The Halstead Marathon is fabulous!

I had the most amazing day at the Halstead Marathon - it's the best race I've been to for many reasons, and I will blog about them all tomorrow when I've woken up a bit ;)

It is horrendously hilly, and it was warm today, particularly the first half when it was bright sunshine too, but I came home (according to my Garmin, below) in 4hrs 47mins.

If you ever get the chance to run this race, you should. It's awesome! :D

I don't think I know what I'm doing

Well, just four days left until the Halstead Marathon...and I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a bit scared!

I really don't know if I'm ready or not, if my body has recovered enough from London yet, if I've done enough training in between the two marathons...if I even know what I'm doing running two so close together when sometimes I don't even feel fit enough to walk up an escalator in a tube station and I start asking myself if I'm really a marathon runner?! Oh, and I'm really nervous about running a hilly course - that's going to be an entirely different experience to the three (very flat!) London marathons that I've done before.  Self-doubt is seriously kicking in, and although I'm trying to ignore it, it's definitely in the back of my mind, and is making me worry about the dreaded "DNF".

As part of my preparations, I went for a sports massage yesterday which was suitably painful, and will hopefully set me up well for Sunday, and I've had a look at the weather - apparently it's going to be raining which although not ideal will be much better than beating sunshine! I'm not too happy with my trainers, but sure they'll get me round...and the only other thing I need to do now is to try and get myself in the right frame of mind, as at the moment, it's my positivity and confidence that's missing...and as we all know, the psychological battle around a marathon course is as important as the physical one!

I did have a lovely boost yesterday though - I received an amazingly generous sponsorship donation of £290 which brought me up to the £1,000 mark, raised for Elephant Family.  Raising that sort of money really does make the whole thing a bit more worthwhile :)

So, I have a final run of 4 miles to do tonight, and will do an easy couple of miles on Saturday and then all that's left is to have a successful run on Sunday!  Against my better judgement, I'm going to start off at a 4hr 30min pace as I did in London, and just see how I get on.  Fingers crossed and wish me luck!

Change of plan, change of marathon

Getting to the Shakespeare Marathon in Stratford-upon-Avon next Sunday was always going to be a bit of a challenge.  It'd mean driving over to my mum's house on Saturday night, which is half way across the country from where I live, staying there, and then driving up to Stratford in the morning, which I'm not sure would really have been the best preparation for the 26.2.

After thinking about it, considering the options, worrying about it, and thinking it through again, I decided today that to be honest I could do without the hassle so started to look to see if there were any closer marathons around the same time.  Luckily for me, I've been able to get a place in the Halstead and Essex marathon instead, after the Halstead Road Runners who organise the race increased their entry limit to 850 runners.  It's on the same day as the Shakespeare, (relatively) local to me, and although it seems to be a pretty hilly course, it's a much smaller event than the Shakespeare, and I think it will work out much better for me, especially as a contrast to the crowds and challenge of running with the masses at London.

So, I've got a spare place going for the Shakespeare if anyone's interested, and am thoroughly looking forward to running the Halstead, if not a bit nervous about all the hills I keep reading about, and about being at the back of such a small field!

Back to the grindstone

After having a week off to recover from the marathon (which I have now, fully, all bar a missing toe-nail) and an Easter weekend where I consumed more calories than I should have in a week...I'm back on the training.  I have the Stratford Marathon coming up, a couple of halves, have also signed up for another marathon in September, and this morning I applied for the 2012 London Marathon ballot again. My friends and family have given up trying to understand why I keep doing all these races...not even sure I understand...but I suppose I just love the challenge :)

Anyway, Francis and I went for a lovely cycle ride yesterday, only 14 miles but it was more for enjoying the gorgeous countryside and amazing weather, than any exercise, so I also went for a 4 mile run in the evening.

I can't believe how heavy my legs felt, how tired I was and generally just how difficult it was to do the run. The Duracell bunny I was not!  I'm blaming all the chocolate, BBQ food and beer over the Easter weekend -  I can't believe that I would have lost all my fitness during the taper and a week off.

I'll be running again this evening (a 6 miler this time) and really hope that if I manage to eat and drink well today, I'll feel more like my normal self when I go out - my next marathon's in just 12 days and that's really not enough time to start from scratch!

Photos from the London Marathon