Loch Ness Marathon - Full Report

On the last day of September I found myself flying to Inverness by myself.  Ruth was supposed to have gone with me, but with Cambridge forecast to be blisteringly hot, compared to a weekend of rain in Scotland, I was told that I’d be going on my own.  Ruth had no intention of standing at the finish line of a marathon in the wet waiting to see her dearly beloved cross the line when she could have been sunning herself at home.  I was, obviously, a little disappointed by her lack of commitment, but also realised that I didn’t have a hope in hell of persuading her to change her mind and come with me, even though I’d already paid for her flights, a double hotel room and pre-race pasta party meal for two.

As there is only one flight a day from Luton to Inverness, I was expecting to see several marathon runners on my flight.  However, I only managed to spot maybe 3 or 4 likely contenders, none of whom I was sufficiently confident were runners for me to approach and ask.  So I kept my nose buried in my book whilst waiting in the departure lounge and for the duration of the flight.  An ex-client bought me a copy of “The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner” as a goodbye present a few months back and I’ve finally got round to starting it.  I would have thought that this would have made me stand out as a runner to any observers.

Once at Inverness Airport I made my way to the city centre by bus, from where I only had a short walk to the Aberfeldy Lodge Hotel, which I’d booked months ago.  I presented my hotel accommodation voucher to the hotel owner, who studied it thoroughly before telling me that the voucher didn’t mean anything to her.  She went off to make a phone call, and when she came back she informed me that I’d been the victim of an internet scam.  I’d handed over just over £170 to someone who had set up a bogus internet site pretending to be a hotel bookings agent.  I was absolutely gutted, to say the least, and realised that the weekend was going to end up costing a lot more than I’d bargained for.  The owner was very helpful.  She didn’t have a spare room herself, but managed to find me a room in a nearby B&B which proved to be excellent.

I ended up staying with Sergio in the Averon House B&B (Tel: 01463 232469, www.averon-house.co.uk).  If you ever find yourself needing somewhere to stay in Inverness then I would highly recommend it.  Sergio is a perfect host and went out of his way to ensure I was comfortable and had everything I needed.  The breakfast was fantastic, if anything there was way too much of everything, which can’t be a bad thing, unless you’re on a diet.  I did have to insist that I only wanted porridge on the Sunday morning before the marathon, and I think Sergio felt he had to make amends for only giving me a measly breakfast by offering to make me sandwiches and to cook me pasta the night before the marathon.  I refused, even though the offer was genuine.  The B&B itself is located just behind Inverness Castle and is just a 5 minute walk from the centre of town and about a 15 minute walk to the marathon event village.



Inverness Castle and the River Ness

The Marathon Event Village - open for registration.

The event village is where I had to go on the Saturday before the marathon to collect my race number and to attend the pasta party.  I always have high expectations of so called pasta parties, which are never realised.  What should have been a fun gathering of like minded people sharing anecdotes of previous marathons, training disasters and narrow escapes from the jaws of menacing dogs, turned out to be a massive marquee that was less than a quarter full, a band playing folk music on a small stage at one end, small pockets of runners dotted here and there and a less than generous serving of pasta for which I’d paid £10 in advance.  I managed to find myself sitting close enough to solitary female runner that I was able to start a conversation.  I think my opening line was built around a moan about the size of the portion of pasta, to which she agreed.  From this we got into a conversation about all the usual sorts of things runners talk about; how many marathons have you run before, what’s your best time, what are you aiming for this time, etc.  Then we exchanged names and asked where we’d travelled from.  Coincidently, it turned out that Jenny lives just up the road from me in Huntingdon.  I considered asking her if she wanted to hang out together for the rest of the day, given that we were both on our own.  I thought that maybe we could catch a movie and go out for pasta together in the evening, but I decided that it might sound too much like a chat up.  Instead we finished our meals, wished each other good luck for the marathon and went our separate ways.

Given that I had pretty much fully explored Inverness on Friday, I did decide that I’d kill my afternoon with a trip to the cinema.  I went to see The Debt, which I really enjoyed.  It’s not exactly a barrel of laughs but it kept me off my feet the day before the marathon.

The previous evening I’d had no problem finding somewhere to eat in Inverness.  The night before the marathon was a different story.  I headed to a well known pasta chain for 6.30pm, thinking I’d beat the rush, to discover a queue of runners outside the door.  I joined the back of the queue to patiently wait for a table.  Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long, mainly due to being a little brash.  I spotted a single male at the front of the queue being shown to a table for two.  I asked the people ahead of me if they had any objections to me jumping the queue to see if I could join who I assumed was a single runner, just like me.  They didn’t, so I barged on in, tapped the guy on the shoulder, asked if he was running in the marathon (he was), told him I was doing the same and asked if it would be ok for me to share his table.  I was very grateful that I was able to drastically reduce my wait time, even though my dining companion, Andy, wasn’t the most talkative chap in the world, and when he did talk in his broad Glaswegian accent I had to ask him to repeat himself.  I found myself wishing I had asked Jenny out.  Once we were both full of pasta and garlic bread, we wished each other luck (I think that’s what he said), and went our separate ways.

It had rained in Inverness pretty much all day on Saturday, whilst the whole of England basked in sunshine.  However, the weather forecast promised dry weather with sunny spells for race day.  When I awoke and looked out the window I saw the same old dreary drizzle that I’d seen all the previous day.  At breakfast I discovered another marathon runner had checked in the previous afternoon.  Matt was running in his first marathon.  The two of us ate our porridge and then walked to the marathon village together.  We were instructed to be at the village by 7.30am to get on a bus that would then drive us to the start of the marathon 26 miles south west of Inverness.  The marathon was due to start at 10am and we both couldn’t work out why the buses needed to depart so early.  Surely it doesn’t take that long for a bus to travel 26 miles! 

