Carlow/Kilkenny Trail Marathon: 22 September 2013: As the course hadn’t been officially measured this race was classified as a trail marathon even though it was on roads. Getting to Kilkenny involved a flight, a bus trip through Dublin and then a train journey. It is a pretty city with an impressive castle overlooking the River Nore and plenty of pubs (most of which have live music). On arrival our first surprise was that our Landlord had gone on holiday to Spain and we were more or less left to let other guests into the B&B as and when they arrived. On the Sunday morning a coach picked up most of the 48 entrants by Kilkenny Castle and took us to the race start in Carlow. The race director provided useful commentary on the course. His best one was ‘You turn left at this junction. This is the first left turn. There are others before it, but ignore them!’ Having said that the course was relatively straightforward and the only thing that caught everybody out was finding that once we passed the 26 mile sign instead of having just 0.2 miles to run there was still 0.8 miles to the finish. I wasn’t feeling as strong as I should have felt at 18 miles and finished in a disappointing time of 4:22:10.
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| Jack in Ostend |
Bournemouth Marathon: 6 October 2013: A twin room for 3 nights for £74 and a return train ticket for around £22 and I was all set for Bournemouth. This was a new marathon forming part of a running weekend with a half marathon 2 hours earlier on the Sunday and a 10k, a 5k and children’s runs on the Saturday. Nobody expected the temperature to top 20 degrees on the Sunday and there were 2 tough, long hills at around 12.5 and 17 miles, but with much of the marathon route beside the sea and the novelty of running up and down both Boscombe Pier and Bournemouth Pier the route was actually quite pleasant. There was plenty of support and the event was generally well organised. I was 9th vet 60 finishing in 3:52:46.
Great Eastern Half Marathon: 13 October 2013: After running the Hatfield 5k race in 23:35 my next challenge was to run this half marathon, which I last ran in 1995 finishing in 1:28. After picking up Howard Bull from his house we set off for Peterborough in teeming rain only to find that the A1 was closed. We made it to the race and to the front of the toilet queue with 10 minutes to spare. Fortunately Howard was not too disconcerted by this and achieved a PB in 1:39:29 in spite of the wet and windy conditions. I finished some way behind him in 1:48:14.
Prince Edward Island (PEI) Marathon, Canada: 20 October 2013: After a couple of days in Halifax, Nova Scotia I headed for race registration at Charlottetown, PEI. The PEI marathon is a point to point race starting at the beautiful Brackley Beach and following the fairly flat Gulf Shore Parkway beside the island’s north shore up to around 21km. Following spectacular views of sand dunes, beaches and the Covehead Lighthouse the route then turns onto the Confederation Trail for 12km. This is a well maintained fine gravel trail along the route of an old railway line and there are one or two long gradual climbs in this section. At 34 km the route rejoins the highway and comprises a series of rolling hills as runners approach the finish in Charlottetown. My original plan was to start with the 4 hour pace group, but when I discovered that they were taking regular walk breaks I moved up to the 3:45 pace group who turned out to be a friendly bunch. I stayed with them until 34 km and as I got ever nearer to the finish I started passing a number of them who had dropped off the pace as the hills started taking their toll. I later discovered that the pace group leader had finished alone in 3:45 exactly. I crossed the line in 3:47:21, which I was more than happy with. Rain had been forecast, but in the end we had sunshine for the duration of the run and the only slight bugbear was that we were running into a headwind for much of the latter part of the race. The rain arrived soon after I’d finished.
Legs for Literacy Moncton Marathon, New Brunswick: 27 October 2013: After a week of sightseeing stopping off at Sydney, New Glasgow and Saint John it was time to register for the Moncton Marathon. To my surprise the girl who had led the 4 hour pace group at PEI recognised me at the Moncton pasta party and introduced her English husband Andrew who, as it turned out, would be Moncton’s designated 3:45 pace group leader. This time I started off with Andrew’s group, but we drifted apart fairly regularly as they were taking walk breaks while I wanted to run without stops. When the group finally passed me at around 34km there were 4 of them, but as I neared the finish line I overtook 2 of them as I was feeling quite strong at that stage. The race route was flatter than for the PEI race, but there was much more gravelled trail to be negotiated and as it had rained overnight and the downpour continued throughout most of the race some areas were quite waterlogged. Also, with a number of out and back sections the path was quite crowded in places especially in the first half when we were sharing the route with half marathoners. An unexpected bonus was discovering that my time of 3:46:56 had been good enough to earn me the first place (out of 11) in the 60/69 age group.
Porto Marathon, Portugal: 3 November 2013: I loved Porto although I would have preferred rain on the race day and sunshine on the other days rather than the other way round. The marathon starts with about 1 km of uphill and finishes with a fairly gentle 1km uphill stretch, but is otherwise flat and mainly follows the course of the river. About 4km of the course was over cobbles and there were one or two falls over these, but mainly the road surfaces were good and the organisation was excellent. For the race entry fee of just under £36 runners received a rucksack, 1 cotton T-shirt and 1 technical T-shirt, a shoe bag and a large bottle of port. I set off too fast and suffered in the sun on the second half finishing in 3:57:6. Nevertheless, I would thoroughly recommend this marathon and might well consider running it again.
Athens Marathon, Greece: 10 November 2013: According to legend the first person who ran this distance dropped dead when he reached his destination. I survived, but it was hot and hilly. The bus pick-up to take us from central Athens to the town of Marathon went very smoothly, but by the time the race started at 9am it was already starting to get warm and within the first hour of the race the temperature was around 25 degrees and still rising. By the time I made it to the finish line in the famous Panathenaikon Stadium I was definitely suffering and was glad to clock a time of 4:14:26.
The impressive aspects of the marathon were (1) running the original historic marathon route (2) great organisation with fireworks at the start (3) the crowd support from every town and village we passed through (4) well manned and supplied drink and food stations (5) I won the sweepstake for the closest guess to the actual times that all of our group ran. The only negatives were (1) the hills and the heat - which are both out of the organisers’ control - and (2) congestion in the baggage collection area, which could probably have been solved by introducing a one-way system. I’m not sure that I’d run it again, but as a one-off experience I really enjoyed the event (once I’d found some shade at the finish).
Ashwell Half Marathon: 24 November 2013: Having originally planned to have 3 weeks with no racing this local (near Baldock) multi-terrain 2 lap half marathon proved just too tempting. Each lap comprised about 1 mile of slippery mud and 2 respectable hills. Runners are taken by bus from Baldock to the race start at Newnham and with only 169 competitors the whole event had a very informal and friendly atmosphere to it. I started off fairly steadily, but as I was feeling strong in the second half I was able to overtake quite a few runners without anybody coming back at me. I finished 82nd and first vet 60 in 1:50:45.
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