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Leicester Marathon
Sunday 13th October 2013
Christof Schwiening
It was Elliot's first marathon - or any race over 5 km. We had some discussion before hand as to what he might be able to manage. 3:15 was the primary target, but for a first marathon that was gong to be tough. 3:30 was the secondary target. I was very confident that Elliot would easily manage 3:30 and thought that 3:15 was worth a shot. The weather was cold and windy and I was keen not to run too slowly! We wore shower-proof jackets that seemed more like parachutes at points on the course.
We held a very steady 4min 38s per km for the first 34 km or so, before the combination of fatigue, weather and general excess of blood on the trainers started to get to Elliot. The Leicester finish is up a long hill and Elliot fought valiantly to the very end. We crossed the line together in 3:29:25 according to my Garmin, although the official results may never appear. The chip timing system failed, it is unclear why. There are reports that lots of the chips, stuck to the back of the numbers, had fallen off - mine didn't. But, I would not be surprised if other things went wrong too - it was wet and windy!
I don't think the timing failure should put people off the event - it was very well marshaled and the support was excellent. I used it as a 'no fuel, no water' run and it worked out just fine. The cold weather certainly meant that we didn't sweat much and my legs had just about managed to recover enough to store the necessary fuel.
15th October 2013 - A provisional set of results was released yesterday. It is still not clear how they were arrived at. There is one electronic 'split' time at an unspecified distance, probably 10km. This split suggests we held 4:32 per km over that initial section which included a 40 m elevation loss over ~5km. From the facebook discussions and by comparison with wristwatch times it would appear that the results are manually recorded gun times.
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