Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Bangkok Marathon - 18th November 2007

Ooch, Ouch, Aagh!

Ironman training is now officially over - I'm tapering! I finished it off with a 123k ride on Saturday (was supposed to be 200k but commonsense prevailed) followed by a quick flight to Bangkok and a 2:00am start for the Bangkok Marathon.

In fact my start was 3:30am but my buddy Ian was celebrating his fiftieth year by doing his first marathon. His start was at 2:00am and as I was doing the race to support him I felt it the right thing to do to go and see him off rather than catching an extra hour and a half in bed - I'm a hero right!!!???

Ian's been training real hard for this race doing many long runs and some more than race distance. He set off in front of the Bangkok Royal Palace and I wondered off to find a chair and reflect on the pain that was inevitably to come to visit in the coming hours.

I started at a gentle pace covering the first 10k in an hour. The first 6k were a bit of a struggle especially as I thought the race was going to be pancake flat. The look on my face must have been a picture when I turned a corner at 2k and saw a mountain ahead of me. In fact it was a very very steep bridge. It wasn't too long and thankfully after that it was all flat.

I had a lovely run doing each of the next two 10k's a minute quicker than the previous. I have to say though I thought I was running much faster than the times showed I was. Thirty K of the course was an out and back along an elevated highway - there was a cool breeze blowing - Ian described it as "very tranquil" which was spot on.

Things started going bit pear-shaped at about 36k. The pain was intense and the k's seem to stretch out for ever. It was a real struggle and quite unpleasant, especially when thousands of 5 and 10k runners zoomed past as the courses converged. Anyway, eventually I came across the finish line which was a huge relief - I almost burst into tears with the euphoria of finishing combined with the pain throughout my body. I finished in 4:09:57 and was satisfied with that as a training run for Ironman in two weeks time.

I managed to hobble around for a while and found Ian with a big beaming smile on his face. He'd finished in 5:10:06 which he was justifiable delighted with. Ian had trained using the well practised run/walk technique but on race day he ran all the way - an awesome accomplishment and he's now eager for the next challenge - London Marathon 2008 maybe?

406th Simon Cross M 40-44 GBR 4:09:57
1166th Ian Stuart Hay M 50-54 GBR 5:10:06
(1931 started the race)

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