Suffering in Salisbury

I am trying my luck with spontaneous marathon running. Somehow summer does not want to become by running friend. Temperatures over 20 degrees take the fun out of the run. As a result I have not been running properly for the last 2 months. Boo! So the plan was not to have a plan, but to trick myself into it by quickly signing up for one telling myself its a new experience, running marathons without preparation. My friend Phil was running the Salisbury 54321 Marathon anyways, would give me a lift and we had been talking about doing a marathon together for quite a while anyway. So here we were, Sunday morning in Salisbury, at the start line and me hearing for the first time that there are not only high temperatures, but also hills and trails. Oops.

So how did the whole thing turn out? To be fair, I did do a prep run on Friday, just to check if I still can at least do a half marathon distance without major drama. And I could, but at 24k I had enough. And it was the same here: this feeling of an inner running child throwing a tantrum: NOOO!! I REALLY don’t want anymore. And then the feeling of not really having a choice, but to move on… Not nice. So I walked, tried to enjoy the spectacular scenery hoping that I will somehow recover. And then there was the feeding station with biscuits. I stuffed my face asking the friendly volunteers if I could stay here forever. “Of course”, was the sweet answer. “But then you won’t finish the race.” You can’t really argue with that, so I moved on. At some point I had walked so much, that the boredom of walking seemed to out-do the pain of running, so I ran. And my first law of marathon running “If you don’t stop, there is no way you won’t reach the finish” proved to be true yet again. After 4 hours 55 minutes I crossed the finish line, feeling a little bit like a cheat by then, because I actually was not feeling that bad. Even the niggles in my left knee that I had felt from the start were completely gone. So I am thinking about the next spontaneous marathon, to redeem myself from not suffering enough and giving it all this time…