What are we going to talk about this week then blog followers? Well,I know for a fact that whatever I’m on about won’t be exciting as last week's adventures, but then every week can’t be spectacular can it, and to be honest, I think I actually got the best weather over the Easter weekend, because it certainly hasn’t got any better over the last week has it. As I mentioned at the end of last week's update, I was actually off work last week, and whilst I didn’t get up to anything special, I did manage to get a few odd jobs wrapped up and made some progress on both the allotment and the MX5 project. The MX5 stuff isn’t really worth mentioning and certainly isn’t worth any pictures, but I have spent more than a few hours over the last week on my back, scraping underseal and rust off the bottom of the car. Dirty, horrible work that will never be seen again once the rust has been repaired and it’s all been repainted and re-undersealed, but if it’s going to be saved, it's a necessity. In more interesting news, I’ve finally got round to replacing the fruit trellis on the allotment. This one's been on my to do list for a while, but I’ve been waiting on an opportunity to get the metal delivered when I was actually at home to take delivery. That opportunity appeared over the Easter break, so before I went on my adventure I ordered the stuff which arrived Wednesday night (typically having been in all day, I went for a shower at 18:30 and the delivery guy pitched up as soon as I got naked). Anyway, having used wooden posts for the trellis since I got the allotment, I’m now on at least the third set of posts, and some of these have rotten away already or are loose, so I’m giving up on the wooden post front and whilst metal posts are more expensive I’m hoping that they’re going to last far longer that the wooden ones do, and therefore over their life the costs will actually be better. Besides the metal ones look far better and are now at least 3ft in the ground so are solidly planted, something that you never seem to be able to achieve with the wooden ones. On other allotment news, the greenhouse is now in full Spring sowing mode and the benches are starting to fill up with seed trays. I’ve now got, Broad Beans, Sweetcorn, Spring and Winter Cabbage, Sprouts, Kale, Broccoli, Sweet Peas, Normal Peas, Summer and Winter Squash, Leeks, Spring Onions, Lettuce, Courgettes, Carrots, Beetroot, Parsnips and a selection of flower seeds in the greenhouse, with Tomatoes, Chilli’s, Cucumbers and Peppers all doing well on the window sill at home. All we need now is for it to stop raining for more than 2 seconds at a time to allow the ground to start drying out a bit and I’ll be able to get the Potatoes into the ground to join the Garlic and Onions, which have been braving the never ending rain out there all winter. I suppose we can’t have a blog update without some running or cycling fun though can we. So to that end, I’ve been running, and it wasn’t even my favorite sort of running. Sunday saw me lining up on the start line for the Southampton Marathon and if there’s such a thing as a good Marathon, then in my book, a road Marathon certainly isn’t it. That’s not to say that I wasn’t looking forward to this one. Just that 4 hours running round housing estates, industrial estates and other assorted city center infrastructure, doesn’t have quite the same appeal as 26 miles through glorious countryside, along muddy trails, out in the peace and tranquility of the countryside. Oh, and there’s always the little issue of 26 miles of running on tarmac being viciously hard on your knees and feet to contend with. Why do it then? Well to be honest, it was the only thing I could find to do on Sunday, to satisfy my need to punish my body on a weekly basis! I could have gone and run the Test Way Ultra, but I’d foolishly promised the day to visiting family months ago, so it was going to have to be either the Southampton Marathon on Sunday, or nothing for the weekend, and we can’t be having that can we. And besides, it’s good to do the odd road Marathon every now and again to remind me how much better trail running is! That said, and as I’ve already mentioned, I was actually looking forward to this. My late entry required an early start on Sunday morning as I had to get to Southampton to pick up my race number before the start. Expecting it to be busy I made sure I was there well before start time and had picked up my number and had plenty of time to get myself ready, wander around for a bit, and have a good warm up, before taking my slot on the start line ready for the off. If there’s one thing that I really hate about the bigger road races, it’s people's inability to start in the right group. Every big run always asks for a predicted start time when you enter, and then goes to a lot of trouble to try and sort out the start so you depart with runners that are capable of running at the pace required for your predicted finish time, which should lead to a smooth start and give everyone time to settle down, spread out and generally enjoy the first few miles. What actually happens, is the organisers go to all the trouble of trying to sort everyone out, but people are either incapable of being honest with their predicted time (I’m going to run sub 3 hours when my fastest ever time is 6 hours 30). Or just totally disregard their allocated start position in an effort to start at the front, despite the fact that your time goes on when you actually cross the line, and not when they say go, so it’s irrelevant where you actually start (you could be the last person over the line and still win, if you're the fastest runner). All of which means that instead of everyone getting smoothly away because you're all running at the same pace, there will be some idiot trying