Manchester Marathon!!!!

The day of the Manchester Marathon, April 16th, had arrived!!  I am writing this in the early hours of the next morning, as post-marathon I wasn't in a great state for writing anything 😁.  I was running the marathon with my friend Kevin who lives in Manchester.  He did it last year in 3:26, but his training this year had been blighted by injury so he was happy to run it with me at what would obviously be a much slower pace.  It was great running the whole thing with a friend!!  I drove to Kevin's late Saturday afternoon, and then we got up around 7:30 on the Sunday to leave the house at around 8:15 for a 10:20 marathon start.  The whole event was quite well organised, with the only downside being the trams being very busy.  I wore a waist wallet so carried my phone and some gels, and wore an old jumper of Kevin's that was put into the clothes collection at the start.  Pretty much everyone was doing that, and I believe all the old clothes go to charity, so it's a good event!  The whole point of this marathon for me was simply to get some long runs in my legs, as endurance running is a very different thing to my usual 5k or 10k.  So I didn't mind the time, and was fully prepared to slow down if Kevin's injuries had meant he needed to keep a more moderate pace.  It was more important to me to be running with a friend than to get a decent time!  But we figured we could aim at around 4 hours.  I was keeping an eye only on power, not pace, but Kevin was tracking the pace.  We did the first half very easily in just under two hours.  I kinda wanted to go a little faster but was slowing down for Kevin and the pace was decent tbh.  After the first half, which was so comfortable, I thought breaking four hours would be a breeze!  My main thought was that the only way we wouldn't manage that would be if Kevin's lack of training meant he had to slow down in the second half.  And how wrong was I with that thought!!  Kevin could have certainly done sub-4, but I certainly could not!  But Kevin was very happy to wait for me and we ran the whole thing together which was excellent!  So, what happened after the first half to mean we did the second half much slower??  I guess the answer is two-fold.  Firstly, in my training, I had missed pretty much all of February due to my calf injury.  That meant I had done many fewer long runs than the training plan prescribed.  So I knew that I was usually ok for 10k, and 20k, but the third 10k was a typically a struggle.  And my longest runs of 32k and 33k were certainly leaving me in a state where I would massively struggle to do the final 10k!!  So, in the marathon, me starting to struggle in the 3rd 10k, and then hugely struggling in the 4th 10k was absolutely not unexpected!  But I said the answer was two-fold, and the first thing to slow us down was the second of these factors...  My right knee started hurting quite badly!!  If I look at our times per km you can see it's pretty  consistent for the first 24k - all between 5:25 and 5:41m/km.  So all within 4 hour pace.  The 25th km was 5:50 which is a little below 4 hour pace but not bad, but the reason for it being slow is that at the end of that km I had to start walking due to my right knee being very sore!  There were also some little hills which exacerbated the knee problem on both ascents and descents.  The 26th km took 9:33m because it was mainly walking!!  My knee was quite bad, but over the next few km of running/walking it got slightly better and certainly did not feel that it was getting worse.  From around the 28th or 29th km my knee was good enough that I should have been able to run ok on the flat.  But, of course, we were now close to the point where I simply hadn't trained.  And, possibly slightly due to worrying about my knee and changing my gate to protect the knee, I was running very slowly.  Probably around 6 or 6:30m/km.  But on top of that I kept having to walk for a bit.  I was simply knackered!!  So the last 12k or so were painfully slow!!  In fact they were painfully painful!! 😁.  My official time at the end was 4:40:17 which is incredibly slow, but tbh, just finishing in any time has made me very happy!  And my wife and kids came through to Manchester to see me finishing, and then we all went for a pizza, beer and wine - perfect 😁.