pickupthepacepaul

On 10 September 2022 I was due to be taking part in Kew Gardens 10k, with Richmond Marathon the day after. I was really looking forward to these events, but with the sad news of the passing of the Queen, these events scheduled to take place within Royal grounds were understandably cancelled. As I wanted to cover the marathon distance this weekend I took a look to see if Phoenix Running had entries open still, and was pleased to see they had availability on both Saturday and Sunday. The Saturday event, Runificent 2, was at Walton on Thames, so the most convenient for me. So the night before I booked my place to come and run the marathon.

There was just one catch to this event. Fancy dress was actively encouraged, with an extra insert for your medal ribbon for all those who dressed up. I was there for a solid training run, just to cover the distance, but I don’t exactly have a lot of fancy dress options, especially when booking late in the evening the night before whilst drinking a beer and watching stranger things. I have a Spiderman outfit I ran Runificent 1 in, but didn’t want to do that. Then my wife said, probably as a joke, “I have a wonder woman outfit if you want to run in that”. I had got her that outfit when I got my Spiderman for a fancy dress superhero themed kids party years ago. My wife refused to wear it, and I don’t think she actually expected me to say OK then.

So at 08:00 on Saturday morning I turned up as Wonder Woman to run 8 laps up and down the Thames Path. We shared the path with runners from the action challenge 100k Thames Path ultra, for their section 30.5k to about 33k.

My run went well. I stopped for a couple of pictures then needed to stop for the toilet at around 16 miles. After this I lost a bit of pace and my legs were tired, so I just kept going, wanting to get to the end. On my last lap I realised I needed to pick up the pace to sneak under 4 hours, but I just didn’t have the desire to, actually slowing down towards the end knowing I either had to run faster or I was going to miss it by a few seconds. The course is always long at these events, and I stop each lap to get some sweets at the tuck shop style aid station. So my total distance was 26.91 miles. And I finished in 4:01:23. Not going to lie, I wish it was under 4 hours, but not enough to do anything about it at the time.

So that’s another marathon under my belt. Making it 93 marathons, 10 ultra and 5 Ironman, which is 108 for the 100 marathon club. I’m still raising money for Cancer Research so if you have anything spare please donate on the link below.

Have you been running this weekend? How did it go?