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Earning a medal for a race I did not run
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Grandad had some interesting views on the Tom Daley revelations yesterday. None of which I can repeat on here. Suffice to say he believed things were done a little differently in his day.
Lets just say that upon reading the news about Tom his first comment was 'So this is what I spent all those years fighting the Germans for ...'
I doubt Tom Daley cares what dear old grandad thinks anyway...
And I hate to break it to "grandad" but Tom's revelation is an example of what people actually did fight the Germans for.
Grandad thinks its all just a trendy fad that everyone is jumping on board with to try and be cool.
Did I mention he voted for UKIP in the last election?
Grandad needs to know that there have always been gay people and always will be.
I said that to him once and he said its just a modern invention because people have too much time on their hands these days.
I think Grandad is the one with too much time on his hands.
Surely Grandad I could tell Tom was a bum boy years ago.
LOL
It is a lot more women than men though - according to the Guardian at least...
If I were a woman I would definitely be a les
Les is more?
92% of women think Silvio Berlusconi is a sleazeball. The remaining 8% just said he was an oily bastard.
I think it was one of the questions on "Family Fortunes"
So on Saturday I did the run! 26.2 miles through my home town to remember the race held back in 1986. Apologies this is going to be a very long post but for those who are interested in how it went please read on.
I realised I was able to do the run on the correct date after all (7th December) which was really good – just 27 years too late….!! But it did not give me much time for find out the route so I had to guess a lot of it but tried to include what I knew.
- To make it a special run but also keep it realistic and not let it totally screw up the my normal training, I put some rules/targets in place.
- Try to start and finish at the same place that the original marathon started. However this was not really feasible due to new buildings and nowhere to park all-day. So I decided to start and finish the run from home but ensure I passed through that area when I did parkrun.
- Include Parkrun. It was our parkrun’s birthday so there were a lot of extra people turning up. I could not miss this and with it being so close to the original marathon’s start it I could run there, and then begin Parkrun as if it was the start of the marathon. It was also good to run with a big group although I did feel a big over-kitted out for a 5k – with running backpack, energy gels etc. and got some funny looks! (I was also quite near the back this time and having run it at marathon-training pace did not get a particularly impressive time!).
- Try and include as much as the original route as possible. This was very difficult in the end as having only a couple of days to plan, I did not find out the route. Instead I decided to keep as much of the route within the city as possible and include local landmarks.
- Keep it as a training run. I didn’t want to push too hard and injure myself as the proper marathon training starts again after Christmas. I’m running 4 marathons next spring followed by an ultra, and keep quite a high mileage all year round anyway so figured that if I did this very slowly and ran/walked part of it then I could get some early low-risk miles in the bank. Therefore my only target time-wise was to finish before it got dark, and would take walking breaks frequently from early on!! This also meant I would not count it as a marathon but just as a logged training run of that distance.
So early Saturday morning I set off for the first part of the run. 5.5 miles to Parkrun, then when I got there it was only 8.55am so I had to stop and hop on the spot for a few minutes before we got going. Had a fun Parkrun – I imagined to myself it was the beginning of the marathon! Afterwards I had a quick catch up with friends (trying to bribe them into running the next 10 miles with me but to no avail!) and sadly turning down the usual post run coffee and cake. When they heard I had another 17-18 miles to run they told me to get on with it or I’ll cramp up!
The main part of the run was now underway. Realising I had actually gone out too fast for the first part and then getting very cold in the queue to scan my barcode, it was suddenly feeling very tough. A very steep uphill mile into town past the cathedral had to be walked, then into the face of busy Christmas shoppers in the marketplace meant I got more odd looks! I even took a wrong turn here and started running my regular run out of habit, and had to double back! This was despite having a map pinned to my running belt!
The lack of proper marathon training made this an interesting, if tough experiment. With a proper plan I got round the Berlin Marathon in September in just over 5 hours, but now 2 months later I was w
Luckily the medal I bought was for the Lancashire County 100 metre final in 1978. Going to see if I can work out the route and go for it on Saturday. Happy to break 30 minutes for the 'race' and make sure I earn that medal.
Oops it did not copy and paste all so final paragraph does not make sense.
Anyway it was a great feeling to re-enact this old marathon which may or may not ever take place again, and a good sightseeing tour of places I rarely bother visiting in my home town. In the afternoon I was able to go into town (in the car!) not only to do present shopping but get the medal cleaned up a bit and the ribbon repaired. Post-run I felt very tired but nowhere near as sore as after a race marathon which was rather nice. A project learning about our local history and now there's no time pressure to run it I will try and find out some more info about the marathon.
Thanks to those who have shown some support so I posted this for those who were interested - to those who do not agree with re-enacting races, well, I am sorry you feel this way and totally recommend it as it adds an interesting new dimension to what would normally just be a boring long solo run! ;D
Not a problem. I never read more than a couple of words of it anyway
Interesting read and a great idea
It would be much more interesting if you had bought a Victoria Cross and recreated the events that lead to it being awarded. Failing that maybe if you had bought a 25m swimming badge you could have recreated that down the local pool.
Well done Aizxana for carrying the idea through! Ignore the curmudgeons, I think it's an excellent idea.
Puts my 12km solo cross-country training run on Sat am into some perspective.
I bought a Purple heart ....... anyone know where I could get shot at as I'll need a flesh wound?