If you spend any time at all running around Edinburgh, you will see on almost every occasion, someone wearing the ubiquitous, blue, Edinburgh Marathon Festival (EMF) t-shirt. Despite having ran for 359 consecutive days now, having ran roads, trails, hills, and cross-country, a small part of me felt like I wasn't a "real" Edinburgh runner because I didn't own one of those t-shirts! Well now I am complete.
BEHOLD!!!
I ran a long way to (finally) get this t-shirt.
Here is the story of how I come to own this coveted, polyester, vestment.
The race started at 8am which unfortunately meant that I had to get up at 5:30am on a Sunday morning to make sure I had something to eat but not too soon before getting underway. Porridge eaten, I woke Kata at 6:45 to get me on the start line for 7:30. It was raining. The forecast for race-day was awful but in the end it was relatively good conditions for running long distance with a light breeze and some light rain. Amazingly we bumped into Rachel at the bag drop area. I know that 8772 runners finished the race, no doubt a few more started, so it was a happy coincidence that we met. The rain by this point was starting to get quite heavy.
Coincidence
This was a huge event with two starting points on London Road and Regents Road. Each road had from what I could see 4 starting pens that you were assigned according to your predicted finish time. Even starting where I was quite near the front, once the dramatic countdown had finished and the starting pistol had fired to a great cheer, there was an anti-climatic pause of about a minute or so before we slowly started moving towards the starting line. Once over the line and breaking into a run, it was still quite busy and a lot of the runners around me didn't seem to be in a particular hurry so I had to do a bit of weaving and dodging to get ahead and due to sheer number of runners, this continued all the way until we left Holyrood Park. At Holyrood Park I was overtaken by a runner in Lederhosen but I didn't let the indignity ruin my race and pushed on. Some poor people were already by this stage stopping to duck into the first available portable toilets.
Brown! Like my vest. You see? Brown.
My pace was good at first. I was aiming for 4:15 per kilometre and the first one was completed in 4:17 despite all the dodging and weaving. Not bad. The next two were completed in consistent 4:17 and 4:18 before I ran a 4:20 and panicked a bit. Speeding up meant I ran 4:06 the next time. Oops. As you can see from the table below, I ran well for the first half of the race before falling off a cliff. I actually completed the first 10km in 42:51 which considering my PB for a 10km race is 42:30 is either very good going, or very bad pacing. Probably the latter - I should have ran the first 10km in about 45 minutes.
Tells it's own story
We reached Portobello at about the 5 mile mark and I was delighted see that the planned rendezvous with Kata had worked out. There she was shouting encouragement and taking photos. Here is one of the photos.
Race face
Leaving Portobello promenade and Kata, I realised that it had stopped raining. I don't know WHEN it had stopped but it certainly wasn't raining now. At the 6 mile marker I took my energy gel. We were still in Portobello at this point and we ran by a house where the residents were playing Chariots of Fire at full blast from speakers set up in their garden. This made me smile and I also have to admit made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It felt like it made me run faster too but the statistics don't back this up! Later on, after we finished the race, it was pointed out to me that it was about 8:45 on Sunday morning when we ran by this house and his neighbours couldn't have been too pleased. Easy to forget what time it is when you have been up for 3 hours and are half way through a half-marathon.
Nailed it!
The Musselburgh section was hard. My legs were very heavy by this point and hope of a PB was slipping away. This is considered to be a fast course so I'd have been disappointed had I not managed a PB. My splits were not good but I was running as fast as I could. The course is very flat but there is a long gradual uphill in Musselburgh that leads to the point where you turn and run the just over 2 miles back into the town and the finish line. It was gruelling but the thought that after the turn I would be running back down this hill kept me going. Nearing the top of the hill and the turn back to Musselburgh, coming the other way back towards me was Lederhosen guy that had overtaken me back in Holyrood Park! Fair play. Also coming back towards me was Rachel who was having an amazing run and finished 4th woman. I did think to myself at one point that it had seemed like quite a long time since she passed and I still hadn't reached the turn - what kind of time was she running?! I also saw Patryk from HBT at the sharp end and when I saw him he was in 2nd place tucked tactically in behind the runner in 1st (he finished an amazing 3rd).
Turning onto the home straight a glance at my watch told me that a PB was still possible. I had 40 seconds to reach the finish line. I ran as fast as my leaden legs would carry me and another glance told me that with 20 seconds to go I was probably going to make it...just. I finished 424th out of 8772 in a time of 1:32:45. A PB of 3 seconds after running for an hour and half?! Ridiculous, but I'll take it.
Accept
Great race and a great event. Straight afterwards the organisers were trying to sell "early bird" entry to next year's race to all the finishers. It was probably the wrong time to ask, but having had a night's sleep and now that the aching and chaffing has eased a bit, I am definitely up for this again. With better preparation and who knows, maybe some training, a sub 90 minute half-marathon is very achievable.
I was shattered afterwards. I went home to sleep. I was aching and had friction burns in places you don't want friction burns (which is anywhere I suppose). I don't know why I was so chaffed because I didn't wear anything that I hadn't worn a hundred times before. Having to get up at 5am is cruel and unusual and I'm afraid I wasn't up to much for the rest of Sunday (although we did go to watch Mad Max at the cinema).
Big thanks to the marshals for standing in the rain to make sure we had enough, erm...water, and thanks as well as apologies to the residents of Portobello for the music. Thanks especially to Kata for getting up at ridiculous o'clock on a Sunday to drive me to the start and then drive to Musselburgh to pick me up and take my broken body home for which it is very grateful.
I am also grateful to finally have my EMF t-shirt.
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