Coyote

#154 Kent Coyote Marathon (KCM)  3:56:54

Fantastic T and Medal

This is the sister event to the Kent Road Runner (KRR) that is run by TZruns (Ian and Sandra Berry). This is also likely to be the only running of this event as TZruns are exiting the event management business. They put on a hell of show but even they with all their extras were unable to sell this event out and only 250 took part. The organisers took a bath on the event.

Rachel

The start was 9am so it was an early start from Basingstoke to get there on time. I am a big fan of Beetroot juice and its V02 enhancing properties and headed off with my 500ml of "beet it". Unfortunately my bottle was leaking and by the time I reached the services 30 miles from Gravesend in Kent there was a lovely splodge of "beet it" down my front. Straight to the toilets to clean up and I left it looking like CSI Las Vegas crime scene. A good start. Luckily I had a change of clothes with me.

Donna (just back from Rio)

Getting to the Cyclopark and parked up it was all too familiar from the recent Cyclopark series but this time we were on the actual Cyclopark itself. It was defined as a road marathon and the reverse of the KRR.

A very efficient registration with new T-Shirt had me ready in plenty of time. The next hour passed quickly chatting to everyone and hearing mythical stories of yesterdays Beerathon and celebrations that went on late into the night. There were a few hangovers around.

Pre start chats

Numbers were visibly down and there also seemed to be a lot less really fast guys around. The route was to be 20.5 laps of the park (in reverse) with chip timing keeping count. At 9am we were off on the small lap. I had forgot how hilly this course was and for the marathon it ended up being close to 1200ft which is hillier than the Connemarathon.

Just catching Tids

I started off trying to go as fast as I could and started ticking off the laps. 26mins 30secs had me through 5K. This was a little down than the previous 2 runs which was definitely down to the hilly nature of the course. A consistent next 5K had me through 10K in 52 mins. I wasn't the only one that had tried to go out hard with Louise Tidsbury and Glenn Keegan well ahead of me. It turns out they did a 48min 10K which was way way ahead of normal. There was lots of lapping and getting lapped and as the process went on you got the opportunity to spend sometime with most everyone in the race.

Suicide pace

I have to say I found it very weird that there was only one twin there.

Surprisingly to me I came through half way in 1:49. This was actually faster than I

had been recently but I hadn't noticed speeding up but I will take it. I passed Louise and Glen around now and they both agreed they had gone out at suicidal pace. Amazingly they both held on. Louise with her fist sub 4 in 3:58 and Glen with a 3:59 and first sub 4 in 8 years. Two very happy campers.

I did slow in the second half and started to hike up the two steepish hills on the back half of the loop and took on a lot more water at the well appointed aid station. Thanks to Malcolm for the coke around 20 miles. That was a life saver. I always felt in control of a sub 4hr today and as the laps counted down I had an ever increasing cushion.

And home

As you went through lap 20 the commentator rang a little bell and you were on your last lap. A special effort on the last lap had me coming through in 3:56:54. Very happy with todays performance.

There was a massive medal, buff, photo's and a beer at the end and much congratulations to everyone. There
was also massages, showers and a cafe for everyone. A super event over all.

Its a pity this is likely to be the last Coyote. I suspect the circuit marathon series which is due to take over will struggle even more to get people to turn up. Short laps are a love it or hate it format and I am reasonably ambivalent to it.

Photos courtesy of Philip Rand and TZruns

Strava stats for today