Yorkshire Marathon 2024

Despite originally not planning on running a marathon this year I entered the Yorkshire Marathon just 13 days before the event.  Whilst I feel as fit as I've been in a long time, resulting in my recent recent win at the Potters 'Arf, I had only done one 20 mile run since August.  In the end I decided to have a go and see what happens on the day, rather than not enter and then have no idea what I was capable of.  Based on training and recent events I thought that I might be able to do something in and around the 2.25 mark, but this was assuming I was properly trained for the distance.  I suspected that ultimately I would be found wanting as there is no easy way to a good performance and so it proved on the day...

At the off I settled into a comfortable pace and was joint second with the leader about 30 metres ahead.  After 2 miles the leader had been pulled back into our group that now contained five of us in total.  The weather was now getting steadily worse and eventually became driving rain with large quantities of standing water on the road and it blowing a gale on more exposed sections of the course.  I was feeling in control and although I rarely drove the pace, I was usually joint lead or second amongst our pack.  Things were fine to the 1 hour mark and 11 or so miles into the race where I suddenly struggled to hold my pace and I began to drift back and the first of our group to be dropped.  It was slightly bizarre as my body felt fine but my legs felt sluggish and lacking energy.  It was at this point that I knew it was going to be a long slog and it was a weird feeling knowing that I was fine but couldn't get the legs to go at the pace that equated to how I otherwise felt.  I went through the half marathon point in 73.15 about 10 seconds down on the leaders.  The even stranger thing was that if the race had finished at the half way point I'm not sure how much faster I could have gone.

Start. I was a couple of rows back in an all blue vest / black shorts.  Shortly after the weather deteriorated. 

At 14 miles there is a 180 degree switch back where I saw my wife and son, it was obvious to her that I was struggling.  Heading back the way I came I could see quite a lot of people that were not a huge distance behind me and the gap between me and the front group started to widen considerably.  I decided to just keep going at whatever pace I could sustain and wait for the likely 'wall' to hit me due to the lack of longer training runs.  Despite my watch now predicting a 2.28 - 2.30 finish time, I was able to sustain this pace and I managed to stop it drifting even further back which is usually what happens as it predicts on the basis of being able to hold the pace you are currently running at for the remainder of the course (which of course in a marathon on a bad day your pace usually only gets slower and slower).

At the 14 mile mark having now been dropped by the lead group a little earlier.  5th at this point.  I should add that I had thrown a gel belt to my wife - I started with 6 gels which is too many to carry by hand.  I had 3 left at this point so carried the remainder in my hand.

I was now just waiting for others to catch me which would then just give me an excuse to shut things down a little and trot into the finish.  However, the catch never happened and if anything I was closing in on 4th bit by bit over the following miles.  By 18 miles we were now level and I had it in my head that we could share the workload together a bit, but as it turned out he was suffering even more than me and fell back rapidly.  At this point I still felt pretty much the same as I had done earlier, in control but not able to transfer any power into my legs.  It stayed this way for the remainder of the race, including the last four or so miles to the finish where the marathon and 10 mile races merged.  It was certainly a mental distraction trying to weave through the 10 mile runners, but it came at the cost of running quite a bit of extra distance through having to take the wider lines around bends.

With just a couple of miles to go my watch was still predicting a 2.29 finish, although as I had run a bit of extra distance I knew that it was going to be 50/50 whether or not I could reach the finish line in under 2.30.  With about half a mile left I knew it was still very tight to cross the line under 2.30 and in fact my watch bleeped that I covered a marathon in 2.29.07, but in reality I still had a further 200 metres or so to go.  I ended up near sprinting the remainder and ended up crossing the line in 2.29.52 in 4th place.

Finish.  I'm on the right hand side of the shot.  It just shows how many 10 mile runners there were and if anything had thinned out a bit compared to a couple of miles earlier.

As it turned out 3rd must had been suffering, as at 40k I was two minutes adrift but by the finish I was about 1.13 behind.  I reckon that had the course been another two km longer I would probably have caught him.  At the end of the day though, a marathon is a 42.2km race, not a 44.2km race.  Perhaps had I been told 5km earlier I might have been more incentivised to find the extra pace, but the reality was that I didn't know and I was running at the pace I knew I could sustain without going deep into the red.

My initial feeling has been one of disappointment, the time was adrift of what I was hoping or expecting and it is my worst UK marathon performance (only one that was worse was the Auckland Marathon a couple of weeks after winning the Chester Marathon in 2017).  Now that a couple of days have passed I have mixed feelings, ultimately its still a sub 2.30 performance and in fact places me 22nd in the UK so far this year in the V40 category.  Bearing in mind that I'm not a million miles from V45 and sub 2.28 in that category would place me 22nd in the All Time (i.e. ever) UK list.  Being less than two minutes adrift of this, in shocking weather, having only done one 20 mile training run in the months leading up to the race puts things into perspective and perhaps I'm being too critical of myself.  

