Sunday October 8th, 2017
The first couple of miles of the race were challenging. A circuit through the narrow streets of historic Chester. The pros would call it technical. Cobblestones and kerbs. Spectators competing for the space too, camera-ready or stretching out for a risky high-five.
They say you should focus on your own form at the start of a marathon. Ignore the others. Keep it nice and steady. Not too fast. Save the effort for the tougher challenges ahead. But it’s hard to stay calm and strike a rhythm. I’m near the front of a mass stampede. Everyone anywhere close wants my space, my position.
A thought strikes me. Harvest all this raw energy and you could probably power the National Grid … and then a stray elbow pushes the thought straight out of my head. The elbow’s attached to a body. The body cuts in sharply in front of me, forces me to shorten my stride. To make matters worse, there are sharp turns. Then a steep rise at the mile mark. So the field bunches again. I need to manoeuvre round and past those who thought the marathon was some kind of sprint. Without getting hit from behind.
These city-centre mass starts have their own special ambience. Thousands of feet on tarmac echoing back from the buildings. Sometimes almost synchronised. Does the race have an invisible conductor? Keeping us all in time? The crowd calls out names. They’re clapping and whooping. Someone has a cowbell. The heat from our combined bodies. Almost palpable. Our neighbours on either side. Their breathing. Controlled, labouring, gasping. How are they doing?
And then a pair of club runners lope past casually chatting to each other about nothing in particular, just passing the time of day, as if they were out on a Sunday stroll. While I’m right at my limit. No words. I’m going too fast. We’ve only just started. Too fast!
This isn’t the way I planned it. I’d worked so hard on my training. The kids sometimes helped in the daytime, staying to supervise Lena while I went out for a long run. Or sometimes I’d run late at night, certain that Lena was sleeping. But running solo it was me who dictated the pace. In races — especially the early stages — it was hard not to go with the crowd.
But if I didn’t slow down, would I even make it to the end? I was still a novice at this distance — only six months ago I ran my first marathon. And I’d only run the full distance that one time; my training had maxed out at 21 miles. Was I ready?
Maybe I could find someone going at my target pace — the 7 minutes 15 seconds per mile I’d planned. Maybe I could latch on to them. I started looking around for help.
