The weather forecast had thrown several options out there during the previous week - none of them that appealing. Different combinations of rain and wind mostly. "Could you do me a cold, bright day with very little wind?" I asked the weather gods, but they were set on their rain and wind.
I got up at 7am and looked out the window and a real rain was falling - not only the kind that would clean up these dirty streets but the kind that would send a fair-weather runner diving back under the duvet. In fact Peter said he wasn't going to get up with such conviction that I believed him. I think he believed himself. After a while he did get himself up though. The rain slackened off and Arthur's Seat became visible again and maybe it would be okay.
We got ready and went out the door and thought it would be that thing where you go outside and think "it's not so bad", but what we discovered was a cold wind to back up the still falling rain.
Kathy Henly and Amy Kerr had bravely signed up for marshalling duties and had been out in the rain for hours before we even arrived as the half-marathon set off at 8am. They were none-the-less buoyant and very funny, which was good, because nothing much else was. The sky had cleared for a while but right about when we'd just put our bags on the baggage trucks it started to really pelt down. Runners pressed themselves against the walls of the nearby buildings as if that was a thing. Then it was time to go to your "pen". I had to say goodbye to Peter, which is always a bit sad before a marathon. Will he survive? I don't know. He's quite old now.
I huddled in. A young guy asked me what the Edinburgh Marathon was like and I'd told him it was quite boring before really mentally testing how this might land with him as he stood there in his yellow rain hood having travelled from the South of England and no doubt spent the night in an over-priced budget hotel, all for the privilege of this. The loud-speakers said "It is nearly your time" and everything seemed a little bit comic-book sci-fi surreal which is just my way of holding unpleasant realities at a distance.
Then off we jolly well went and I spent the first mile warming up. My hands were actually cold which is unusual for me. We galloped down the Mound and then were herded round the galleries on some kind of horrid metal walkway.
Some days you just have it, and yesterday I did not. I was a bit sore from the start, and without enthusiasm for the task ahead. I was still hoping against hope that maybe the wind would miraculously drop somehow. There seemed to be a possible weather window where the rain was easing but the wind wasn't picking up, but it didn't happen. A surprise 3rd element came out in the form of the sun which actually shone quite brightly for a while and threw heat into the mix. I had taken some paracetamol on a strip which I thought I'd have at about mile 11 or so, but I decided just to take them at mile 4. My legs were sore. Getting them out the strip with cold, wet hands proved more of a challenge than I'd thought, and I had to resort to putting them in my mouth and popping them out with my teeth - then spitting out the silver paper.
We landed on the prom and trotted along. Seeing Tony Stapley was a highlight - he gave me the usual full name check "There's Mary Hunter!" which made me feel famous for a good minute or two.
I never saw Nick who took the photo of me passing the green coffee caravan thing, which begs the question what on earth I thought I was grinning at. I don't know. Leave me alone.
And then off and away and out and out and out towards Aberlady. I was in quite a bad mood and I was irritated by the behaviour of other marathoners. We were shovelled in together quite closely and maybe half of the people were wearing headphones and would suddenly stop and walk without warning, calling for a sudden swerve or the brakes going on, which was highly unwelcome. At 10 or so miles I contemplated turning around and just trotting back to Musselburgh and "hanging out" until Peter got back. But it just seemed too defeatist and I forgot to stop running so after a while it wasn't an option any more. I was slowing inexorably and for several miles there was a regular tide of runners passing me. This just never feels good, but I hadn't wanted to admit defeat right from the start so that meant setting out at a pace that on my best day I could possibly sustain. This wasn't my best day however and I couldn't sustain it. Sub 9min-miles degraded to just over 9 min-miles to well-over 9 min-miles and then kind of evened out.
You're supposed to go into your marathon with 3 outcomes in mind - your ideal time, your it would be good and kind of possible time and an "I'd really like to at least get this time". Well that's my take on it anyway. So miracle times would have been sub-3.50. There were times during my training when that seemed possible. Good would have been sub 4hrs - and then the next marker was 4.06 which was what Julie Moffat who is in the same category as me for the club champs had done at Stirling - and also what John Blair had done at London. I quite liked the cheekiness of thinking "well I want to beat John Blair". So miracle time was off the table as soon as I'd gone over 9 minutes. Sub 4 was still possible but increasingly unlikely as time went on. I ducked just under 2 hours at half way and knew I was steadily deteriorating still. All the way running east there was the knowledge that when we turned there would be at least 6 miles into the wind, and the wind was getting stronger.
At the Aberlady turn-around, surprisingly, I felt a bit better. The last time I had done this was in 2015 where I'd run a fair effort up until that point and had in fact arrived 8 minutes sooner - but I'd had a gradually increasing rumble in my abdominal jungle which had resulted in taking flipping ages to run the last 6 miles. This time, although I was slower, there was nothing acutely wrong, and also...other people began to walk. Now I know it must be wrong to feel happy when I see other people throw the towel in like that, but it's remarkably helpful. At 20 miles I had pretty much an hour to get back to make 4.06, so there was still everything to play for. So I headed back out onto the road and got my head down and worked it to try to get back in time. The wind was quite extreme at times and there was increasingly a walker's lane in close to the kerb and a runner's lane out towards the middle of the road. So I never walked. The worst mile, which I'd anticipated for a while, was that shelter-less patch between Seton Sands and the Pans where the power-station should be but isn't.
Coming out of the Pans there was a deal more shelter and Musselburgh was looming closer and closer. I did everything I could to lift my pace without going into some fatal crampy spasm that would take me down completely. 4.06 was just on the road ahead of me, almost possible. I chased it down. Coming into Musselburgh there was a wall of noise. I couldn't remember where the hell Pinkie Park was - I concentrated on running and didn't look at the time until I was rounding the corner and saw that 4.06 had been and gone and I was not yet done. Just an odd run over the strangely bouncy metal finishing straight and I ducked under the finish in 4.08 and then enjoyed a slow achy walk over the astro turf with my fallen comrades littered all around me.
Thank Goodness.
Then it was all about keeping moving and getting my stuff so I could get to the beer tent where I was to meet Peter. He was there with Graham Dunbar who was mighty grey around the gills and had had better times. The beers were £4 a pop and to add insult to injury I dropped a pound on the grass and couldn't pick it up because it was too much of a stretch. I had to just leave it.
The beer helped a great deal. I knew it would. When we were tired of lager we had some cider for pudding. Graham went off to get something to eat and our friends the Neighbours and Jennifer turned up and we had fun with them. Eventually we acknowledged it was time to get moving and hobbled off as far as Portobello and then got a bus.
We discovered, belatedly, that we were quite sunburned as well as everything else. My face was all hot in bed and my eyelids hurt. I had a wakeful night interspersed with odd queasy dreams with a Royston Vasey flavour. No more marathons, at least for a year, perhaps longer.
THE END.
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