The run!

WE DID IT! This morning we woke up bright and early at 7 o'clock and put on our bright orange tops and our running shoes for the half-marathon. We went down to breakfast and ate as much as possible to energise us (and to make the most of the free food...) and I drank a silly amount of coffee to try and keep me going. With 10 minutes to go till the time we were told to be at the start we left and headed in the general direction we thought we had to go in. We were an hour early so we passed the time by people watching and dancing to Duke Dumont to warm up, before joining in with the proper warm up routine led by an overly enthusiastic man who was thrusting rather ferociously.

Pre-run chic in orange.

And then it was time to run.

Just my luck I needed to pee from the word go, and prayed that there would be porta-loos dotted along the course. Of course there was not so I had to grin and bear it (I shook my fist at every man I passed who was wee'ing against a tree. Bloody genetics.) For the first 10km I found it tough to concentrate on anything other than finding a loo, which was good because it distracted me from the running. For the second half, I was concentrating on overtaking other people and setting a good pace. After about 17km I could tell Ellie was suffering. She was starting to grumble and lag a little so I tried to set a good pace and encourage her. There were quite a few photographers around this point and one of them managed to get a photo of her pulling a relatively angry face and me next to her grinning from ear to ear and with my thumbs up. I don't think I stopped smiling the whole time, I was so proud of us. We did not walk or stop ONCE and kept running till the very end. We thought we were going slowly, but at around 18km we saw that we had run that far in 1h40. This encouraged Ellie and made me grin even more.

 The route in red is the route we ran. It literally went around the whole city.

We high-fived at every opportunity we could, such as when we overtook someone who we had previously been following as they had a good pace, and when we realised we had just passed the furthest we had ever previously run. Towards the end Ellie looked like she was going to cry, so I tried to distract her by pointing out all the amazing architecture and reminding her how close we were to the finishing line. We went under an arch at around 20.5km, which Ellie thought was the end, and her face was so twisted when I told her we still had a few hundred meters it instilled so much fear in me. It was definitely a 'shoot the messenger moment'. And then we saw the blue carpet that signified the last 100m. I never realised my legs could stride so far and and move so quickly and I jumped over the finish line with my fists in the air. Ellie and I had a nice big sweaty hug then I jumped about while she walked around trying to recuperate. My joy when I found the loos was unlike any joy I've ever felt before. However, getting back off the loo was a bit of a task. We received our medals, and even Ellie managed to grin with pride and joy.

 

Our post run snap

We ran the semi-marathon in 2h20 minutes, which we are extremely proud of. We did what was probably the bare minimum training possible and succeeded anyway. It was the longest I have ever run for, and definitely the longest distance. I am so proud of myself to have managed to finish it. I was so happy to be running, something I have never really experienced before, and there was such a community feeling between the runners, I would definitely do it again! 

This is not the end of the blog, I'll decide upon some new fitness goal that you can all follow me on my journey towards.

Marie x