April 1st - first full marathon

Feeling pretty confident about my training recently so I decided to take a day off and go for as long a run as possible. Running round the villages is one thing but I wanted to get more empathy with the distance I'm going to have to run on the day. Checking my local route maps I realised I could get to the outskirts of Banbury in half marathon distance, so the germ of a thought hit me, could I do a practice marathon for the big day?

I was up at the crack of dawn and before I had a chance to talk myself out of it I was breakfasted and kitted up, complete with water and energy gels. My route would take me the full length of the B4100 through Aynho to Adderbury, and back, crossing the country boundary twice. I made my mind up that if it was too much at the halfway stage I would continue through Adderbury to Banbury proper, curtailing the run at about 16 miles, and take the train back to Bicester.

I actually began the run at 6am, so as to complete in the morning, and avoid the rush hour traffic around the A43 junction at the busiest time. It seems I made the right choice as those first 5 miles or so were run in almost complete silence. No trouble from my aching legs, I felt good about my choice. Briefly into Northamptonshire, I had crossed my first ever county boundary while running, though at some unmarked point the road becomes Oxfordshire again.

I have to say the whole run up to Adderbury felt really good - no annoying songs in my head either which is always a bonus! I reached my turnaround point at pretty much bang on two hours, a lot faster than Silverstone, and decided at that point that I would have enough left in the tank to turn round and come home for the full marathon distance. I was well into my stash of energy gels at this point but they seemed to be doing the trick and I still had plenty left (and more to the point, no ill effects!)

I thought coming home would be a killer, but in reality it was more downhill than up (the outward leg had clearly been slightly uphill but I hadn't really noticed it). I slowed down somewhat, which was inevitable, but wanted to avoid the much bigger slowdown I had suffered on Sunday. The best thing about this was that when I really started to get tired at about mile 24, I knew I was just running home, to a triumphant blog and a bath that could last afternoon. Final time was an amazing (for me) 4 hrs 35 minutes, pretty much bang on ten minute mile pace.

I made it home, checked my route, and in fact I have done 26.8 milles this morning, my first full marathon. I'm buzzing now - April 1st, can you believe it? ;-)