It’s the biggest marathon in the UK. Some might say the biggest marathon in the world. The London Marathon went off with a bang last week, and my legs have just about recovered, so it’s time to look back and see what happened in my race.
Expectations
I’d approached the final run in to race week with strong designs on a 2:43 or lower marathon. The closer I got to race day, and when other spring marathon results meant I still held the club record, the more I looked at sub 2:40 as the target.
So although I haven’t posted on the blog for a while, I’m going to kick things off again by catching up on a few race reports. So let’s get cracking with how things went at the Dewsbury 10K two weeks ago.
The Dewsbury 10K
The last 10K that I’d raced was not the best race of my life. After getting injured in the run up to the Leeds Abbey Dash, my running life was pretty grim. Unused to how weak I was, I’d gone off at tough pace that I thought would be manageable, and then ended up struggling and running really hard to finish in a time that I was really disappointed with. It was grim.
Abbey Dash 2017 training blog week 8/20
I didn’t need to finish this race to know things were going well. I was only two miles into the five miles of the Firefighters 5 (previously the West Yorkshire 5) to know that my day’s work was done. Last year I came into this race slightly undercooked having been ill in the run up and off training, but with some decent leftover form, and ran a respectable 29:46 for 6th round the hilly five miles around Birkenshaw.
Although I’ve been starting to come back into a little bit of form, it’s been a slow start to this training block. This was going to be a test of where my level is at the moment, and how on track I am for the Abbey Dash at the start of November.