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| Mik and Jason at the finish. |
In some respects the answer should be ‘who cares?’ If the gun goes off and you cross the line 26.2 miles later then what else matters?
Well for those of us who are slightly obsessive it can be really important.
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| The medal is the biggest of any marathon in the UK |
So, following a less than perfect night’s sleep and then seeing the cycle track that was to be the venue for this marathon was not as flat as you might expect a cycle track to be I began to feel a sense of impending doom.
Consequently I went into politician mode and decided that if I was possibly going to fail on my target time I should look to the small print to see if I could maneuver the goalposts.
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| Pre-race accommodation was sparse to say the least. |
Races where the distance is accurately measured and stated by organisers to be 26m 385y (26.2 miles) / 42.195 km (42.2 kilometres) on a road or predominately road surface.
The IAAF has the following criteria for a road marathon:
• All courses must have been measured to IAAF/AIMS (Association of International Marathons and Distance Races) standards and full electronic timing must be in place to provide split timing and final results.
• The event must be broadcast on a live or delayed basis on television within the country, or delivered to a good standard through online streaming.
• A minimum of five nationalities must be represented among the "elite" runners.
• All traffic must be closed off from the race course at all times during the competition. There must be adequate medical provision for the number of runners at the race. A number of doping tests must also be carried out after each race in accordance with IAAF requirements.
Ok... so there might be enough for me to work with here as I certainly don’t think it was being ‘live streamed’ but when I suggested to Mik on the start line that I was thinking that seeing as we were about to do 17 laps that this might be more of a ‘track’ marathon than a ‘road’ marathon he just raised his eyebrow at me.
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| This is what the runners saw. 17 times. |
By the end of the first lap I knew it was going to be a really tough day.
You can see from the profile below that I was never going to be able to settle into an even pace and it was just going to be a dig in and keep going type of day.
I can honestly say I didn’t enjoy any of the first 15 miles. They hurt both physically and mentally. I’d watched Mik and a few other marathon regulars disappear into the distance and I could see from my Garmin that at half way I was a quarter of a mile behind where I should be if I wanted to be safely under 4 hours.
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| Mik approaches the finish line. |
Each lap saw me reduce the deficit to the pacing man on my Garmin by a few seconds until finally at 20 miles I was back on schedule. I kept on pushing and when I came up next Mik we were right on the edge of making it under 4 hours.
My lap times meant I was increasing my buffer by a few seconds a lap and thankfully I didn’t slow down as those extra few seconds each lap would prove vital at the end. When I finally passed the 26.2 mile mark at 3 hours 53 minutes I was nowhere near the end of the lap and in fact had another half a mile to the finish line.
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| The course profile in all its hilly glory. |
I finally crossed the line at 3:58 with my GPS reading 26.7 miles.
So... It wasn’t exactly 26.2 miles, it wasn’t on roads and it was 17 laps but, it was called the Kent Road Runner Marathon and it was run on tarmac.
Was it a ‘road’ marathon... I’m not sure, but with a 3:58:17 finishing time, another negative split, an intact sub 4hr record and a very loud medal, I got in the car and started my 8 hour drive to Glasgow with a sense of exhausted satisfaction.
For more information visit the website.
Jason.
This is cool!
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