Brighton – Kissing The Medal

Well, with the post title I am just explaining, what is happening on this picture. I don’t think it is very clear, and I don’t want to leave it open for interpretations. I am kissing (not eating, or chewing, or licking) the medal. And there is an other anomaly: I am wearing glasses. I think it is my first marathon where I had to wear glasses. Not because I run out of contacts, but because I did not find time to put them in. The plan was to do this before the start, when I get into my running gear. But the Brighton start was so chaotic that I simply did not find an opportunity to do it. When I arrived far over 1 hour before start and wanted to have a quick loo visit. The long queues made me wonder if I will actually make it in time. Getting somehow changed while waiting for the loos was also tricky, because the whole place was covered in mud and there was no way to put your bag(s) somewhere without getting them wet and dirty. As a result the whole pre-race experience was one of the worst (if not THE worst) I ever had. (We are talking about 28 other marathons to compare it with!) But against the odds, I just made it to the start and even re-united with my newly found (and then lost) running buddy Matt, whose one (self declared) job it was to pace me through to a new PB. Around 10k in, I wondered if his plan would actually work out. He was obviously aiming more to pace me for a London Marathon good for age time (3:15) and not for 3:25, which I would have been very happy with as a new PB. It happened what had to happen, I crashed and burned eventually and finished in 3:31:17 (still respectable time for me). However, over all this PB-ing and crashing and burning I forgot a bit to enjoy Brighton as the great place it is. But I can say that the infamous industrial stretch was not as bad as people told me. Spectators actually made the effort to go down there and give us runners the feeling we are not completely abandoned. Apart from that, I think running through some rough and run down areas has certain edge to it, that I quite like. So, don’t be ashamed of this industrial stretch, Brighton, I loved it. And the rest was pretty nice, too. The seaside of course, but also the fact that we came back to the seaside centre more than once with all the friendly Brighton people who cheered you on. And the weather was also perfect, sunny, cool, a nice breeze – so overall a brilliant day. Brighton, we got off to a bad start, I guess, but you made up for this later on. And having even someone else to blame for not doing a personal best makes it nearly a perfect marathon day. (Which still does not explain why I kissed the medal, but some things are just the way they are.)