I love the Northumberland Coastal Run which is 14m from Beadnell to Alnmouth. So when the opportunity came up to run a marathon on roughly the same course out and back from Alnmouth, I jumped at it and I am glad I did. An added advantage was that it was almost all offroad and it took me down trails I hadn't covered before.
A very small invited field of about forty including 100 marathon club members, locals and Anna Seeley and myself. Phil Owen was there supporting on his mountain bike and as is almost inevitable when Phil is around we had a sunny day. We started with a slight cooling breeze, but that developed in the second half which made it tough. It also got warmer and I was resorting to pouring a bottle of water over my head at the checkpoints. However, I seemed to dry out in about five minutes.
I had spent four and half hours on a mountain bike the day before and as I expected, I ran out of steam. This was at about 18m and I ran/walked from there. The scenery in the sunlight was just awesome. I managed to come in under 5 hours so I was happy with that. Anna finished not far ahead of me
One of the advantages of a small field is it increases your chance of a prize and I won my age category ! It's only the second time I have ever done that
I will definitely do this one again
No comments:
Post a Comment