It does seem to be the norm now at the 10in10 that emotions are heightened in every sense, the a smallest thing can make you smile, such as the sign the children at the local school had made for us knowing Saturday was their day off, and they wouldn't be there to high five us as we run past, through to nice gestures and comments making you cry. I probably underestimated how big the mental challenge of this event would be, and today was another example of that.
It's day 9, not a normal day really, it's last day eve I guess, we were all suffering in someway or other with soreness and injury, some far worse than others, my problem continued to worsen which was my right achillies heal which was now very difficult to put weight on, strangely seemed easier to run than walk on, we decided at Physio we wouldn't tape it up this morning as I'd got this far and I'd see how we got in today. I iced it last night a few times and warmed it up on the spin bike this morning and it felt 'ok'.
See below my physio treatment so far..
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| Days 6 - 9 |
After physio we all moved through to the athletes room for to kit up and get the morning brief , each and every morning Aly would do a roll call to be sure we were all there, 1 - 20, as a group we'd should out our number in the order before we headed to the start line. This morning was different however, earlier in the week Michelle handed us all a picture of ourselves taken during the event and asked us to write a note on the back to Aly. So when the roll call started this morning each of us stood up, walked over and handed Aly our picture.........now whether this was planned our not, it was silent as one by one we handed our picture over until all 20 were complete. It was another 'sun glasses on inside' morning. We could sense the end now....Chris Heaton gave us our brief which in summary was "concentrate today, we're very close, don't forget we've a job to do....there will be a lot of people on route wanting to support you but keep it together, don't stop to chat, get the job done" .
As we headed down to the start I could see Duncan was really struggling to walk, I found this very difficult to see as we were so close to the end and really wanted everyone out and every one in, to lose a member of the team now.....would be difficult. I was losing the battle to fight back tears as I set off to huge applause along the road outside Brathay.
I struggled to settle in to my pace once on the road, but I've said before running helps me, and it did help me today get my head together, and as Chris said 'concentrate'. There was good support on the road today with Sarah here again on route along with Adam and Lisa, I needed it today to be honest, it was one of the more challenging day, mainly due to the emotions of being so close I guess. I finished well, perhaps a little slower but only by a couple of minutes at 3 hours 51 minutes, I was glad to be back in, my friend George was there to see me finish who runs his first Marathon at Windermere tomorrow, and the place was really busy with runners arriving for the run tomorrow . Again I struggled a bit at the finish......I asked Michelle straight away how Duncan was getting on, well it seemed considering which was good to hear, although both Richard and George were having difficult days with injury but still expected to finish and did, 20 out and 20 in, a great end to what I found a difficult day, both on and off the road.
The mood lifted over dinner, and the marathon set up was all ready for the final day outside, a weird feeling going to bed, mixed emotions of happy we were almost there, and a sense of sadness it was almost over.
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