I did it. If you’ve been following me on Twitter or on Facebook you’ll have seen my updates from last Sunday’s race. If not, then here you go: I flew along the half marathon course in the Edinburgh Marathon Festival in one hour, fifty-five minutes and thirty seconds. I bloody loved nearly every step.
I’d been fighting off a bug for a couple of days before we left for Scotland on Friday. In short, I was feeling grotty and tired and in no fit condition to do much more than shuffle off in search of doughnuts and ice cream. My tiredness got worse as the weekend progressed because I was too nervous to sleep properly. We were staying with my dad and step-mum in Haddington and I just couldn’t get to sleep on our first night there. Instead, I imagined running the route in real time. As it turns out, I got the route slightly wrong but finished in a reasonable two hours five or so. I’d have taken that on the day.
As I was trying to drop off I kept worrying about random, stupid stuff.
“What if I’ve forgotten how to run?”
“What if I’m late for the start?”
“What if I get up on Sunday morning and my legs don’t work?”
And the rest.
We spent the day before the race killing time in Haddington and Edinburgh. We had dinner at an Italian restaurant in the Grassmarket on Saturday with a bunch of Fetchies. It was a nice way to spend the time and good to get some last minute advice. Part of that was to get a good night’s sleep and have a little breakfast in the morning before I set off. The last thing I did before bed was pin my number to the front of my t-shirt and a Macmillan label to the back which read “I’m running… in memory of Mum. xxx”
In the end, I got hardly any sleep and couldn’t face any food the next morning. I was up and dressed in my race kit by 5:00am. I set off on the 20 mile drive to the start early enough so that I could get along the roads they would be using for the race before they were closed. The skies were clear and a striking shade of pale, Lamborghini blue. After a couple of days of dodgy weather, I thought we had got lucky.
I got to Edinburgh just after 6:00am which left me with two hours before the race started. I parked my car just off Elm Row and headed up to the start area in Regent Road. I had the banana I couldn’t cope with before I left the house and some sips of Lucozade Sport. There was an old bloke walking along to the start area and I thought at first that he had come to see the start but no, he’d come to run. He looked about 80 and he was starting ahead of me. He looked barely capable of walking to Holyrood Park never mind running to Musselburgh. We exchanged a few words while he sought a loo in which to change. I never saw him during the race. I hope he flew round in 90 minutes.
I changed out of my nice, warm fleecy top and into a plastic sack the good people at Macmillan Cancer Support had sent me with my race information pack just as the skies opened and I got a soaking. Between rapidly falling temperatures and the onset of the heebie-jeebies I was shivering so badly I needed both hands to control the bottle I was sipping from. I’ve had better mornings with DTs.
I found the luggage bus – actually a large articulated lorry – and dropped my bag off shortly after 6:30am. I had nothing to do for an hour and a half except try to keep warm and dry. Going to the loo while the queues were short seemed like a good idea so I tried that but there was a howling, wintry gale tearing round the car park behind St Andrew’s House where the toilets had been parked up. I ducked back into the lee of the building while I summoned the courage to brave the wind again. There were no queues so I found a box and dived into it. When I emerged a minute or so later, the wind had died down.
There was still over an hour to go before the start but it passed quickly. I nodded to the other people I saw in Macmillan vests and spent some time talking to a young guy I assumed was a squaddie in a Help for Heroes t-shirt and camouflage trousers. There were further occasional wet squalls but they passed as quickly and as dramatically as a teenage romance. They’d blown through by the time I’d found shelter.
I had a sudden need for a serious visit to the toilets with about 15 minutes to go. By that time the queues were gigundous. I tacked myself onto the end of one of them, found a loo, did the necessary and emerged back into the starting area with 5 minutes to spare. I discarded the plastic bag and my Lucozade bottle by the side of the road. Thank you to whoever picked them up.
I found a relatively open area near the front of my starting zone just as 8:00am clicked over. I started walking forward with everyone else towards the start line. It took us nearly 5 minutes to reach the start line and I started my watch as I crossed it. There was an enthusiastic commentary and lots and lots and lots of runners heading off down Regent Road, down through Abbeyhill and into Holyrood Park. I’m afraid I did the bottom watching thing. It helps motivate you and keep you moving if you follow nice bottoms so that’s what I did all through the race.
