The Marathon Man

1. I have been going running on and off (mainly off) for the last year or so.
2. I live near (alarmingly near) where they start the London Marathon each year.
3. I am not doing Edinburgh this year and am looking for a myriad of things to fill the fringe shaped void in my calendar

I think only a fool could not come to the conclusion that I should try and run the marathon next year (even if number two is because it’s an easy commute – and is for the same reason I’ll never climb everest. Or go anywhere.)

Well, we had someone staying over who was a friend of a friend of ours that was doing the marathon, and we went to see her off and, like when at most big events, I didn’t like not being the total centre of attention I started to think I might like to do it next year.

Claire, in some stunning reverse psychology, said I’d never do it and so here we are, a blog read by literally people in which I say I will.

Come monday I was watching this morning and found myself welling up at the women who ran the marathon and were being interviewed on the sofa. They’d all had cancer or lost someone with cancer and it was all very emotional, but all I could think was that if I ran the marathon maybe I could get on This Morning.

This proves that a) I should get out more and b) doing the marathon is exactly that.

I’ve been very careful in all the time I’ve gone running to never measure time or distance that I ran as I knew I would be disappointed. It was time for some disappointment. I basically run around greenwich park until I get knackered (which is about halfway round the park until a fucking massive hill stops me), I presumed I was managing about 5 miles a go. My mapping the route on google maps I found it was a depressing 1.2miles. That’s a lot less than what a marathon is.

So today I found myself pushing hard and using the inbuilt ipod stopwatch for the first time (before this I used to use the vague timing system of albums “I got round the park in two thirds of London’s Calling, but I did skip the first track”).

The hill that normally finishes me off wasn’t going to beat me today and I carried on, past the tennis courts and a rose garden I’d never even seen before. And I made my first ever full lap of the park in 24min 15.29sec, or most of Alright by Cast (the prospect of making the album stop did make me run quicker, it’s not as good as I remembered).

Getting back home I plotted the run on google (which took considerably longer than 24min 15.29sec) and it told me I’d done a whopping 2.54 miles.

Good, but I can’t help but feel slightly annoyed I didn’t get the 4 minute mile (though maybe I did, but ran the other mile and a half a lot slower)

Here it is in glorious google…

View marathon training in a larger map

So, like too many things I do, instead of doing the groundwork in secret I am going to start from the off by announcing that I can do this, which means I will probably humiliatingly fail and this time next year someone will point to this blog (which will still probably be the most recent post on here) and will go, “Oh that, yeh, well, um.”

That is, of course, if I get into the marathon. Fingers crossed I don’t, after all what is less humiliating? Getting into the marathon and not doing it, or failing to get in and saying “Well they wouldn’t let me do it”. Both involve the same amount of training, one loses a lot less face.