Lisrun: District Double Brathay Windermere marathon 2008

Sunday 18 May 2008

District Double Brathay Windermere marathon 2008

We stayed in Staveley, but not at my usual place, this time we were outside the village in a house with fantastic views, but I did miss my usual place.

We got to Brathay in plenty of time and we were encouraged to park the cars near the lake so that my support team would not have far to carry their windsurfers and canoes ! :-)

They had a great time again. We met up with loads of Fetchies which was great.

I had no idea how the race was going to go. My legs had cramped the day before and I felt very tired after White Peak, so the signs didn't look good. However, a night in compression socks seemed to have helped quite a bit. I decided just to see how it went and slow down if the cramp came back. I took it very easy at first but soon settled into the pace of 10 min/miles that I had got into the day before. Ran for a while with a 100 marathon club runner and chatted away about marathons, it was great. I was taking sports drink and kendal mint at every station and also a gel every 4.5m. Never done sports dring and gels together before but it didn't seem to be doing me any harm. Walked the 7m hill and lost a couple of minutes, but then plodded on at the same pace.

As yesterday from about 5m I was catching and overtaking people and this seemed to help me along. As we turned at the bottom of the lake, the sun had gone behind clouds and it remained that way until the end. The next 5m after halfway were tough with lots of climbs and descents.

I remember reading KinkyS's blog of Windermere last year as she described her district double. As I recall she found a second wind somewhere round the last quarter and much to my amazement I found something similar (just a lot less speedy :-)

). Nightjar seems to have had something similar this year. At about 18m after the tough undulations, I suddenly felt strong and started to speed up. I walked only some of the 21m hill but didn't lose too much. I speeded up a bit more in the last two miles.

In the last mile I passed one of the 10 in 10 runners and I congratulated him on what he had done and then as I ran on he noticed that I had done White Peak (I had the white peak race number on my back) and he gave me some lovely loud cheers which encouraged me a bit more. Got a few comments about my sanity on the way round because of that number :-)

I drove up the hill to the Hall, round the bend to hear the loud whoops and claps of the assembled Fetchies - a lovely sound. 4hr 26m 29sec, my slowest marathon but I enjoyed it much more than Windermere last year which was 13m faster. It feels so much better not to blow up at 21 miles and have to walk most of the rest. I had originally set out to do both under 5hr so I'm over the moon to have done both in less than 4h 30m :-)