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Just minutes after completing the Dublin Marathon 2008
Just a quick note to say that I successfully completed the Dublin Marathon 2008 on Monday in a PB-smashing time of 5h:27m:47s.
I’ll be posting a fuller account later. In the meantime, I’d just like to say thank you to everyone who supported me and gave generously. If you haven’t donated, you’re not too late – my justgiving.com fundraising page will be accepting donations right up until the end of January next year.
That might seem a tad over-dramatic now, but I assure you my Tuesday training run was, literally, agonising. After a days rest from my Sunday long run (of 11 miles), I began the weekday schedule by doing the usual six miles. The first mile was hard, but then it always is, as my muscles warm up to optimal operating conditons.
Then the second mile was just as hard. Usually, it gets a little easier, the aches and pains wear off and I can concentrate on running the distance. Not today. It just got harder and harder. I was running my normal route of going round the headland, around the South Bay, back around the headland and along the North Bay and through the parks. When I reached the Sea Life Centre, I almost stopped as I turned around to head towards Peasholm Park, but I knew that if I stopped it would be twice as hard (and painful) to get going again.
So I struggled on, plodding away trying to ignore my aching leg muscles. By the time I was a short distance into the Peasholm Park leg, on the final mile of my route, I gave in and started walking instead. It wasn’t just my legs that were being tortured – my feet were on fire!
From there I walked the rest of the route. As I emerged from Peasholm Glen, I was started by a tremendous BANG! from the other side of the lake. It took me a few moments to realise that it was a television crew who were filming an episode of The Royal.
The exhaustion of this run has once again made my doubt my ability to run the marathon in my target time of 5h30m and rudely reminded me of just how hard and difficult running a marathon is.