Brighton Marathon

I was watching it not running it. But because of that I had to get my longish run in on Saturday morning before a family engagement. Not only that but I had to be finished before the Parkrunners needed the park which meant I had to be running by 6:45am. I am happy with the state of my race balls and having put a few miles on them I want to preserve them for race day now, so I got out an old leathery pair to parade around the park with Saturday. It was a lovely morning but very cold. I think the car said it was just 4 degrees. This is not good for my hands and I ended up splitting the index finger on my left hand, having split the one on my right hand at Bluewater a week earlier which had mostly healed in the following week.
I ran deliberately slowly this week as the plan I'm loosely following said I should be doing a 2 hour easy run. So off I went, round and round, overtaken a couple of times by fellow Petts Wood Runner Martin Cunningham who was obviously getting a few miles in before performing his Parkrun Run Director duties that morning. It was a fairly uneventful run. I saw a few familiar faces as people began to arrive for Parkrun but I covered 12.38 miles in a few seconds over 2 hours which was a slow pace of 9:43 per mile. I'm happy with that as I still wasn't over all the snottyness and grogginess I'd been suffering from since last weekend. It's still hanging in there now but clearly on its way out.
Sunday was another early start to catch the coach to Brighton to support my fellow Petts Wood Runners in the marathon. It left at 6:30am. The weather was bonkers for marathon running - far too hot. I'm really glad I wasn't running and sincerely hope it's cooler in London on the 23rd. It was actually 9 degrees warmer in London than Brighton which doesn't bear thinking about.
We must've had about 30 runners at Brighton and pretty nearly all of them suffered in the heat. In fact I've no doubt they all suffered but some more than others. Not everyone finished and many of the others would rather not talk about their time. It was a lovely day for the spectators though but not nice to watch your friends struggling in the heat like that.
I was supposed to be doing some filming with Guinness this Wednesday but having arranged the day off (not easy to do at short notice when you look after other people's children as I do) they decided at the end of last week that they were going to put a hold on it! I don't know if that will get rescheduled.
I won't run with balls this coming weekend in order to preserve my hands and I'm taking the family to see the Harlem Globetrotters on Sunday to get in the basketball mood. On Easter Monday I'm going to walk parts of the Marathon course to look out for manhole covers, poor road surfaces and traffic islands etc. It's getting very close now (but there's still time to send me a good luck message along with a few quid for the charities I'm running for - www.virginmoneygiving.com/kevhowarth )

Thirsty work watching the Brighton Marathon