Category: Marathon

What a weekend

What a Weekend

by Rachel Fawcett

No rest for Leighton Buzzard Athletic Club. Just a week after organizing the brilliant Leighton 10 the club were gearing up for another day of racing starting with the London Marathon. This year it was Billy Mead, Coralie Anderson, Katie Stanton, Michael Furness, Nicola Mellor, Ruth Mitchell and Will Eastman all toeing the line in Greenwich Park. With perfect weather conditions reports of some cracking times started coming back from the Mall. Of note, Billy completed his first marathon in 2:45:46, Mike had a PB of 3:01:56, Will in at 3:11:53, Ruth just behind with 3:14:29, Nicola got 3:17:29, Coralie gained another PB at 3:29:29 and Katie came in at 5:07:34. As we all know, these events don’t happen without some willing manpower getting the runners around and we had our very own Stu Blofeld, Andrea Meek and Carl Meek manning the Lucozade Station getting much needed isotonics down all the runners. With support from BRE, it was great for members of LBAC to give back to the London Marathon community in return all the support our club runners have had from volunteers over the years; it certainly looked like hard graft but a great day. read more

3 in 3hr Challenge – The Final Part

Snowdonia Marathon

by Stuart Blofeld

So as I write this it was over 12 months since I started training for the 3in3marathonchallenge. This challenge finished on 27 October as I completed the Snowdonia marathon.

Attempting to run a sub 3 hour marathon at Snowdonia was always going to be a very tall order. Was it even feasible that I should dream about such an audacious goal? Well probably not but that’s what dreams are for isn’t it…  To motivate you to keep pushing and reaching for the impossible. This was my 8th consecutive Snowdonia marathon. My fastest time to date was 3:16 set in 2016 and my slowest was last year in 3:50. So I was looking for a 50 minute improvement!! Hhhhmmmm…….. read more

Warsaw Marathon

PREAMBLE (PACING STRATEGY) 

The Warsaw marathon took place on 30th September 2018. My second marathon of my #3in3marathonchallenge for the year.  The challenge is to run each marathon in under 3 hours. To recap Brighton in April I ran in 3 hours and 5 seconds! The challenge for Warsaw was to find those extra 6 seconds but of course I had much grander aspirations than that. I use to think (until this marathon) that we owe it to ourselves in every race to always push ourselves to our absolute limits. To realise our full untapped potential. I would of course be extremely pleased with a sub3 this weekend but training had been going very well following Brighton and posting PBs since then in 5K, 10K and half-marathon distances. All the signs were very good and I was confident of running quite a bit faster than 3 hours.  read more

The Mack is Back – Berlin 2018

Berlin 2018

by Peter Mackrell

Berlin 2018 was my 18th marathon and my 3rd Berlin. Germany’s capital has been kind to me down the years, in both 2013 and 2015 I ran PB’s there and my 2015 time of 2:33:35 broke a long standing club record, only for Elliot to take it off me shortly after by a handful of seconds! He subsequently improved it to 2:32:35, exactly a minute ahead of my time.

Following that 2015 run I was convinced I had more in me but then in 2016 and 2017, nothing happened to suggest that I did. Regular niggles meant I went into marathons not fully prepared and at one stage I completely missed seven months due to a combination of injury, studying, and a bit of loss of love for the sport. I began to think I was ‘past it’. The problem is, I’m stubborn and I like proving myself wrong. read more

London Marathon 2018 – Kas

London Marathon

by Kas Gardner

This is my fourth London Marathon and every experience has been different, including this one. I’d had the lurgy in the week before the marathon and it was going to be ridiculously hot, so the plan was to run on heart rate and whatever that got me as a time, was whatever that got me as a time.

I warmed up with Andrew Wasdell of MMKAC, where we chatted about the irony of warming for a marathon on a hot day, and then it was into the pen for the start.

The first two miles were horrible, in fact my overriding thought was, “Oh god this is awful,” but I could see that my heart rate was low and nowhere near my usual marathon effort heart rate so I just kept going. Around mile three I started to feel better as my body adapted, but I made the effort to stick to the shade where possible – even if that meant going the long way round the corners. read more

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