to do 6:45 pace in amongst those doing 3:45 which brings everyone to a halt while they try to get past and just leads to mayhem. Why do they do it? It happens at almost every big run, with Sunday being no different. As such instead of getting smoothly away when the man and the mayor with the big hat and loudspeaker said “Go” we spent the first couple of miles trying to get into a steady pace, whilst jostling around trying to get past those that are incapable of actually starting in the right place! While I’m having a rant the other big bug bears are the people that are incapable of running in a straight line (these will be the same ones that cant walk down the pavement in a straight line, and spend their time on the motorway endlessly going from 30 MPH to 90MPH and then braking before repeating the whole episode again). If they just ran in a straight line then everyone else wouldn’t have to keep swerving and slowing down / speeding up to get out of their way! And the idiots that think they need to stop in the middle of the road to get a selfie, or just as bad, swerve across everyone as you approach a drinks station, pick up a drink and then stop dead to take a sip from it (these will be the ones that stop dead in shop door ways, escalators and other inconvenient places or swerve across 7 lanes of traffic at the last second when they finally decide to pay enough attention to realise that they are about to miss their exit on the motorway too). Strangely, all of these phenomena appear to be specific to road running. It may just be that the average trail run has less participants, so it’s not so obvious, but knowing that you're going to spend half your run weaving around people, trying to avoid being tripped up, and generally having to try and pre-empt what those around you are going to do, tends to put me off road running (as if the boredom and smashing your knees isn’t enough). For me, it’s a bit like cycling in a group, it’s fine if everyone knows what they’re doing, but if not, it’s best avoided, or it’ll probably end in tears. That said, once everyone sorted themselves out and settled down, the first few miles, through a quiet Southampton, in the early morning spring sunshine was quite pleasant. What wasn’t quite so pleasant was when we turned into the wind, which was absolutely howling in off the sea. The crossing of the Itchen Bridge was particularly nasty, with the wind swirling around strongly enough to trip you up as it surged around your ankles, and the stretch along the promenade with what should have been views of the spring sunshine glinting off the Solent, was downright viscous, with the wind straight in your face, trying it’s best to push us back the way we had come. I settled into a fairly comfortable pace quite quickly though, falling in with the 1:45 half marathon pacers. A pace which whilst undoubtedly too fast for the full distance, felt fairly comfortable for the first half. Being a 2 lap run, it’s hard to know how you're doing in the big scheme of things. But, as the half way point approached and we peeled off for lap 2, it became clear that there weren't many runners doing the full race, as the majority went the other way! With the numbers considerably thinned down, and 1:45 on the clock for the first 13 miles, the second lap was going to be a case of trying to hold my pace for as long as possible, whilst trying to enjoy the endless city center roads for a second time. If anything the wind had picked up as we crossed the Itchen Bridge for the second time and battled our way around the promontory, a task made all the harder by having no one to hide behind and already having 16 odd miles in my legs. Having already been round once, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect on lap 2, including the long climb, at what would be mile 22 or 23, just when the mileage would be really starting to bite! Bite it did too. A long slog of a climb, which unsurprisingly hadn’t seemed quite so hard on the first lap! No pretty scenery to distract myself with. No distractions from the task in hand. Just an endless stretch of tarmac reaching ever upwards in front of me. Eventually though I reached the top of that endless slog, and turned onto the flatter terrain of the last few miles. Miles which ticked slowly down, until with 3:37 elapsed, the finish line hove into view. And I’m happy with that. I think that 3:37 is a fairly respectable time, and is actually slightly faster than I was expecting, having set off with the goal of 3:45 in mind. Maybe, I went out a little fast, and if I could have maintained the pace from the first half I’d have been closer to 3:30, but that was going to be a big ask.
Road running isn’t really my thing, so it’s hard to know how competitive you actually are until you put yourself against a measurable crowd. But I would say that considering the strong wind along the coastal section and the route. That 3:37 here compares favorably with my last road marathon, where I did a 3:34 at London in October 2022. So, I may be older, I’m certainly no wiser, but I don’t seem to have lost that much pace in the last 18 months either, despite having spent most of last year out injured, and I’m more than happy with 3:37. Maybe in another 2 years I’ll do another road Marathon and see how I’m getting on. But I’m certainly in no rush to repeat the experience. It’s much more fun off-road!
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Paul PerrattOld enough to know better, young enough to still feel invincible, stupid enough to keep on trying the same thing again and again. Cyclist, Gardener, Runner, Hiker, Cook, Woodworker, Engineer, Jack of all trades and master of none, Anti social old git and all round miserable bugger. Archives
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