The Race that wasn't to be

New Forest 2015 Today is the 20th December, a day I have been building up to, and training for, for the past six months. It’s the day of the Portsmouth Coastal Waterside Marathon. I booked the train tickets and the hotel room months in advance, did some wonderful long training runs and was feeling confident that I could do this, my first marathon in five years. But it wasn’t to be :(

On the 5th I came down with a cold. Not a stinker but still, a cold and, later, a bit of a loose cough. If the cold had come later, a few days before the race, then it would have been a no brainer to call it off and rest up. If it had been a week earlier then I would imagine I can recover and run. But this was two weeks before and I could get back in good health in time… maybe. But by the Wednesday before I realised that I wouldn’t be fit enough. I did go for a short run on the 20th, just a local one, and felt pretty good. But going the whole marathon would have been too much. I was, basically, gutted that I couldn’t make it.

It’s a hard call to make but there was every likelihood that I would get to the half way stage and have to drop out. I’ve never had a DNF before and it would have been a shame to have to do that. So, now I’m looking for a good marathon in January. I’ve still got my training done, I just need to top it up. My running is going well and I could easily do a Half in the next weeks, but I would really like to do another Full marathon. Not too big (I don’t like the big, multi-thousand events) and prefereably not too hilly. There are a couple of nice runs in the New Forest in March but January seems pretty thin for long runs.