I have written a number of pieces as a result of my own personal experiences, but have never thought about publishing them, but just to have them as a record or diary of my own personal life. Like the time I ran a marathon. I wrote a diary of the time I prepared and ran in the Holstead Marathon 2008 in Essex.
This was my first marathon and I had been training very hard, well what I thought was hard – about 12 miles a week. I even ran 19 miles one day in preparation all this led me to believe that I had done enough to get a good time. I wrote in my dairy – it makes me laugh now thinking it. How could I have possibly think I could run a reasonable time on the mileage I had been doing? The training I was doing I found a ‘hard slog’, in wind and rain, freezing cold and hot weather , 6am starts before I went to work – which is how it is supposed to be. But I still did not do the required 40 miles a week which should have been my target for the time I was after which was about 2:30 – 3 hours finishing time.
I was super fit at 12 miles fine at 15 , 16 , 17 and then mile 18 came. Well something happened to my body. Was it the kilo of jelly beans I had consumed to keep my sugar levels up? – they rattled a lot in a specially designed pouch, obviously by this time they were now sticky and gooey. Was it the 5 litres of water I consumed? – far too much. Luckily I had my reggae music on my phone playing all the way round to keep me going. I found out afterwards that the day was the hottest day in the year making it a record – no wonder it was sweltering hot. Adding to my the enjoyment of the marathon I also had a steward on a bike rattling away in my ear, about me being mad to run in this heat and would I like to go to a local pub on the way to the finishing line for a cool beer instead.
I did not take him up on his offer no matter how tempting it was. I eventual finished the marathon and swore I would never do one again. I am now in preparation for my second marathon, which I will be doing during the winter months, but I will be putting in more preparation.
This article was written by St.Clair Brown using our Community Reporters website
