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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