Marathon #75: Broken Witch and Not so Broken Me

Here I am again, doing something I said I wouldn't do - entering a marathon because I was suckered into it because of some fancy bling. Having said that, it was relatively cheap to enter, being a group discount of races races spread over the year. Phoenix Riverside Marathon is the 3rd out of 4 in the Phoenix Icebird series (same as last year's Firebird, but a different coloured medal at the end). You do the first 3 marathons and get plain old medals for them, then the 4th is an enormous Phoenix with places to hang your other three medals on. 

Thankfully this series of events is reasonably close to home and only requires getting out of bed at 6:30. The weather was set to be sunny and cold, but I still struggled to get out of bed due to a load of aches and pains around my hips, glutes and hamstring. 

I arrived on time, got my number and then started looking out for friends in the crowd who I might run with. Club-mate Leon didn't turn up so it was looking like it was going to be a lonely trial of just coping with the pain, but things started looking up when I noticed someone in a FetchEveryone t-shirt. The wearer goes by the Fetch name MovingAlong and we spent a few minutes chatting before the briefing. At least there would be someone to cheer back to as we passed on each of our 4 laps. 

Setting off, I quickly felt overdressed and got rid of the hat, but kept gloves on. The course by the Thames near Walton down to Hampton Court is almost completely flat, not even a little bridge to break the gradient, but I was struggling for the first few miles with tight glutes, hamstring and hips. Time to start badgering other people with running chat to take my mind off the pain. 

So I ran for a while with Jagjit Singh until I had finished about 4 miles and I had warmed up a bit, then kept the pace up around 10min/mile. On the second of the 4 laps David Lewis, chairman of the 100 Marathon Club, caught me up. We have met on several marathons this year and we had an interesting chat about being club chairmen. This turns out to be a far easier job for me than for him, what with members and committee of the 100 Marathon Club being spread all over and also having to deal with the odd few members with very strong opinions voiced on Facebook on what should constitute a marathon, membership of the club, club kit, the shape of medals, the effort or lack of if you happen to be very slow.....It seems there's always something vexing someone. 

For me, it's basically "Everybody happy? OK. Let's run!" 

It is so nice having a great committee who are enthusiastic about their roles and club members who just get on with running and having a nice time. Makes my job so much easier. 

Half way through lap 2 I caught up with Judy, the "Broken Witch", who I think had decided to do a last minute marathon just to keep the legs ticking over, but only found out she was in this one at 10pm last night at a party. Great prep! We chatted about her job - an equine vet, so generally brilliant work, but stressful at the moment - and her marathon challenges. She had been running marathons in Antarctica, North Pole, Falkland Islands, Christmas Island, Faroes and had more exotic, hard to get to places to run while raising money for breast cancer research. Fascinating stuff and nice to while away a couple of hours along the way to the finish. We finished together about 45 minutes quicker than I had expected I would do (maybe I'm not as broken as I thought). Thanks to the people I met it was a very pleasant day out. 

This running journey is so much enhanced by who you meet along the way. 

More details about Judy's current 7 Seas Challenge can be found here: 
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