Just as we came round the corner onto London Road by Meadowbank Stadium, I had a sudden burst of emotion. There was a woman in another Macmillan t-shirt who had a sign pinned to her back saying who she was running for. I’ve forgotten now who it was because the reason for picking Macmillan Cancer Support, the reality of it and memories of that awful, awful summer all hit me at once. I felt the tears rise for a few moments before I could gather my thoughts. I pushed on, slightly more quickly, just to get past this woman and my own emotion. As I passed her, we smiled and nodded to one another. My guilty feeling slipped away.
There was a cheerpoint shortly after that. Macmillan supporters with big plastic, clappy things and banners and all sorts were there to lift our spirits. It came at just the right time for me. I ran past doing aeroplane impressions and clapping them in return. There were Kodo drummers on Leith Links. That’s not a sentence I ever thought I’d write. I got a real buzz from them. There were more of them on Portobello Esplanade and I cheered them as I passed by. I whooped and yelled for the sheer joy of being out for a run with 5,000 of my newest, nearest and closest friends while Kodo drummers beat out a driving, harum-scarum rhythm. There are some things at which you’re only possible response is to shout “Woohoo!” at the top of your lungs and run like fuck.
The owner of the Nice Bottom I’d been following for the previous mile turned at that point and gave me the biggest smile. If I’d been single and maybe about 25 years younger…
… I’d have been face down in my bed and wondering how bad my nicotine craving would have to get before it overcame god-awful hangover and drove me to the shops. I wouldn’t have had a chance.
My step mum was waiting at about the half way point. She goes to her gym on Sunday mornings and said she’d come out and see me run past. I’d told her to expect me some time between 9:00 and 9:30am. I got there just after nine. I zoomed out of the pack. She couldn’t have recognised me in my iridescent shades and Buff because she looked shocked. She said afterwards that she was really impressed that I looked so fresh. “Some of the others looked fit to drop,” she said.
At various points, I remembered everyone who had supported me. The people I’d run with, the coaches, my sponsors. I thought I’d need their help when I got slow and I did. They also helped push me when there were no cheerpoints and I couldn’t hear anything other than the blood rushing round my head, the air wheezing in and out of my chest and the sound of several thousand shagged-out trainers slapping onto the ground all at once.
There were another couple of cheerpoints and more showboating but it was a bit of a struggle towards the end. I passed the young squaddie I’d been chatting to at the start heading up the hill into the ‘Pans. He was taking a tactical walk. We shouted encouragement to one another and I moved on. The worst moment was just after the turn for home at Prestonpans. It had been raining on and off for about an hour but the wind was at our backs, driving us on. There was a sudden rain squall just as I turned into the wind. I almost stopped. I dug in for another half mile and saw the squaddie heading in the opposite direction. We high-fived as we passed. I had less than a mile to go.
A few minutes later I entered the finishing straight. I don’t know how, but I found some finishing speed. I could hear Teresa in my head shouting at me to go, to push and to lengthen my stride. “You’ve got long legs! Use them!” The clock had just clicked onto 1:59:00 so I knew I’d broken two hours but I didn’t know exactly by how much. I sprinted for the line, scanning the crowd by the side of the road in case Anne was waiting there. I must have looked a bit of an arse but I managed to beat some of the people who had passed me in the last mile to the line and I don’t think anyone else passed me. I crossed the line with 1:59:40 on the clock and 1:55:32 on my watch. I was as high as a kite.
Anne wasn’t at the finishing line. She was in the Macmillan tent in the charity village. I was so anxious about meeting up with her, I didn’t stretch properly. I regretted that for the rest of that day and all the next. I couldn’t move my right knee freely until Tuesday lunchtime. Happily, there was no permanent damage. I’ve been out for a training session and I beat my PB at the parkrun this morning so I think I’m back now.
I have a 5k race on Thursday, one of a series over the summer but my next biggie is the Moray Marathon on 4 September. May God have mercy on my soles.
