Sarah runs her first marathon

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Morning all. So I ran my first marathon yesterday! It was the Bewl Water Trail Marathon, (near Tunbridge Wells) which is a very beautiful two loops around the lake, mainly through lovely forest. Re my time, Louisa says I should just say that I had a lovely time, thanks! But I’m going to tell you because I think it’ll add some balance and illustrate that you can be an Arrow and run marathons even if your time is not under 4 hours!

I did it in 5 hours 25 minutes, which I’m extremely proud of :)

It was about 12 degrees with drizzle and no wind, so quite amazing conditions really, thankfully!

I believe about 700 runners were signed up, split between 10km, half marathon (once around the lake) full (2 circuits) and ultra (3 circuits) so it felt pretty quiet. I quite enjoyed the fact it was two circuits, as I knew what was coming in the second half; although there were killer hills at around 7/8 miles and 12. So it was pretty torturous at 12.4 miles walking up a huge hill, thinking “how the hell am I going to do this again in nearly 3 hours time?!”

I was wondering how I was going to run 26 miles when I’ve only ever run 20 miles. Lots of people told me that the atmosphere would carry me through, cheering, other runners etc. Well, as I’ve already mentioned it’s quite a small race, so there were barely any spectators. The route isn’t always near a road, so it would be quite tricky to go to more than one point. That also meant the 3 aid stations were at slightly odd positions, with 2 fairly close together. Aid station 3, manned by extremely enthusiastic Air Cadets, was at mile 22, where I chatted with one runner. Then during the last 4 miles I was overtaken by a couple of runners; then I didn’t see anyone else apart from some dog walkers and a horse, until I was almost at the end. At about mile 25 you have to do a bit of a loop skirting around the car park, then you see lots of runners who’ve finished and are milling about etc. So not a huge amount in the way of atmosphere, but somehow I managed!

I would definitely recommend it though, as it’s gorgeous; although if it had been raining in the weeks beforehand it would be pretty muddy requiring full trail shoes (I got away with standard trainers).

I’m still feeling quite emotional, so I’m going to relax now; see you in a couple of weeks once I’ve recovered!