CHESTER-DNF

where to start on this one, well you could say it started off the minute i crossed the finish line at the Manchester Marathon which in itself was laughable (if any one wants that story feel free to leave a comment). anyway to get to the point i wanted to get my first SUB-3 so eager as ever i proudly stuck my entry in for chester many months in advance. so after the brief hiccup of a shortlived niggle/injury in June i got back into training seriously in July and it was all in, 100% effort with 100mile weeks an more. i did enjoy the training because of how well it went. for this marathon i decided to have a shorter taper so rather than 3 weeks it was to be 2 weeks. my body just seems to shut down with 3 weeks you see so i had to keep moving to a bit later this time so as not to get lethargic. Unfortunately it didn`t really go to plan though at all. i did my last quality session 14 days before Chester, in the form of a easy 2.5mile warm up then a half marathon distance effort with my marathon training partner then a 2.5m cool down, that was okay on the sunday, but things just went down hill after that. i felt really unusually tired on the monday(rested up) thinking i`ll run tomorrow, nope tuesday i felt rubbish (head aches an loss of appetite) then wednesday tonsillitis started and that basically was it till 3 days before the Marathon. so with 3 days to go i started to be able to eat again but it was to late. 10 days pre marathon i was 11st 4lbs and 3 days before the marathon i was 10st 10lbs so i was just cramming calories (carbs and protien) in to try to regain strenth an i thought with less than 24hours to go that i was good to go. with 24 hours to go i was back up to 11st so i thought great, things might work out after all. so i managed to get a solid 10hours deep sleep the night before...... MARATHON DAY So finally the day had arrived, it might as well of been D DAY the way i had banged on about it to the unfortunate souls that are my family. only runners choose to get up at 5:30am for breakfast then going back to bed for a sleep setting a second alarm so that we can make a fine art of of not sleeping in. I seemed to get it just perfect actually, getting up at 0715HRS packing the basics in a small backpack then setting of at 8:00am with me dad on the short drive to Chester getting parked up at 8:30am (perfection) just enough to go to the loo get into our running stuff then jog very easy to the start. so 8:58am i duck the barrier to get in my pen at the start (sub 3) 9:00 town crier gives a bit of a speech. 09:04 WERE OFF you could feel the tension in the atmosphere. thousands of runners all as fit as and prepared as they could hope to be given all there various circumstances, and here they are stampeding down the turf at the racecourse. it was exciting to be running through those first few minutes enjoying the crowds cheers and company of other runners. however after the first 5 mins the novelty does wear off and it really settles down now to relax and ease into the run ready to be hit with the reality of what i was attempting to do hear. the first mile seemed to pass in seconds, i just cant believe that first 7:01min/mile went in what seemed like a matter of seconds. at this stage it felt like i`d just been sat in armchair it was that easy. then on through the main street in the city centre with some good cheers from the crowds up to the 2nd mile in 6:51, it was slightly downhill though for most of this mile after a short climb at the start of the 2nd mile. then before we new it we were at 3rdmile (6.53mm)marker. it seemed to get serious now because we were all headed out of the city so from here on in were only going to get pockets of support in each of the villages but that was okay because there were plenty of them. 10k came round bang on schedule in 42:42 so 3hours was what i was headed for. just after the 10k point the runners around me slowed up slightly as i looked at me watch at about 8mile it said ave pace 6:54 so at 9mile i started to just pace myself up to one runner at a time, and this worked nicely because it reduced my average pace about a second every other mile so i went through halfway in 1:29:40 and by 17 mile the average pace had gone down to 6:49 which was nice because i wanted to have about half a minute leeway because there were a few undulations in this course which could derail a sub 3 attempt. i was feeling tiredness creeping into the legs now but kept pushing, at 18mile the legs began feeling sore although it was just 8miles left, i could do that surely, its only about an hour. unfortunately i was wrong i couldn`t do it because at 19miles in 2hrs 4mins 57secs i started to feel light headed, so at 19.5 miles or thereabouts (bang on for sub3 hours aswell) i started walking or swaying down the road as the guy marshalling told me so i began to worry at this point how i was going to make it to finish. then i just stopped at the road side because me brother just happened to be at 20m and he asked me if i was okay but i couldn`t think staright to answer so he just sort of helped me to the floor so i could come round. and that was it MARATHON OVER. gutting to be honest at the time because i was all in, nothing more to give. lesson learned do not start a marathon if unwell in the weeks leading up to a marathon or if not 100%. in future i will just save it for another day i think. very valuable experience though. thanks for reading.