Pink Triathlete

October 2020

I’m on a roll- this is my second report. Not sure I’ve got the hang of this yet…

Had the worst night of nervous sleep, waking every hour and listening to the epic precipitation. Resulted in a HrV of 6.9 😱.

(Despite that I went for a swim warm up at the lake, of which I had to ford a stream and nearly stranded my car.)

The route we had planned wasn’t suitable anymore in the rain- I was concerned about wet feet as I’ve suffered terribly in the past from mouse-sized blisters. So, Instead of starting at one end of the Basingstoke canal, we opted to have the car as a base and do ‘out and backs’ either direction (5km out, 5km back).

I’ve never ran a marathon with a buddy before which was wonderful.

We started out with immediately wet feet and a pace probably faster than my hrv would have liked.

The first 10km felt amazing, the halfway mark started to feel like a drag. The rain didn’t let up and I decided not to change my shoes and socks because I just wanted to keep going.

Fuel: 2 packet of hula hoops, 2 high5 aqua gels and a bottle of PH.

We saw over 20 other VLM runners (mostly walkers) who gave the most encouraging words and cheers for us. It felt special even without the crowd.

Mile 19 is my nemesis: I always struggle at that point. But this time I sped up! I felt great! We started run walking 9:1 or 10:1 but the legs were strong and it didn’t hurt!

Then the giggles began…

First we thought we were being attacked by two herons (which were definitely pterodactyls!!), we saw a shipwreck on the canal bed (an old barge) and then when we stopped for a selfie I discovered I was covered in clear jelly snot!!!! Since then I’ve found it’s called Star jelly and it’s algae than probably rubbed off from a plant into me. BUT IT WAS SO GROSS!!! 🤮

A lovely lady runner who passed us called a ‘well done ladies’ to us and I made a comment to my friend about how posh she was in her fancy black shiny running jacket. To which my friend pointed out she was actually wearing a bin liner. Yes the delirium had begun 🤣

Then we found out how inaccurate the GPS on the Garmin because the VLM map running on my phone decided I’d finished the marathon 1 mile before garmin did. So we had to run an extra miles to get the shiny virtual garmin badge I haven’t even looked at. The last mile was hard 😫 but I finished really strong and without any pain or discomfort after. Today I can’t believe how I feel compared to my first marathon when I couldn’t even sit down! Just goes to show the training works!

Elapsed time 5hrs 22mins

Moving time 5hrs 4mins