Edinburgh Marathon
This past weekend Sonja, myself, Erin, and Megan all went up to Edinburgh to watch Sonja run the marathon. This was Sonja’s first ever marathon and she had spent five months of hard training by herself. Sonja would consistently get up before be on Saturday mornings (6am) to eat breakfast then go back to bed for an hour and then get up and go on her 3 ½ hour runs. These were the long easier runs while during the week Sonja did one really hard workout normally something along the lines of three repeats of ten minute faster running then taking a three minute break and doing it again. This is normally called tempo running and can be very strenuous on the body as well as very taxing on the brain. She did these Tuesday workouts by herself without ever complaining about how difficult they were or about how much she hated them, which she did. I knew she did not like doing the tempo runs based on what she put in her training dairy but she never once complained.
Well after five months of hard work the three non marathon runners decided the least that we could do is go up and cheer her on. Well that’s exactly what we did we rented a little car and we all piled in. Sonja and I the night before packed lunches for everyone so that we would not have to stop for lunch so that we would hopefully arrive in Edinburgh at a decent time. The drive is supposed to take about 8 hours if you don’t get lost or you don’t speed. Well we got lost and hit a massive traffic accident so we were a little later then we wanted to be. We arrived and had to go straight to pick up Sonja’ s race number because the place was about to close and she needed for next day. After we got the number and checked into our uber sketchy hostel we were famished since it was almost 9 and we hadn’t eaten dinner yet. We grabbed some food and put Sonja to bed as she had to race the next day while the rest of us were free to go out on the town. Megan wasn’t up to coming out with us at night as she had had a busy the night before.
This left Erin and I which can only mean good stories as Erin and I always find the most random stuff going on. Well this night we saw some really random stuff but that will be hopefully a totally separate blog. Needless to say we saw a groom on a stag night get a little over the top with a girl that isn’t his bride and his best buddies have it all on camera. We saw outfits on girls that I didn’t even think existed outside of magazines. Erin and I called it quits at midnight as we needed our rest to watch the rock star perform the next day.
The next morning Sonja and I got up before the other two girls as we were going to leave before them and make our way to the start line. Sonja had a good breakfast of oatmeal and a banana and then we headed to the start line. I was a little surprised at how hilly Edinburgh was as I had never been there before and was a little worried that Sonja hadn’t done a lot of hill training over the last 5 months. In fact she didn’t do any hill training for this marathon. I thought to myself that this could be a very long day for Sonja as the last 3 miles were uphill. The day was perfect marathoning weather; not too hot and overcast. The race was actually larger then I thought it would be as well with over twelve thousand crazy runners. One of the problems with this many people is the large number of runners who have to go to the bathroom (also known as the loo over here) and the lack of toilets. This meant that Sonja spent the twenty minutes before the race in a loo lineup, which may have been better than standing in the racing queue as this may have made her even more nervous. As soon as she was done with the toilet we quickly jogged to the section where she had to be and as soon as she arrived the race started.
Well she ran and she ran like a rock star. Looked great through 4 miles, looked great through 9 miles, went through the half at 1:53, looked tired but strong at 19 miles, and ran the last 3 miles tired but passing people going up the hills. She was tired but was able to walk away from the marathon and not be in too bad of shape. This really shows that her training has allowed her to end strong and not totally exhausted. Like the rock that star that she is the next thing that she wanted to do was eat and drink. We currently don’t know the official time but we do know that she was under four hours which is amazing for a person on their first marathon. She had three goals for this day: one that she wanted to finish, one that she wanted to go under four hours and other last goal was to go under 3:45 and qualify for London. Well she chose a very hard marathon to be able to run under 3:45 so this was the only goal that she didn’t actually accomplish but something that I am sure would/could be accomplished on a course that doesn’t have three miles of up hill at the end of the race. I will hopefully have the pictures of the race up soon.
After everything that was done we had to drive home, not arriving back in London until 12:30. Sitting in a car, not eating healthy, and going to bed very late didn’t help getting up this morning but sure enough Sonja got up and actually was not as sore as I would have thought she would have been.
Well after five months of hard work the three non marathon runners decided the least that we could do is go up and cheer her on. Well that’s exactly what we did we rented a little car and we all piled in. Sonja and I the night before packed lunches for everyone so that we would not have to stop for lunch so that we would hopefully arrive in Edinburgh at a decent time. The drive is supposed to take about 8 hours if you don’t get lost or you don’t speed. Well we got lost and hit a massive traffic accident so we were a little later then we wanted to be. We arrived and had to go straight to pick up Sonja’ s race number because the place was about to close and she needed for next day. After we got the number and checked into our uber sketchy hostel we were famished since it was almost 9 and we hadn’t eaten dinner yet. We grabbed some food and put Sonja to bed as she had to race the next day while the rest of us were free to go out on the town. Megan wasn’t up to coming out with us at night as she had had a busy the night before.
This left Erin and I which can only mean good stories as Erin and I always find the most random stuff going on. Well this night we saw some really random stuff but that will be hopefully a totally separate blog. Needless to say we saw a groom on a stag night get a little over the top with a girl that isn’t his bride and his best buddies have it all on camera. We saw outfits on girls that I didn’t even think existed outside of magazines. Erin and I called it quits at midnight as we needed our rest to watch the rock star perform the next day.
The next morning Sonja and I got up before the other two girls as we were going to leave before them and make our way to the start line. Sonja had a good breakfast of oatmeal and a banana and then we headed to the start line. I was a little surprised at how hilly Edinburgh was as I had never been there before and was a little worried that Sonja hadn’t done a lot of hill training over the last 5 months. In fact she didn’t do any hill training for this marathon. I thought to myself that this could be a very long day for Sonja as the last 3 miles were uphill. The day was perfect marathoning weather; not too hot and overcast. The race was actually larger then I thought it would be as well with over twelve thousand crazy runners. One of the problems with this many people is the large number of runners who have to go to the bathroom (also known as the loo over here) and the lack of toilets. This meant that Sonja spent the twenty minutes before the race in a loo lineup, which may have been better than standing in the racing queue as this may have made her even more nervous. As soon as she was done with the toilet we quickly jogged to the section where she had to be and as soon as she arrived the race started.
Well she ran and she ran like a rock star. Looked great through 4 miles, looked great through 9 miles, went through the half at 1:53, looked tired but strong at 19 miles, and ran the last 3 miles tired but passing people going up the hills. She was tired but was able to walk away from the marathon and not be in too bad of shape. This really shows that her training has allowed her to end strong and not totally exhausted. Like the rock that star that she is the next thing that she wanted to do was eat and drink. We currently don’t know the official time but we do know that she was under four hours which is amazing for a person on their first marathon. She had three goals for this day: one that she wanted to finish, one that she wanted to go under four hours and other last goal was to go under 3:45 and qualify for London. Well she chose a very hard marathon to be able to run under 3:45 so this was the only goal that she didn’t actually accomplish but something that I am sure would/could be accomplished on a course that doesn’t have three miles of up hill at the end of the race. I will hopefully have the pictures of the race up soon.
After everything that was done we had to drive home, not arriving back in London until 12:30. Sitting in a car, not eating healthy, and going to bed very late didn’t help getting up this morning but sure enough Sonja got up and actually was not as sore as I would have thought she would have been.
posted by Glenn Saqui at 12:54 AM
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