Brighton Marathon 2015: Triumph over adversity

This is my account of the Brighton Marathon 2015.

Sunday morning- 02:00hrs (12^th April).

Things were not going according to how I had envisioned on the morning of my first attempt at running a marathon in under three hours. Below my hotel room was the steady thumping of disco music combined with the cacophony of voices, laughter and cheering from a party that the hotel was hosting. I won’t try to pretend to you that I remained calm. I wished I could say I had, but even my intensive meditation this week could not contain my anger at being placed right above a party. I had even asked the hotel to put us in a quiet room. Things started to deteriorate for me when I started to hear the plumbing from various other rooms. In the end I went down to complain to the duty manager of the hotel; call me a spoil sport but they had a number of  other guests staying who were running the marathon that day and I felt well within my rights. Luckily I managed to squeeze in four hours sleep, but I knew things were not going according to plan. I knew I wasn’t in the right mind set, there was no doubt I was feeling sorry for myself and was very frustrated, but I tried to be positive. I thought about how champion runners would have dealt with the situation and realised they would have got on with the job.

08:35hrs

The final step to the start line: Tapering.

“I had as many doubts as anyone else. Standing on the starting line, we’re all cowards”. Alberto Salazar.

Running, being in general an individual sport, means that things can be quite lonely. Compared to other sports I have played, e.g. rugby, I find from time-to-time I have a certain yearning to share the highs as well as lows of what my training has been like or how a certain race went. This is probably the reason for this blog, is that I like to share what I have been through even if it only helps one other person in their running journey; but also to record how I felt at a particular time or what I have learnt from training. In this post what I am beginning to understand is that tapering is as much a mental battle to believe in the goals you have set yourself for the marathon, as well as being a chance to look at what you have achieved through training and how you will run the race you have prepared for.