Brathay Windermere marathon 2014

After the Keswick Mountain Festival marathon Melanie spent some of the evening looking at youtube videos about how to tape up her knee. I tried not to get cramp, but failed at this...

I woke up feeling much better and ready to run, it is amazing what a good night's sleep can do. Melanie wasn't too bad, but she wanted to try the K-tape. We went to Brathay and found some tape to buy and I tried to put it on as per the video. It wasn't as easy as it looked to avoid getting kinks in the tape, but I got it on with some minor kinks. Neither of us had a great deal of faith. As it turned out her knee was fine all the way round. Could have been coincidence, but you never know ...

We saw the awesome 10 in 10 runners including Rentboy and Kaz and lots and lots of Fetchies and one other clubmate from Durham. It was clear it was going to be another hot day, but at least the route is pretty shady.

We decided to run separate races for this one as we knew we would probably run out of steam at different places. Melanie gradually pulled ahead but I found myself catching her gradually after Hawkshead and I caught her at about 6m when she had stopped to stretch. We then ran on for about 5m together. After that I slowed a bit and she disappeared and I didn't see her again.

The traffic was much lighter on the way down to the bottom of the lake which was good. The third quarter I always find hard, not just because of the undulations, but because of the traffic. There is no pavement, the road is narrow and two way traffic means that cars are passing very close to you. It was slowed down by convoy cars going up and down at 20 mph, but it still felt risky. However, this year the organisers had made it largely one way (though there was less traffic going south so maybe that was restricted as well), which made an enormous difference. Not sure how they achieved this, it must have affected lots of people, but hats off to them, it was great.

My running of this section was poor though, the after effects of the previous day, poor training and the heat were taking their toll. It thought I might try for sub 5, but I missed out by just under 2min. I wasn't disappointed, on Saturday afternoon I couldn't even see myself starting ! MelanieLH had a much better second half than I did and came in with 4hr 38min, a great performance on her first double 



My eighth time at this one and I will definitely be back, it has such a lovely atmosphere and it is beautiful 


Photos