Hot in the Shade

Approaching the finish

Some of you will be aware that I ran my fifth marathon last Sunday in sunny Edinburgh.  It's actually a lovely marathon course, which is surprisingly flat with a long downhill stretch at the start.  My daughter is also at University in the beautiful City of Edinburgh - so it was a chance to see her too.

As you can probably guess, the marathon was extremely hot - measured at 26 degrees at one point. That made life very difficult, especially considering most of our training has been done in this year's not so magnificent Fenland spring.  But that weather also brought out the best in people, with numerous people running hose pipes and spraying the runners down from out of their gardens.  One house had a twin set of sprinklers out the front.  That sort of contribution from spectators really adds to an event - and I have to say the crowd on the day were great.

That didn't make finishing the run any easier and I had a really hard time over the last few miles,but managed to finish in 4h52m.  This year myself, Angela and my son have been using our training as part of the 2012 Challenge, the aim of which was to run.walk and cycle over 2012Km up until the start of the Olympics.  We have finished that challenge, with most of the miles coming from running.  But it is not too late to sponsor us - we have been raising money for Get Kids Going, a great charity that helps provide specialist wheelchairs so disabled children can participate in sport.