With this being my first marathon I had no idea how well I'd go. And being worried about injury I had no idea if I'd even finish.
I'd flared up a couple of injuries late in my training and spent my tapering period desperately trying to make sure I could make the start line. I only have a week off after this race before I dive head-first into a triathlon programme to prepare for Challenge Wanaka.
Long story short I stood at the start line feeling pretty good but my strategy was to pull out if injury started to rear its ugly head again. If this was a target event I'd push through the pain but I only entered this race because I want to have at least one marathon under my belt before Wanaka, if only so I know what the distance feels like.
Coming into the race I can't say I was all that impressed by the course map. I realised that if I do have to pull out it's a very long walk back as you can't just cut across the airport and the race info made no mention of transport. So if something was to go wrong during the second half I may as well carry on walking.
The nice thing (at first) was the weather. I had to take my jacket off pretty early because it was quite warm. If they'd kept the start time at 9:00 I might have taken it off before the start which would have saved a little weight.
I felt a bit of soreness in my foot about halfway through and started to wonder about the injury monster but it wasn't bad so I kept going. The wheels started to fall off a bit at about 25km which seemed a bit unusual as I'd had training runs longer than that. Then I realised that the lovely warm weather was lovely warm REALLY DRY weather and I was dehydrating, despite having two cups of fluid at each aid station. And they were really generously filled cups, not the half-filled ones you normally get at races.
At the 27km aid station I downed a gel and three cups of fluid. This put the spring back into my step just in time to hit the part of the course that heads directly into the wind. I felt good but was working to maintain a fairly slow pace. Not to worry, once I'm out of the wind I can get the pace up again.
Except it didn't work out that way as the dehydration monster had bitten and the writing was on the wall. The 30km aid station was a welcome sight and I forced down another 3 cups. I knew going in that the race would really begin at 30km and that pretty much held true. I was starting to suffer a bit.
From there on I had to battle to make it to each aid station and get the 3 cups down. At least they were staying down... I wouldn't recommend spectating anywhere past 30km as you'll see some ugly sights.
I managed to jog my way across the finish line in 4hrs13min which is quite a bit slower than I'd hoped but given the conditions and the dehyration I'm still quite satisfied. I'd been aiming realistically for 3:45 but figured anything under 4:00 would be a good result, especially when I hit that head wind. If I'd hydrated better then I'd have had a good chance at my original target.
Afterwards my legs were pretty stuffed, it was difficult and painful to walk. My old heel injury had gradually flared up again during the race which is a real disappointment since it had been behaving very well recently, to the point where I thought it was as good as cured. I think I'd originally injured it last September, then re-injured it in February when I did the Run to Remember much too fast. So it's going to be a while before that comes right again.
My left leg is very sore as well and this worries me a bit. Between the two I'm hobbling around quite slowly.
So now it's a week off trying to get these legs back together, then we start with three months of intensive strength training which is intended to help prevent me from injuring myself all the time... should have done that years ago!
