Desford Quarter Marathon
5th July
2009

 

Official Result

Katarina Darcy 63.23

It was a lovely day (for me) to run in this race; hot and sunny. A small number of runners participated in this event, mainly clubs from around the area but they were friendly and there seemed to be a mixed bunch of the very competitive to those like me. The race was quite eventful from start to finish...
 
Whilst sorting myself out by my car a male runner approached me and asked if I could give him a hand. I was not too sure what he was saying as he was talking quite quietly, but I soon found out when he turned around and pointed to the back of his shorts. His back pocket had split and as he tried to zip it closed, his pants had somehow got caught. Having thought it being too inappropriate for me to ask him to take them off so I could have a proper look to unzip them, I asked him to get as close to my car door as possible whilst I sat in the seat (cars which are low to the ground certainly have their uses!). I have no idea how this may have looked to anyone passing and luckily I did not think anything of it at that time. After a short while, I fortunately had managed to sort everything out.

All of the runners met up on the field and walked several hundred metres to the start on a housing estate. It was a 'whistle' start and without chip timing, so as usual I hung at the back. As soon as the whistle went one runner fell over immediately which caused other runners to either fall over or collide with others whilst trying to remain upright (it's a good thing to hang at the back!). However, everyone was able to get up and carry on running afterwards. 

As soon as we had run about half a mile a car decided to do a u-turn in the middle of the road which caused many runners to run in all directions. The car then came to an abrupt halt as a mass of runners ran towards it. It was, therefore, quite difficult for us to 'keep left' on the road. (There were no marshals present on this part of the road but the organiser had told me before the start that three had dropped out the night before.)

The course was one lap of mainly country roads with the only traffic that seemed to pass were 4X4s, sports cars and the occasional tractor. The heat, lack of shade and the number of hills slowed several runners down but I felt fine. The water station was half way on the course but I decided not to stop and collect any (a mistake I made in the St. Albans Half).
There was a bonfire in one of the fields that we had to pass, not a very good mix with my poor old lungs, so I tried to take in as much air beforehand as I could and hold my breath until I had passed it. This worked a treat and also made me run a bit faster as I needed to breathe again! If this had been a 5 mile race I would have got a PB right there and then!
After running up and down several hills which were quite challenging, I felt comfortable that I could tackle any further hills that I approached. That was until I turned a corner and looked up! There was one very long steep hill to run but I talked myself into running it with a vision that I could sit down on the bench outside the pub at the top. It took ages to get to the top so I was not surprised why the pub was situated there (shame I didn't have any money with me!). But as it had taken several minutes I thought that it would be best to carry on despite my head saying one thing and the rest of me saying another.

As I approached the 6 mile mark I looked down at my time and I should have died of shock. I was actually running faster than my 10K times so when I caught up with the two runners in front of me I decided to slow down a bit and just hang on to the back of them.

There were a couple of short hills back in the housing estate before running onto the field to the finish line which was single file. All of a sudden the male runner that I had been following suddenly stopped and began walking, so the female runner that was with him continued to the finish line with me following.
Our goody bag consisted of a mug, pen, £5 off massage voucher and a choice of a banana , biscuits or flapjack. I fancied treating myself to something from the ice cream van afterwards, only to discover that the poor icecream seller had collapsed due to the heat. He was treated by the paramedics, only for the ambulance to get stuck trying to come off the field onto the small lane due to the idiotic parking by some people. The ambulance was still trying to get around the parked cars when I pulled out of the car park so one of the marshals asked us all to reverse back and find another way to go.....
 
Katarina
 

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