At 7.45am a long convoy of assorted buses, from luxury coaches to Stagecoach double deckers, left Inverness with some 3000 runners onboard.  It was quite a strange sight to see so many buses travelling in convoy, with police escort.  Whenever the buses needed to turn right, the police would set up a road block so we could carry on unimpeded.  This must surely get full marks for organisation.  Just over an hour after leaving Inverness we were still on the buses, driving slowly along winding country lanes, with lots of well hydrated runners writhing in their seats with tightly crossed legs.  Someone on our bus begged the driver to stop so we could jump off and then jump behind a bush.  The driver refused, but a few minutes later it become apparent that someone on the lead bus was in a similar predicament and the whole convoy came to a halt.  One by one we witnessed bus doors ahead of us opening up and streams of runners jumping off to relieve themselves in the wide open Scottish air.  Our driver grudgingly opened the door, but shouted at us that she’d leave us behind if the convoy moved on before we were back on the bus.  We eventually reached the start at 9.40.  We were all at a loss as to how it took so long to get to the start of the race.  We must have taken a massive long detour.

Baggage trucks at the start

At the start it was very cold and damp.  This made it difficult to decide what to wear for the run.  I opted to wear a T-shirt over my running vest with the intention of discarding it somewhere on route.  There wasn’t much at the start other than a few portaloos and baggage trucks.  Starting zones were marked according to predicted finish times on boards along the side of the road.  Once everyone was in position a troupe of pipers made their way through the entire field from the back to the head of the line of competitors, which made for a very atmospheric start.  Once the pipers were at the front of the field there was a lot of cheering, clapping and hand shaking amongst the crowd of runners.  A few seconds later we were off.

Pipers at the start of the marathon

Loch Ness is probably one of the easiest marathons I’ve run.  The first 10 miles is predominantly downhill.  To some extent this makes it hard to judge how fast you should be running.  Clearly you can go faster than on the flat, but how hard should you push it?  I was running at about 7 minutes per mile for the first 5 miles, and wondered if I was going too fast.  I was aiming to finish in around 3 hours 30 minutes.  I feared that any faster would be too much given that I’d only just run a marathon the week before.

At times we’d come to short sections of quite steep descents.  I employed the just let go and let gravity take you technique, which requires turning the legs over very quickly and almost leaping large distances.  Most runners around me were using way too much energy breaking themselves and fighting against gravity.  Running fast downhill is a skill worth learning.

Last view of the Loch before the hill at mile 18

Miles 10 to 18 are then mostly pancake flat and right alongside the shore of the Loch.  I reached the halfway point in 1 hour 35 minutes, 10 minutes faster than I’d planned.  Still, I was feeling pretty good and wasn’t too concerned with being ahead of schedule.  At mile 18 the course starts to go upwards.  Many runners at the start were talking about the ‘big’ hill at mile 18.  When I got to it, it was nowhere near as bad as I was expecting.  It did go up for the best part of two miles, but the gradient wasn’t severe.  It was possible to maintain a comfortable pace all the way to the top.  There was then one other smaller and slightly steeper hill at about mile 22, but once over this it was mostly down or flat all the way to the finish.  I was amazed at how good my legs were feeling.  I decided to increase my pace, and each mile got progressively faster over the last 3 miles.  I passed dozens of runners, and I felt as if I was having the best run of my life.  There were a reasonable number of spectators lining the course over the last two miles.  I got several shout outs which helped spur me on to catch the next runner ahead of me.  When I got to the last 100m I even had enough left in the tank for a sprint finish, a definite first for me.

I hung around at the finish to greet a number of runners that I’d chatted to on the course.  This was then how I managed to orchestrate my customary finishing photo, by roping in Ross, who finished his first marathon in an incredible 3 hours 17 minutes.  I mentioned in my previous post that I finished in 3 hours 14 minutes, a time that I’m very happy with, and one that deserves a second mention.

Tired runners in the finishing funnel collecting medals, goody bags and drinks

Nessie keeping an eye on the finish

Once I’d collected my medal and excellent quality race T-shirt, I headed to the baggage trucks, got my stuff and had a quick bite to eat.  I then started to slowly walk back to the B&B, periodically stopping to stand and cheer those who were still running. 

The following morning I opted to wear my race T-shirt for the journey home.  I wanted as many people as possible to know what I’d just done.  After breakfast I said goodbye to Sergio and made my way to the airport by bus.  Inverness airport was a very funny sight.  It was clear who had run the marathon.  Bizarrely, the vast majority had opted to proudly wear their race T-shirt, just like me, but many were also limping around as if they’d been wounded in a hideous accident.  I’d say a third of the people at the airport had run in the marathon.  This time I wouldn’t have my head buried in my book in the departure lounge.  I found myself sitting next to a couple of runners who were only to happy to exchange stories.  Everyone seemed to agree that it had been a fantastic event.  I’d rate it in my top 4, which I’d say are London, Snowdonia, South Downs & Loch Ness, but in no particular order.

Despite the distance from Cambridge and the fact that there isn’t a whole lot going on in Inverness, I would definitely run this marathon again.

I’ll be writing more either later today or tomorrow with other news from the past week.