challenge (a 10k one day followed by a half marathon the next), as he didn’t believe at that point that he would ever run a full marathon. He was going to be turning forty in 2020, and he thought it would be the perfect way to celebrate his milestone birthday. Then 2020 arrived, and the pandemic happened… and plans just slowed down for a while. During that time, those plans morphed into the full Dopey Challenge (four back-to-back days of races: a 5k, 10k, half marathon and full marathon) as we became more confident in our running.

It took a long time to get here. But here we are now! For Geth’s 40th birthday trip… in my 40th birthday month.

(He’ll be forty-five this year. We’d better start thinking about his 50th birthday trip now in case we get derailed again!)

We arrived in Florida two days ago as we needed to go to the expo yesterday to pick up our numbers and t-shirts (which was a fun experience in itself!). This morning was the first race morning, and I was glad that the 5k acted as a bit of a trial run for the next few days, as it meant we could see how all the logistics worked without needing to worry about the distance. We’re now set for tomorrow onwards and know what we’re doing.

It was very cold (not what we expected from Florida) and we were shivering at the start – it took us most of the race to warm up. After we were done it was fine though as the queues for the drop bags and buses moved nice and quickly. It just felt like the race itself was gone in a flash and over too soon! I doubt we’ll have that issue as the distances increase…

We continue tomorrow with the 10k for day two!

This was the second marathon of the year – something that would have been inconceivable just a couple of years ago, as my body simply couldn’t have handled it.

Following my 4:21 at Manchester I wondered if I was capable of a sub-4 this year. It was a big jump, but I had just taken more than two hours off my previous marathon time and was used to big jumps in terms of PBs at the time. I decided to train with the aim of sub-4 and see where it got me.

Training was pretty intense and I didn’t miss a session, but I did find myself struggling on the long runs – this was the first time I’d attempted to do marathon goal pace blocks during long runs rather than just taking them as easy as I liked, and I found it incredibly hard to manage the pace. This is very much a mental thing as I can manage much faster than marathon goal pace on shorter runs, but on long runs I always feel fatigued from early on and it seems impossible. Due to this frustration, I have also become more aware that my true easy pace (i.e. what I fall into when not focusing) is still very slow compared to other people I know who do similar race paces to me – and this has given me a bit of impostor syndrome in recent months, as it makes me feel that deep down I’m still a naturally slow runner and always will be.

I only did one B race (the Great North Run) during the training block, which was great as it meant things didn’t feel as disrupted as they did during the Manchester block. Going forward I’m going to be splitting training into slightly shorter blocks and mostly focusing on one race at a time.

I did a 15-week plan with a three-week taper as I had done for Manchester, but I found that I didn’t even begin to feel rested from the taper until a few days before the race. This should have been a bit of a warning sign.

Geth and I planned from about halfway through the training block to run the race together. He’d originally been aiming for a 3:45 but his training was significantly hampered by his Achilles injury, so he hoped he’d be able to pace me to the sub-4 instead.

I spent the last few days before the race really worried about the weather conditions, as Storm Ashley was forecast for the weekend. The wind didn’t end up being too bad on the day – it was the rain that was more miserable – but I really felt that because of the weather forecast, the race just wasn’t in my control anymore.

It was lovely to spend the weekend in York with some of the Benchies, as there were quite a few of us down for the marathon – and the out-and-backs on the course meant there were always people to look out for!

Setting off on the day, I was glad I had Geth with me as it meant I didn’t have to worry about pacing myself – I could just stick with him. I was able to manage the pace but I knew from the first few miles that it didn’t feel as easy as it should. There was an energy missing in me. We had done a faster pace together at the Great North Run – also in the rain – and that had felt easier.

At halfway, we were still on pace, but I really felt deep down that I wouldn’t be able to keep it up for another 13 miles. I tried hard, but by about 17 or 18 miles I couldn’t stay at the pace anymore and Geth had to slow down to stay with me. The aim became a PB.

This was what kept me going for the last six miles, because the last six miles were hell. I wanted to stop and walk SO badly – probably more badly than I had done in Manchester. But, just like in Manchester, I knew that if I took even one walk break, that would be it – I would have given myself permission to walk, and I would keep doing it, and I wouldn’t get my PB. So I kept running as fast as I could, even though ‘as fast as I could’ was definitely not fast anymore.

The miles ticked by so slowly at this point, and there was so much mental maths. But finally we got to the last mile, and I was surprised to find that the notorious hill at the end – the one I’d found such a struggle when I did the Yorkshire 10 Mile back in 2017 and 2018 – didn’t feel like much of a hill at all these days. Geth encouraged me on, and I managed a weak semi-sprint over the line. It was a relief to finish, but I didn’t feel elated like I had at Manchester. There was quite a bit of disappointment there.

4:16:30. Very nearly a five-minute PB – 4 minutes and 58 seconds off my Manchester time. It was a difficult race and I’m proud I kept running when it got hard – that’s two nonstop marathons run now.

I won’t be attempting a fast marathon again until autumn 2025 (my next marathon is part of a multiday challenge, then I’m doing an ultra, then a fast half as my spring A race), which is partly why I was disappointed – I won’t get the chance to improve on my marathon PB for a year. But it does give me the time I need to improve and think about what I can do differently next time.

I will definitely be factoring in a longer taper. Back in my super-slow days, the happiest I ever was after a marathon was when I’d done a five-week taper. For next autumn’s marathon training block, I am going to try four weeks. I think, due to the spondylitis – which does still cause a lot of fatigue even though I’m very well medicated for it now – my body perhaps just needs a bit longer to recover after the peak training period.

I think I also need to find some way of speeding up my easy pace. This is more complicated, as I really feel that easy pace should just be what feels natural (and should speed up naturally as you become a faster runner in general – though unfortunately mine doesn’t really seem to be doing that!). However, I do have some initial ideas about things to try. I’ll change a few things around next year and see what works.