A good demonstration of what was going on in the race was my heart rate.  It peaked at 151 going up a hill at about 7 miles into the race, but overall it averaged 143.  This is ridiculously low on both counts and shows how I was unable to transfer energy from my body to my legs.  By comparison the winner had an average HR of 165, 3rd was 158 and 6th was 182.  It gives me some encouragement that there is more in the tank.  Although I thought the dreaded 'wall' would come, it never materialised and I could probably have continued at the same pace for a few more miles.  Despite feeling like my pace had fell away I went through half way in 73.15 and the second half in 76.37, so although it drifted a bit it was nowhere near as much as it felt at the time.  I also finished strongly, having had the 3rd quickest time out of the top 10 from the 40km mark to the finish so it was far from a poor ending.  Not too bad considering I averaged only 62 miles a week in the 6 weeks leading up to the point where I started to taper.

I have to say I have a lot of mixed feelings about the event itself and I am trying to be objective, despite the performance itself not being what I wanted.  Admittedly, some of this was influenced by the vile weather being as bad as anything I've experienced anywhere but at the same time you can't expect it to be lovely at this time of year.  To be balanced the on course logistics was very good, regular aid stations, excellent traffic management / road closures, logistics and organisation pre-event and support out on the course as well as the ability for spectators to be bussed to the half way point.  The problem for me was fourfold:

  1. Although getting to and from the event was very well organised from Elvington Airfield, with plenty of busses to and from the start / finish, you have to allow lots of time for this.  So although the start was 9.30am, I was parked up around 7.20am.  On arrival at York University campus there is nothing to do but just stand around and although there are a couple of indoor areas, basically everybody else has the same idea.  It was also a good 10 minute walk from the event centre and bag drop to the start / finish area and then more waiting for the start itself.  I'm glad that my wife did not join me at the start (for the first time ever), as knowing the weather was poor in an out of town location would be no fun, especially with a two year old in tow.  As it happened, by pure chance we were staying overnight within walking distance of the half way point and she then caught the spectator bus with my son to the finish.
  2. I have an issue with the merging of the 10 mile race and marathon.  The last four miles or so were extremely challenging and I would guess that I overtook upwards of a thousand in that last section.  Whilst there was the upside of lots of encouragement from fellow runners and it being a diversion from the mental pain at that point of the race, there were several times where I had to shout to people in front to ask them to let me pass.  There were numerate times where I weaved through people and almost always I had to take the widest line possible around bends so must have ended up adding a considerable unnecessary distance.  The finish line was far from special as you all just finish together.
  3. The post race management was poor.  For whatever reason, my chip failed at the finish, despite it working at all the timing mats up to 40k.  When I finished someone from race management asked me to wait whilst they verified the results (this was nothing to do with the chip issue).  The problem was that it took about 10 minutes, I was soaked, the weather was vile and I quickly became cold.  Whilst everyone else crossing the line was given a space blanket, for some reason I was not offered one, perhaps because I was asked to stand aside.  At that point it was clear that for whatever reason I was still listed as being on course so was obvious that my timing chip had malfunctioned.  This was brushed off as it just being bad weather and the app used for the on course timing having some issues (despite others finishing after me appearing on the results just fine).  Once I had been released I then had a 10 minute walk to bag drop at which point I was shaking uncontrollably and was later told I was turning blue in the face.  It ended up taking upwards of 25 minutes post finish to get changed in single digit weather and driving rain with significant wind chill.
  4. I contacted the organiser by email early afternoon that I had finished but still not listed in the results.  In fairness I got a quick reply, but basically it said that if not resolved when the results were published that evening to contact them again.  At about 5.30pm I then get a call from the organisers checking after me as they were worried that I might still be out on the course!  After putting them straight I sent another email to the organisers and never received any further reply.  Its only after calling the timing company direct did it then get resolved over 24 hours later (even then the initial time given was incorrect, but subsequently got corrected quickly once I had told them).
In fairness, some of the challenges were because the weather was so poor and is out of the organisers control.  That said, its not possible for the weather to be fine each year, and because everything was so spread out it made for a miserable experience (e.g. queuing in the open (again for balance it was only a few minutes but we were still soaked) for the return bus to the airfield in torrential rain with a two year old).  However, other aspects such as what happened with the timing chip were farcical.  It could be a good, if not great event, but its shortcomings resulting it being someway adrift of the Manchester, Chester and Bournemouth Marathons (latter now defunct).

Moving forward, my mind is now focused back towards some ultras I have planned.  I have the 55 mile Cheviot Goat in early December, then the (190 mile Coast to Coast) Northern Traverse in April, followed by the Tahoe 200 in the USA in June.  In someways I regret having entered the latter two a little as its been nice to be back doing some racing on the roads, so will have to find a few other races to fill gaps in the diary.

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