Race Report: Flying Fox Marathon 25/05/2014

When people were booking up for Edinburgh  some were booking up for rocking and rolling around Liverpool I had my eye on a little event in the marathon world. 
 

Mat and Paul

The event I had in mind was a marathon near to Stafford in a tiny place called Knighton. A rerunning of an event that had not been ran for some 30 years and in an attempt to fix that, Stone masters running club had elected to re introduce the event as a reminder of what the event entailed.

I looked through some of the old pics from them days and the running kit these people had and found it rather amusing. So without further ado I got myself booked in and got training for a road marathon that was described as "undulating" meaning hilly In other words.

I arrived at the race having doubted my ability to start due to a badly sprained ankle only the week before at the Leaden boots challenge that saw me drop out of that at only 2 miles. However rest and a new pair of Hokas a run with Martin on Friday assured me that the ankle would hold up enough for this one.


I managed to talk Mat in to coming and also Wona agreed to come too as well as. Some friends of mine from south Cheshire harriers. Prior to the start I got a nice loosening massage from our own Liz who had come to offer massages. All set and ready to go at least it wasn't raining, something it had done for no less than 36 hours prior.

Paul and Wona

So at the start line I started right at the very back, the very very back last man off along with Mat who had kindly decided to run the whole race with me. Off we went nice and gently out of the club waving goodbye to Nikk and Liz and off on our way. We started on a nice gentle first four miles or so, no hills just gentle and little inclines here and there. Before long I had established a group of people, it consisted of me mat a guy from the 100 marathon club " there were 23 of them" and a lovely gent from peel road runners. As we went along we nattered nicely and before we knew it were eating in to the miles. We had managed to cover the first 13 miles in 2hrs 7 mins which was quite pleasing as we set off in to the second half. The second half was far more hilly than the first. At mile 13 I had to give myself my first short walk break as we battled a long long drag which went on for approximately a mile, quite steep but very punishing.

As we passed mile 15 and a small cafe, mat decide to stop for a beer whilst I carried on. Mat soon caught me back up as we started to bang away in to the tail end of the marathon. I managed to somehow just keep plodding along until we got to the dreaded mile 20 at this point I had crossed mile 20 at 3hrs and 17 mins and knew from that moment if I punished myself and listened to Mats motivational talk I would be able to push myself in to something of a PB despite there being more hills to get over. I kept going as best I could with the odd bit of shouting and swearing as I did so. At this time I had began to become determined. When the legs no longer wanted to go forward with Mats help I managed to keep them going.

Before long we hit mile 25 which was another long drag up hill and not what you need at 25 miles, I swore I huffed and puffed but kept going inch by inch. Eventually I managed to climb the hill back to the social club and put some effort in to get around the playing field to the finish. As I got round to the end I finished with a sprint and crossed the line and stopped my watch. I had come over the line in 4hrs 30 min and 2 seconds. Two seconds from becoming a sub 4-30 marathon man in my 23rd marathon but a PB by a massive 3 minutes on a hilly course. In fact it goes without saying if I had started further up the field I would kicked a sub 4-30 for sure, but being it wasn't chip timed I missed out.

Here were my marks for the marathon

• Scenery 100 percent lovely run,
• Organisation was like clockwork
• Sparse support if any
• Excellent goody bag almost a rival for déjà vue

The rain held off for most only giving us a bit of a shower, mat was fantastic in mr motivator role 

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Paul N.