Rememberance

#214 Remembrance  4:56:57

>6lbs of metal today

Phoenix Running put on this event and its sure to be a hit going forward. It was a remembrance run that will be run the weekend of remembrance Sunday every year. This year in its first running was actually on 11/11.

It was on the marathon course at Walton On Thames so was the standard out and back 10.5k lap.

receiving 100 medal and cert

I arrived early with Brenda as there were due to be lots of awards today as well as a special race brief. A quick registration and we all gathered outside the leisure centre. There was a steady drizzle but it wasnt too cold.

Rik's new challenge series "Global Marathon Challenges" were giving out awards and I received two awards. First one was my second 52 marathons in 52 weeks. Due to a quirk in the rules it is actually a rolling year and my 52 in 365 days (52 weeks and 1 day) was good enough. This was also followed by a 100 in 100 weeks which I managed to do in 699 days. The medals were huge and we also got some lovely certs. There were 2 more 52 presentations and 6 more 100 inductees including Philip McEvoy and Enda Cleary from Ireland. I quickly changed into my new 100 in 100 shirt and we headed to the start.

Brian Mills 1300

At 9:00 we were off and I started steady but not fast and sloshed my way through the first 5K to the turn around. It was wet and muddy and drizzly. At the turn around point (32 mins) Fiona was there encouraging everyone and I settled in for what was a slow but steady run.

Start

Special for the day was Brian Mills running his 1300th marathon. He was struggling bad with injury and this will be his last marathon of 2017.

There was a fairly big crowd today and noone was going super fast. It was a very sociable day with lots of shout outs and high fives along the route. I ran a little with Richard Boese before he speeded up and left me.

One of the unique things about today was the "race freeze" that occurred at 11am (2 hours into the race). On the sound of a hooter the whole race stopped as did cyclists, dog walkers and pedestrians. You could hear the cannon's go off in the distance and after 2 minutes we were off again. This 2 minutes would be taken off at the end.

End

With Philip

Half way was in a pedestrian 2hrs 20 and I stopped for some sweets at the tuck shop and kept plodding along. Enda was going great and would go on to do a sub 4. On the last 5K I reckoned I needed to speed up a bit to make the 5hr mark so ran it all and even caught quite a few enroute. In the end I was easily under at 4:56 and about 10 came in after me all under 5 hrs.

It was cold at the finish and we got the most amazing 2.5lbs weight medal.

It was a good day out and now roll on the 10 in 10 in 10 days time.

Stats for today