Running the Hottest Ever London
Top tip: try not to melt
In October 2017, three life changing things happened in my little world.
My sister had her first child.
I started a new job.
And
This fell through my letterbox
Author’s own picture
I’d applied on a whim back in the May. I was a member of an online running group and back in the spring it had seemed like everyone was applying – I got carried by the enthusiasm of others. There’s about a 40 to one chance of getting in the London marathon. Checking the facebook page confirmed this, post after post of the rejected. And here I was, success on my very first attempt.
I read the magazine with trepidation. I had run half marathons before, but last time I felt sick from about 4 miles and cried most of the way round. In my defence, I live in Manchester and it was only a few days after the Manchester bombing. It was a strange time, and there was a lot of crying all round.
There were other obstacles to overcome. The need to impress in a new job; my husband working away nearly every week; and an eight year old who needed and deserved attention.
Getting creative
Melanie and Don Fink of Be IronFit fame recommend how to fit training into a busy lifestyle.
It gives three great tips:
Train early in the morning.
Train at lunchtime
Train indoors.
The first two tips were no use at all.
Training in the morning was out. I could hardly leave an 8 year old sleeping in his bed, there was the school run and then work to contend with.
Training at lunchtime was also impossible. My work hours and the train commute fitted tightly into the wrap around school clubs, but this was with a 30 minute lunchtime. You can’t begin to fit a training run and lunch into a 30 minute window.
The third tip seemed more designed for Canadian winters or tropical summers. Adding a 30 minute round trip onto a run didn’t seem like a super helpful life-hack, when I could just open my front door and step outside.
It was clear I was going to have to use other tactics. I went through my weekly schedule and found every opportunity to run. I then looked a basic marathon training plan. Trying to reconcile the two was like trying to put a double fitted sheet on a kings sized bed. In the end I recognised my own lack of knowledge and ended up paying for a virtual PT to write me a plan.
It certainly wasn’t ideal and it wasn’t without its challenges. Strength training in the gym whilst my son was at taekwondo. Dropping off in the dark at cubs and going straight for a run to maximise the distance. Spending almost all my Friday off on the long run.
It’s traditional to do a half marathon race in the build up. Mine was at the beginning of March and the weather in an English spring is incredibly unpredictable. It can be anything between snow and a heatwave. For the half it decided snow. The race got cancelled but undeterred I headed down to the gym and ran it on a treadmill. To try and make it more bearable I took my iPad and watched Lala Land whilst I completed the run. The movie was underwhelming and I was glad when both the movie and the 13.1 miles were over.
Otherwise training was uneventful, I kept going and kept sticking to the plan.
The day itself
The British weather played the reverse trick on the 22 April. The sun shone brightly. It was the first warm day of the year and the hottest London marathon on record. The first ten miles went ok, but then you began to see people dropping like flies in the heat. It was a gruelling experience. There were highlights, running over Tower Bridge was epic, seeing my family kept me going, but mostly it was an exercise in grinding out the miles to the finish.
I always thought running a marathon was something super fit people did and I thought it was would be the hardest thing I ever did. I was wrong on both counts (homeschooling makes a marathon look like a cake walk). But through a little creative thinking, a fair amount of discipline and a lot of hard work, I completed my first marathon and I raised a lot of money for charity in the process.
Author’s own picture
