Hull marathon 2018

Road marathons are not our favourite thing to do, but Melanie was born in Hull and wanted to run across the bridge. I lived in Hull for four years and grew to love the city so we decided to enter. I had done a marathon in Hull before, but this was a different route which I was happy about.

After our rather painful experiences at the end of the Liverpool Rock and Roll road marathon, we decided to adopt a different approach this time. At Liverpool the approach was to walk until we came to a band and then run after that, but it was way too vague as a strategy. This time we decided to adopt a run to a mile marker and then walk for a minute and repeat. If felt a bit weird early on and we kept to it until we got to the Humber Bridge area which was a bit more hilly and windy.

We picked up our numbers on the day, the race started from the KCOM stadium and we we were going to get a stadium finish 😀 We came across a few people we know from previous marathons and ultras which was lovely.

We were a bit cold at the start so I was running in a long sleeve top with a tee shirt on top, gloves and shorts. Melanie was also similarly wrapped up and she was running with a backpack.

It took us about a minute to get through the start which was fine. Besides the marathon there were relay runners, some a two person team and others a four person team and they had signs on their backs indicating they were relay runners. The change over points were well organised and no problem for us going through. Overall the event was very well organised. The number of marshalls was just amazing, they were on every single road junction and they were incredibly supportive and encouraging. Lots of them were offering jelly babies, which we don't eat, but we could have eaten our body weight if we had wanted to.

After a run round the outside of the stadium we headed off to the centre of Hull, past the main hospital and the railway station. Hull is very flat which meant that the first 16m or so there were no hills. The drags started as we approached the bridge.

After coming through the centre we headed for the Humber.

Flood protection on the River Hull.

Looking towards the mouth of the Humber.

Then route headed north east through various residential street and then turned to head back to the centre a different way and through East Park.

We came back into the centre of Hull again and crossed the River Hull.

This street brought back memories for me, I used to regularly go to a pub down here and it is such a wonderful name for a street.

There were quite a few music groups on the route. We passed this group of pipers twice and the route crossed itself at about 4m and 9m

After leaving the centre we used a road through the docks which I guess the public don't usually have access to.

and then inland. There was regularly something to look at. Also there was quite a number of pieces of artwork stuck to the ground that we ran over.

Through the lovely Pickering Park.

We came to a dual carriageway which we were to come back on and it was good to see the faster runners go apparently effortlessly by. There was a definite drag up at this point. At this point Melanie was in pain from various parts of her legs so we changed our strategy a bit and walked some of the hills when we came to them.

We came to the bridge and went south which felt good. There was a good reason for this, we had quite a breeze behind us, so coming back north into a strong breeze was pretty tough and we decided that as we didn't care about the time and Melanie was finding it a bit easier to walk, we walked until we got halfway over when the drag upwards finished.

Back down the dual carriageway was easier and then we turned off and went into the Costello stadium where a bit bizarrely, there was a 100m sprint section on the track. I haven'y encountered this before but it was a welcome distraction to see a few people going for it. We were way to beat to try !

A few more residential streets and then half way round the stadium and them into it and another half lap to the finish. A nice touch to finish in an impressive stadium.

Bananas, flapjack and water at the end. A slightly bizarre collection of things in the goody bag...

Overall we enjoyed this one more than Liverpool. It could be a fast route if it wasn't for the bumps on and around the Humber Bridge. It did not affect us but those looking for a personal best it may not be the perfect route. 

Hopefully Melanie will get over her injuries quickly, she is hopeful !