Marathon Number 8

I'm very aware that I haven't been producing regular blog updates over the last few weeks.  This has been mainly due to commitments at home.  Ruth decided it was time that the entire ground floor of our house was re-decorated.  If it had been left to me this job would have been put off for probably another couple of years.  But Ruth is strong willed and very persuasive and I decided it was probably in my best interest to do as I'm told.  As a result a lot of my spare time has been spent with a paint brush in my hand.  Needless to say I have been getting out for training runs, I just haven't had the time or energy to also write about them.

I'm not going to go in to any details of what training I have done over the last two weeks.  All you need to know is that I completed marathon number eight today.  Today's marathon was primarily organised as a long distance walk starting and finishing in the small Cambridgeshire village of Conington, which is about 10 to 15 miles from home.  It was the 14th running of the Pathfinder Walk.  Given that it's such a local event, and so close to home, I was surprised that I'd never heard of it before.  I've mentioned the event to almost all of my running friends and a few other friends besides and haven't so far found anyone that I know who has heard of the event.  I can only assume that the organisers are happy keeping it as a low key event.  It's mainly advertised through the Long Distance Walking Association website.

The event is called the Pathfinder Walk to commemorate the Pathfinder bomber squadrons that were mostly stationed in East Anglia during World War II.  The sites of three of the former air bases can be seen on the walk/run.  The Pathfinder squadrons were an elite bomber force that pinpointed bombing targets ahead of the main bombing raid.  The memento from the event was a mug with a picture of a Halifax bomber, one of five aircraft used by the bomber group.  I'd personally prefer a medal, but a mug is better than yet another useless T-shirt.

Walkers had a choice of four walking routes of 14km, 23km, 32km and 42km, and could start any time from 7.30am onwards.  Many walkers had already started by the time I reached the village at about 8am this morning.  Marathon runners were all set off at the same time at 8.30am.  I found myself very quickly amongst a group of three other runners consisting of Rob, Ian and Lisa.  We all seemed to be running at the same pace so we stayed together and chatted as we ran.  I discovered that Lisa is a local girl and midwife running something like her 143rd marathon!  Ian was running his 61st marathon and is from my home town of Winchester, and Rob lives close to Stevenage (sorry but that is all I remember).

Self navigation with written instructions was required on this run, the fourth such event I've run this year.  Thankfully, the instructions were very clear and I never found myself running off route by mistake.  From Conington we headed west to the hilly part of Cambridgeshire.  We ran past our first airfield at Graveley were a few WWII buildings can still be seen, and continued on undulating ground through Yelling and Papworth Everard.  From here the ground started to level out again and at about this point Rob decided to speed up and run ahead on his own.  The rest of us were content to continue as a group of three.

I'd like to make it clear that whilst running marathons does get easier, they never feel easy.  As is always the case I started to struggle with six miles to go.  It was reassuring that Rob and Lisa were also finding the going tough.  For the most part the ground was very uneven over the last quarter of the marathon and this really started to take its toll.  It was a relief to finally reach the tarmac road leading into Conington for the last 200m of the run.  The three of us crossed the finish line together in a time of 3 hours 31 minutes and 40 seconds.  However, there was no official timing on this event.  Once we'd crossed the finish line we headed to the registration tent and handed in our route cards, which had been stamped at each of the five checkpoints and then collected a certificate and our mug memento.  I'm not sure whether our times were recorded or not, or if any finishing results will ever be published.  I'm not expecting them to be.

My running companions: Rob, Lisa, Ian & me.