Marathon 7: Northumberland

The longest marathon….ever!!! Over 7 hours of pain to complete this bad boy. Now I’ve mentioned that over a few of the marathons I was unprepared, but you could say that this was from a mental preparation side with getting my head around lots of climbs. This one….I was extremely unprepared on all levels.

Not taking into consideration that you were given a route map, and that I have no sense of direction what so ever, this run was always doomed for failure….or just a very slow completion. Needless to say, sat the night before until about midnight going over the route power point, it felt like I was cramming for an exam, but no I was just trying to learn the route by pictures! I’ve never been one for map reading or navigating myself around places so there was definitely a panic building up.

The actual morning of the race went rather smoothly and probably a bit of wishful thinking and complete denial about what I was about to enter into, I stamped out any nerves, or just blatantly ignored them. The first tell-tale sign of how the day was going to go, began with the race HQ…a teeny tent. Not your usual race HQ in a nice big village hall or hotel, it was clear that this run was for hardy souls. Then there was overcoming my one ultimate fear…squatting. Don’t get me wrong im a lover of the great outdoors etc. however the one thing I’d never been able to get my head around was weeing outdoors. Well with no toilets insight and about 2 litres of water in my system I had to get over that fear pretty quickly.

The race started pretty horrendously. Within the first 3 miles I’d been stung by nettles, thrown up about four times and was right at the back of the pack, not really sure where I was going. And then I met the lovely Maxine! Without a doubt had it not been for Maxine that day I don’t know whether I would have made it to the end, not through physical fitness, but directions! I thought I would be able to wing some of the route but nope, not a sign in site!

Having already mentioned to the great John Bell that he could pick me up at the end and guessed my time at being 5 hours, alarm bells started to ring, after a never ending climb up Cheviot, and a time check that showed we’d been out for about 4 hours and only just hit 13 miles thereabouts, my calculations had been massively wrong and I’d clearly underestimated the challenge that this run was presenting.

Following the lovely Maxine upwards...literally

A very long climb later we got to the top of this bad boy, only 13 miles in!

Officially at the top

 However, sticking with a bit of PMA and having no choice but to trudge on forward I decided to enjoy the rest of the day, resigning myself to the fact that I was going to be out in Northumberland for a rather long time. A few tumbles down some rather steep declines later, and we started to make some progress along some country roads, however we also had the blistering midday heat, and herds of farm animals to compete with.

If we weren't competing with hills, we were competing with this...

But how could you complain with views like this!

The hours passed by and Maxine declared that we were getting closer to being back at Wooler. By this point I was a mess, to put it nicely. It hurt to run, it hurt even more to walk, and we didn’t seem to be getting any nearer to our destination. However when we started getting stung by some familiar looking nettles I knew that we couldn’t be far away.

 

Dragging our sorry arses through the streets of Wooler back to the race HQ I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see a camping chair, and even better was the packet of crisps to satisfy the massive salt cravings I was having.

After 7 and a half hours, 26.2 miles and over 5000ft of climbs through Northumberland, I learnt one lesson that has stuck with me….make sure you check the route before you sign up to an event.

Evidence of a hard days work!