Report from Bruce from race on Sunday, 27 May with further comments from Tomoyo.
After having a worried eye on the weather forecast for most of the week beforehand, like most I was dreading running yet another hot marathon.
The day got off to a bad start with us leaving the house a little bit later than planned, getting caught in a diversion getting onto the M8, having underestimated how long it took to drive to Edinburgh City Centre and then realising that the ‘London Road’ start was actually quite a long way from the old Regents Road start. Oh dear. So after a panicked warm-up scurry to the baggage truck, flinging on some factor 30 all that remained was to fight my way through the crowds of spectators to the start pen.
By that point I didn’t actually care that I had 26.2 miles to run. Victory was mine just for making it to the start line.
Once the race started the crowds thinned out quite nicely, and (as usual) I set off too fast at sub-6 minute miling and ended up 3.5 minutes ahead of my target by halfway. I spent the rest of the race waiting for my legs to seize up – but thankfully it never happened and was able to hang on. And luckily the weather never got quite as hot as it looked thanks to a cool sea breeze. My low-tech anti-Garmin device (race pace band printed off the Runner’s World website: http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/pacing/javascriptcalcs3-v2.asp) worked quite well until the latter stages, by which point I’d flung so much water over myself to keep cool that it had turned to a gooey pulp. Oops. It wasn’t like I was paying attention to the plan anyway, so it didn’t really matter. After a seamless hand over of hydration juice and a gel from Nina at the 23 mile point, I was able to relax and soak up the atmosphere as the realisation that I was going to beat the 2:45 target sunk in. All that remained was a quick dash up the finish straight for 7 minute PB, encouraged along by a big shout-out from our own race commentator Bryan and the impressive crowd.
The nice weather brought out a decent crowd of spectators on a pretty inaccessible route for spectators – special thanks to Gerry, Louise and Mrs (Geordie Jim’s wife) Robinson for the shouts of support, they were much appreciated.
So all in all, a great day out!
Here are the results I could find on the EMF site before it crashed, I’m sure I saw more Bellas than this though:
Pos Gun Chip Name Category
18 2:41:33 2:41:24 Bruce Carse SENM
220 3:07:28 3:07:10 Neil McEwan SENM
236 3:08:31 3:08:12 Jim Robinson V50M*
307 3:11:53 3:11:35 Robert McEwan V55M**
1220 3:38:07 3:35:02 Tomoyo Fujiwara V35W
2132 ? 3:51:46 Lucy Mackay
2907 ? 4:02:29 Sarah Gillies
* PB, 5th in MV50 category and all important London Good-for-age place
** 7th in MV55 category
Race report with info on the winners here: http://scottishrunningguide.com/news.php/1291/sun_shines_on_edinburgh_marathon/full
And from Tomoyo
I am very proud of you all who made a personal best yesterday!
It was my 20th marathon race and the first time that I did not enjoy running at all.
It was already too warm from the beginning and I guess too much for me to run the 2 marathons in 6 weeks (I agreed with you Jim!).
Although I could not make my dream time sub 3hours 30min, I am so happy that I managed to finish to the end without walking… I did my best, no regret.
I thought I was not going to run the marathon again when I finished yesterday…however I guess it is an addiction, I am looking for the autumn race now.
Thank you for your great support as always.
Tomoyo
