Wolverhampton Marathon (and other things)

Phew, there's been lots going on since my last post. It's hard to know where to start.

First up :- The Confession

After my last proper post Everything Changes when I said there will be NO nutrition change, NO clothing change and NO bike change............. I went and bought a new bike in a moment of madness! It's much more than I deserve, much more than I can justify, much more than I need and MUCH MUCH more than I can really afford. But this is Ironman Hawaii, people keep telling me how priviliged I am to have qualified, heck I know it's a once in a lifetime race and the bike is a once in a lifetime purchase. Never ever will I be able to justify such an extravagent purchase again.......... So Welcome to the Focus Izalgo along with all it's SRAM and ZIPP goodness. Now I just need to justify the purchase in 5 weeks time!!!
Next up :- Training

Last month (August) was my biggest month of training EVER!! By a long long way.

I swam for just 5hrs which is pretty par for the course where my swimming is concerned and I finished the month off with a 4000m time trial as is traditional Pre-Ironman just to prove to myself it's still there.

I ran for 15h40m which is actually my biggest total for 2 years, but only just. Running has really just ticked along as normal and this weekends Marathon (I'll come to that later) pretty much showed me that my running form is ok.

The biking is where the time has been put in. Whether it has been put in the right way or not I've no idea, I've still not done a 100mile bike ride this year. I did however total 46hrs in the saddle during the month and that's over 10hrs more than I've ever done in a single month before.

It may be that the increased bike training swayed my decision where the new bike is concerned, maybe I got carried away with a month of training that totalled 67hrs which is over 15hrs more than I've ever done before. Who knows?

Last week I was off work, a week I'd booked off to train. It was very tempting to get myself booked on a warm weather training camp but as it turned out we probably had the best week of weather that we've had all Summer. I managed to put in 21h40m of training which was actually a good bit less than I'd planned but the ordering and arrival of the new bike interupted a bit of training time. The week did however finish with.....................

Wolverhampton Marathon

So at the end of a 10 day spell during which I'd done over 27hrs of training I found myself on the Start Line of the Marathon feeling tired and having absolutely no idea what was going to happen. I hadn't mentioned it to anyone but I was fully prepared to pull the plug at half way if it wasn't going well as I didn't want to risk anything with Kona around the corner.
I'm not afraid to admit that I've not got the mileage in to RUN a decent Marathon, even if I hadn't been training hard then 15hrs a month of running isn't much. Therefore the plan (as normal) was to run/walk the race. I was told that there were drink stations every 2.5miles(ish) so the plan was to run 10mins, walk 1min then run to a drink station and walk through it for another minute so that I could take in a drink (and a gel every 2nd station).

I started half way through the field alongside my Sis who was doing the Half Marathon. It took us around 30secs to hit the Start Line and then because of the congestion my pace felt very sedate. Because of this I decided to forgoe the initial walk break and run straight through to 20mins, from then on it all went to plan until around 10miles when I started suffering some (bowel) issues. Another advantage of the run/walk is that the walk section allows these things to subside a little, but on spotting a porta loo inside the park as we finished the first lap I made a small diversion for a couple of minutes. Unfortunately the stomach/bowel issues didn't go away (I won't go into too much detail) and a few more stops were required on the 2nd lap, I've since decided that drinking fizzy drinks the day before may be a bad move!!!

After my final 'call of nature stop' around 23miles I decided that there was to be no more. I was fed up of working my way past people just for them to go past again while I was 'occupied'. My legs were still feeling good so I laid it all on the line for the last 5k and my 26th mile was actually my fastest of my race (6:13) and I made up 5 places in the last 2 miles.
So my Finishing time was 3:05:52 but my Garmin tells me that my actual moving time was around 2:57 which I can't complain about with my race strategy. Sure I'm a bit disappointed not to officially go sub 3:00 but pre-race, after the previous week (and month) of training I'd have been happy with a comfortable finish. I'd have been perfectly happy with a 3:30 so in the big scheme of things a 3:05 was much better than I could have anticipated.

Now I just need to train solid for another 3 weeks and it's all systems go for Hawaii!!

The only downer to the weekend was Rosie Pup needing a (very expensive) trip to the Emergency Vets on Saturday night. Not really sure what was the cause although she'd been running with me on Friday and Saturday so may have drank some nasty algae filled water over Baggaridge Country Park. She's ok now though which is what matters though although as the pic below shows, she was feeling VERY sorry for herself. Poor ikkle thing!!!