The song ‘Ring of Fire’ by Johnny Cash has been playing in my head all day on and off. It’s mainly ‘on’ when I try and stand up or go down the stairs. When two rings of fire light up around my quads and I wince audibly.
The irony here is that after my previous marathons it has usually been my calves that have been the biggest sufferers. They were fine yesterday and they’re completely fine today. So that is perhaps where the super shoes came in handy. Either that or the regular single-leg heel raises that I decided to do a bunch of in the last month to keep the dreaded calf pains away.
What my super shoes could not do was alleviate the shock of the steep downhills in the first half of the race which I started to feel midway through the second half by way of some painful cramping. That and a period of nausea after mile fifteen scuppered any possible chance I had to get a PB. At each of the water stations I wondered whether to throw in the towel as I was no longer enjoying the experience.
But, I wondered, have I ever enjoyed a marathon? Especially during these later miles when I’ve been on my feet for over four hours and counting. I have done seven marathons in total now, and I have only enjoyed the second half of two of them. Athens Marathon, all the way back in 2015, when I was running with my old school friend Salena and was in sub two-hour half-marathon shape, and the Yorkshire Marathon in 2023, where I was keeping it very conservative in the first half and then had the training to push for a slightly faster second half. But that was quite a flat course, and three years ago.
I was hoping to replicate that feeling this time. My training runs were a lot slower this time around, but I tried to compensate by running more miles on average and do a bit more strength work. Yesterday, the weather was perfect for running. The wind was gentle and for the most part, behind us. The course was net downhill. My mate Salena had got her own personal best of just over five hours here. What could possibly go wrong?
It turned out to be my slowest time ever, at 5:44:57 (chip time). I didn’t throw in the towel even though I was feeling rather miserable at the end. There were other people looking worse than I felt who kept on going, so I had to keep going too. Credit to the Inverness supporters, many of whom were still in fine voice cheering me and my zombie comrades over the line at the end.
I found my bag and painfully put on some extra clothes under a tree as a gentle drizzle turned into a downpour. I swore blind that I would never do another marathon again.
Today Salena texted me to say that next October we were both going to get ourselves under the five-hour mark, and I said, okay.
