So we had a nice evening with my Mum and Dad on Saturday night, pasta for me and water of course.
On Sunday we got to the start probably an hour too early so we were stood around for a bit. It was chilly. Having said that the time went quite quickly and I was soon in the starting pen. 50000 people and I bump into Eamonn from work!
We did the mass warm up which was fun. Although half way through the speaker in our pen broke so we were far more interested in watching the guys try to fix it. Then it was just a few minute's wait until the crowd started to move.
The start's all down hill for the first 500m or so, so you really get moving. I was surprised a bit by the 'I'm doing this for the next 2 hours feeling', I've never had that in training but then you can always escape training if needed. After about a mile we were coming up to the Tyne bridge and the Red Arrows did a fly past overhead. At this point it was early, I felt great and that made me very happy. Without doubt that's my outstanding memory of the race.
The first half went well, I felt good at 10k. The route then narrows a bit so it got a bit more congested but it wasn't a problem.
I had a bit of a drink around 13k, it wasn't too bad (I normally suffer with stitches) so I drank a bit more over the next few k. I skipped the lucozade at around 16k.
Things then got tough.
I really struggled. With hindsight I went off too quickly but looking at my pace it didn't alter significantly, I felt rotten though. There's a bit of an up hill, it felt like Everest. At about 18k there were showers and I ran through them to try to feel better but it didn't help. When I got to the sea front with about 1600m to go I felt really bad, I expected to be able to kick the pace up a bit at this point. I can hardly remember the last k, I tried to sprint the last 100m or so but struggled.
However, having said all that I'm very pleased with my time and know on the day I could not have tried harder. I genuinely feel like I worked for it.
Here's to 1:45 next year.
I planned to run tonight but I'm having the week off as a reward. I'm still a bit tired. I'll do a 10 miler on Sat I think but this week is a chill out.
