The York Marathon

The build up to the marathon on Sunday the first thing that went wrong was my brother was meant to be doing the marathon with me and I had already booked the accommodation at the Ace Hostel in York which didn’t go to plan because my brother didn’t do the marathon so I was left with two options I go to York and paid £42 or do I stay at home and go in the morning with Sarah Burn another club member from Thirsk. It took me over hour to make my decision after getting my train ticket twice and both times getting a refund I choose to stay at home and go in the morning so we only lost £5.70 which wasn’t too bad it was better than me paying £42 + £10 for the train and then the bus to get to the start so it would have turned out to be an expensive weekend. Glad I had another option. So I went early on Sunday morning, Sarah picked me up around 6.30am at my flat Sarah was going to drop me off in the city centre but then choose to be dropped off near the start where I would get picked up after the marathon so I got to the baggage and holding areas about an hour and a half early so I joined the queue for the toilet and just had a walk around and chatted with other local runners got changed and saw Steve Scott and had a chat with him asking if I should wear my t-shirt under my vest or would I be too warm and I’m glad I took his advice because it was warm out on the course I walked to the start when Sarah phoned me to wish me luck and have a good race I went to the toilet for the second time. It started to rain as we did the warm up before we started. The race started and took 10 min to get to the start line. We started at York University we ran through the city centre and passed the minster it was nice to see Matt and Clare at this point cheering us on and then it was out of the city and to run the rest of the 24 miles going through a number of villages where the people in the village came out and supported us running but it was very boring running on the open country road with no support. The first water station was poor as they were still opening bottles and taking them out of the plastic packaging I took water on every 3 miles there was also gel station as well I was doing ok until I hit 19 and a half miles where I started to tire and had to walk and run for about 3 miles and was going to give up around 22 miles but I told myself to get a grip and finish the race even if there was a nice big hill waiting for me at 25 miles I was happy when I saw Matt and Clare at the finish cheering us on again that made me smile and the determined to get to the finish. What was mentally tough was the no support on the country road between the villages, the second loop which was about 3 miles long I can say it felt like it went on forever and those slow burning hills that they found even know they said it was flat. I got finish and picked my finishing bag and just sat down and had rest before getting a finish picture and picked my bag up would I do the Plusnet marathon again NO unless they change the course