Moray Marathon

Elgin, Sunday, September 4, 2011

Dave Robson

I am ashamed to say that this was my first time this far north and it was good fun to explore a new area. On the evening before the race I drove some of the marathon route and I must admit my heart sank a little. Long straights, gradual but long climbs. The weather was a bit grey which didn’t help. I also realised that it has been a while since I have done a road marathon and it felt a bit of a challenge. The organisers were encouraging runners to finish in under five hours and I wondered whether I might not make that – I might just get tired of running as I had done two weeks ago at the Northumberland Coast marathon.

Race day dawned with much brighter, sunny weather. I met up with some other Fetchies, some new and some I have met before There had not been any signs out on the previous evening and the start/finish area was only sorted on the morning, so I thinking that this was a laid back event. The organisers knew exactly what they were doing (it was the 30th running of this event) and everything was ready in time and about 170 of us set off. The half marathon and the 10K used the later sections of the route so that everybody finished at the starting area of the marathon – those runners had buses to get to their starts. The mile markers counted down from 26 which I hadn’t seen before.

We did a bit of a zigzag out of Elgin and then there was a steady climb out of the city. As a course I think I would say rolling, though there were some long flat sections. I enjoyed the route much more than I had the previous evening. The sun definitely helped, but it was warm. I don’t think I have never seen so many water stations for a relatively small number of runners – every 2-3 miles and I was making full use of them.

I decided just to try and take this very easy. I had a plan to get to 3m in about 35 minutes and then see how it went. Well I got to the 23m sign (3.2m) in 30 minutes and that included the long drag out of Elgin, so not great pacing ! But I did try to slow down and quite a few people went by me. There was a woman about twenty yards ahead of me who was going about the pace I wanted so I just tried to keep to her pace. At 11m she stopped for a walking break so I went on and started to catch some of the people who had passed me earlier. From the splits, I did slow down after 9m, but I wasn’t conscious of that at the time.

I thought I might try and speed up when I got to the 10k start (so just over 6m to go), but it didn’t feel like there was much in the tank with the heat, so I plodded on, catching and overtaking other runners who were wilting in the heat. I was concerned I might just slow down again near the end and the penultimate mile was a struggle. The final mile was a breeze and I picked up on that one

4hr 37min 27sec was better than I had expected and it was good to come into the final straight in the front of the cathedral and to hear my name being called over the PA system

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