26.2
As we stand in the pen waiting to move forward towards the start line there are no nerves. We have One last check of our phone before setting it to flight mode and there’s a message from our youngest daughter telling us to ‘wave to the ASICS camera’ We try to work out which side is going to best and as we edge along nearer to the start we traverse across to the right hand side and we spot Cathy on the stage and give her a massive wave and cheer. And then we see the camera and wave excitedly.
We cross the line and our victory lap is underway. Down the hill and into the first corner , it’s all bunched up ! And disaster strikes. Debs trips on a cats eye in the road and falls! Going down heavily and just missing a manhole cover with her face.
Myself and Mel help her up and straight away it’s apparent she’s hurt herself quite a bit.
The skin is off both the palms of her hands and she’s got a cut on her chin, the only thing I’m thankful is she has damaged her teeth or anything else. We clean her up with some wipes and calm her and she’s ready to go again. We take it easy for a little while but we can see the 4:45 pacer just ahead. As Debs seems fine from the fall we decide to try and catch him up.
As mile marker 2 goes by we spot Sarah and Fei’s partner Connor who give us a cheer and raise our sprits. We are having such a good time. Waving to the crowds, giving high fives to the kids and dancing to the songs blasting out from the pacers play list.
We are making good time and manage to push on ahead of the 4:45 pacer! We are ticking off the miles as we go. At about mile 8 we come to a little loop in the course, we start looking for any familiar faces running in the opposite direction all the time wondering how our fellow marathon challenge mentees are doing. And we know that when we come along that stretch of the course we will be half way! Brian starts to struggle a little here and but we get talking to an inspirational man that was running his 154th marathon!! And that gives Brian the little kick he needs to keep going.
We are still going strong until mile 15 when Debs knee gives in with that familiar sharp pain. There are a few tears of frustration, we stop to try and stretch out and continue but it’s too painful to run more on it for more than half a mile at a time so we adopt a walk/ run strategy. Picking out land marks along the way and running to them then picking out another and walking to that before running again.
We see the 4:45 pacer go by and try to stick into him for a little while but by that point Brian is feeling the effects of the marathon and feels like he’s running on empty. Sub 5 is still in reach if we keep going as we are but it’s getting harder and harder to keep any pace.
At about mile 22 we see Jamie another of the ASICS front runners and he continues on with us. It was really nice to chat to him and take our mind off everything else. We knew that the ASICS cheer squad would be at mile 24 and that was our focus now. We saw the 5 hour pacer go by and we just can’t hold on which is so frustrating . We focus on what we can do and decided after that just to soak up the experience so when we seen the ASICS team at mile 24 we stopped for hugs and high fives and it was just what we needed to keep us going till the end. Despite feeling like we had nothing left we managed to jog on from there for a little while. We walked again so that we could save our energy for the final stretch.
We can see it, that finish line that we had been picturing for weeks. It’s enough to make us pick up our feet and we run in together with our wonderful mentor Mel hands aloft! Stop our watches look at each other and give each other the biggest hug. One of celebration and joy and pain and frustration at missing out on sub 5 . As we receive our medals and then wander through the finish area it all seems a bit surreal , It was over! We had just completed our first marathon!!!!
When We head back to the VIP area we are met with a round of applause and more hugs and congratulations from the other mentors and project runners who were cheering us as they saw us run in on the big screen showing the finish line.
Not only have we just run our first marathon , we have made some fantastic friendships. It’s been a joy to share our experience with you and we hope it’s inspired you to maybe consider running and who knows we maybe following you on your first marathon journey soon.
Brian & Debs x