The half way point in my current goal to complete a marathon. I made a promise to myself that once I reached the 13.1 mile mark in my training – I would return to posting. So here’s the story so far.

Whilst in full flow of accepting challenges in 2015 – I signed up for the Brighton Marathon. A decision that was made with no real consideration to how much it would impact my life. It’s only since new year, I that I really started to take training semi – seriously. Sunday’s can’t just be hangover days anymore.. they’re meant to be for long runs. I’ve never been a distance runner, in fact, I’ve always despised it. Give me a 100m sprint all day – anything over 200m and I’m struggling. I think prior to starting this challenge the longest I ever ran is 5k – so not a great base to start with.

Training has consisted of running three times a week on Brighton seafront, gradually increasing the distance of the run. It’s a frustrating process, some weeks you think you’ve made some real progress, only for your body to tell you ‘no you haven’t’ a week later. Add on the fact, my body doesn’t seem to agree with running. First my knee then my shins – everything seems to be in pain post runs. Having said that, there’s something therapeutically about running – particularly after a stressful day at work. Plug in, listen to your tunes and just free your mind.

It was my aim to be smashing half marathons well before Brighton half marathon race day came around. However, injuries and illness, for the two weeks lead up to the event I couldn’t really train. The closest I got was an 11 mile run on a Monday evening before my body completely shut down and gave up on running. I was hoping to complete 13 miles on this night, but I crashed. The body had nothing left to give and had to walk myself home, tail between my legs.

My preparation didn’t feel quite ideal coming into race day. The 6.30am alarm in order to get my porridge down me was painful but the view walking towards the start line was special. It was a perfect day to run – not too hot, not too windy. Over 8000 people turned up to the start line – way more than I ever imagined. All the runners filled the waiting time by doing their stretches, jogging on the spot, looking the part. I try to join in at this point, and act like I knew what I was doing. There’s only so many times you can stretch your quads though.

The run itself started off feeling quite easy – the atmosphere of the day and nervous energy seemed to make the first few miles feel comfortable. I ran past a gentleman, running without shoes on and thought now there’s a challenge! I don’t know how this man got on, but he was cruising at the 5 mile point, fair play to him. I wanted to complete the run without stopping or walking, so I would find myself just getting into a zone where I would just be looking down on the road just concentrating on each step. In this zone, I became completely unaware of the crowd supporting me, no idea what song I was listening too and not really sure if I was thinking about anything!

The 11 mile point came along. Where in training I had previously failed. At this point, I was no longer in the zone. I was exhausted – using every little boost from the crowd to pick me up. Touching signs for energy, taking sweets of strangers for sugar and shouting at my legs to keep running (followed by a few laughs by runners around me).  It was hard by this point.

But as I jogged towards the Brighton i360, I noticed the time I was doing. I didn’t really care what time I finished in, but at the 12 mile mark my running app told me I was at 1 hour 51 minutes. At this point, I did start to care what time I finished in. Could I finish under 2 hours?  Could I run an 8 minute mile?

No. My jelly legs had nothing left in them and my face was pulling all sorts of expressions. The crowd cheering made it possible to get to the end and the feeling at the finish line was an emotional relief. 2 hours 1 minute and 16 seconds. A time in hindsight, I’m very happy with. At this point, the thought of running double the distance is terrifying. Two days later, at the time of writing this post, I can’t walk down a set of stairs without a gasp of pain coming from my mouth. Half way point – It all gets harder from here. I’ll report back in April.

In the words of Dory from Finding Nemo – Just keep swimming. Or running in this case.

I must thank Rockinghorse Children’s Charity for letting me represent them in the race, and for the free killer post-race massage. They’re still looking for runners for the Brighton Marathon, so feel free to join me and represent a good cause. A shout out to Rachael Phelps – alarm clock, baggage holder, general support and putting up with my post-race moaning – Much appreciated.