Robert was the unfortunate chap that passed away at the end of yesterdays race. He was seemingly a well trained competent runner posting a 1.30 half and aiming for 3.20 yesterday.
Its struck a chord with me as I crossed in 3.18 and passed a number of people in bother going down the mall, in particular one chap just after the finish receiving a lot of attention, which could have been him.
Anyway, it serves as a timely reminder for those with marathons still to come to listen to your body before and during the race. Its not like a 10k where you can sit at your limit for 20 minutes.
Just be careful, its not worth trying to gain 90 seconds on your finish time.
RIP Robert.
Comments
Yes another sad story to come out of the marathon
although I beg to differ , if we all listened to our bodies yesterday none of us would have finished , I certainly wouldn't have ! there were obviously underlying unknown health factors in Roberts case
His blog is easy to find- actually they've provided a link to his website via the news story- his traing looks good, but he did seem to be struggling with asthma- talks about using an inhaler a lot in the traing runs.............wonder what happened.
Sad.
I think we all know that the overall chances of dying are lower if we are fitter, but that if you're going to go, a marathon is a likely place for it to happen. You always wonder whether there are warning symptoms, or whether it is really as sudden as it is protrayed in the media.
The symptoms are not dissimilar to what a lot of people experienced in the last few weeks with pollution and pollen.
Night nurse, yes I get your point, my body was screaming to stop from mile 19ish. However part of me wanted to kick on against that for 3.15 I tried a few times and could tell I risked a complete explosion. Its that kind of body listening I suppose I refer to.
There will have been many 1000s of people pushing for their best at this race - just like there is every week.
My thoughts are with his family but if we all took it easier - where would the human race be ?
His training actually scares me. Look at some of the HRs, especially week 6, look at the pace for the 20s, try to spot the build from 13 - 20 miles. 3x 20M at MP is a big load.
We all do training that's suboptimal. It's not a criticism.
RIP Robert.
Is there a link to his training?
https://sites.google.com/site/robberryuk/marathon-plan
https://sites.google.com/site/robberryuk/marathon-training-actual
It does look like he was blasting every run - if you've got asthma that must be pretty hard on your body.
Yep and there was a pretty quick climb to 20 miles as well. Though he looks to have tapered sensibly.
In terms of his asthma he said in his blog he had previously only used an inhaler three times a year so that was very mild.
Very sad. RIP Rob.