After a night of interrupted sleep (thanks to BooBoo cat sharing the bed) I woke up feeling quite achy, my calves were particularly tight. A soak in a hot bath saw a slight improvement. I taped my feet and sprayed my legs liberally with Deep Heat. Gitcat didn't seem to approve of the smell but he doesn't often approve of anything.
As there really was going to be booze at the finish, Sarah and I were travelling by taxi today and arrived at Lightmoor just in time to start at 8.45am which meant we got a lap in before the group photograph at 9.00am. A few laps in, I was starting to feel comfortable and hopeful that completing the full marathon was realistic. A bit further in, Sarah decided she would be happier aiming for the half-marathon but we decided we would use the track for some training runs in future. I hadn't had breakfast again so at about 9 miles, I had a 9-bar - I'd found this approach suited me quite well over the last couple of days.
There were lots of familiar and friendly faces and some new faces today and everyone was friendly and supportive as always. I was still enjoying myself when I got to lap 16 - halfway there ! A few laps after that my feet started to get painful and my right knee was uncomfortable so I took some painkillers. At about the same time, I started to dislike the flat section of the lap so I was trying to power-walk that section, wade through the big puddle at the bottom of the hill, stride up the hill, run down the hill and then up part of the next hill. There was a big stone partway up the second hill and I'd set that as my target to run to on each lap, then I'd walk briskly to the top of the hill and run all the way to the finish. I stuck to this approach for the rest of the race, apart from running the flat section on a few of the laps. My Garmin died at about 23 miles as I'd forgotten to charge it since marathon no 2 ! By this time I was hoping that I would be able to finish in a similar time to the two marathons earlier in the week. My feet were still painful and I was swearing a bit when I was out of earshot but I was steadily ticking the laps off. Once I had just three laps to go, I was getting a bit excited and by the time I got to the final lap I smiled and sang the whole way round (We're off to see the Wizard, if you must know !) and even managed to speed up for the final stretch.
Sarah filmed my finish, thankfully missing the bit where I said "Thank f**k for that!" and then opened and poured the champagne and Denzil presented me with my medal, a bottle of Prosecco and a big hug. I didn't remember to ask the time immediately but it was somewhere under 6 hours so consistent with the rest of the week and I'm really happy with that.
Three marathons and three half-marathons in six days. As some were a little bit over, that's 120 miles in 6 days. After the first day, every day was a step into the unknown as I had never before run the day after a marathon or a half-marathon (or probably any race at all). As I expected, my feet were the weak point but they didn't do too badly and I'm pleased to have only got one tiny blister all week - having never before run a half or a full marathon without getting blisters. Injinji sock liners and Blister Shield did the trick. I had a low point on the third day where my feet hurt too much for me to carry on after the half-marathon point but sticking to half-marathons for the next two days was the right decision and meant I could keep going and finish with a full marathon and at no point did I feel I didn't have the energy to keep going. My only real strategy was to slow down - it works !
I'm a very happy runner.
I've been trying to raise funds for the charity A Mile in Her Shoes so please consider donating to a very good cause: https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/hazels6in6challenge
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