118

Northampton Running Festival Marathon – Sunday 8^th April

This weekend was so disorganised of me and I was feeling the need to budget with regards to petrol and events and general living costs. But I fancied a nice marathon and so I managed to hatch a plan and get driven ‘dahhhn sowwth’ish to Northampton to do a run that I haven’t yet done.

It was laps, 12 of them and I wasn’t so much looking forward to this prospect, but the grounds around which we were running were really quite pretty and so I was able to put the dread of laps to a corner of my mind…well, for most of it. Inevitably my concentration and focus always succumbs to the curse of the laps and this time was no different but I was able to laugh about it. I was also running around yet another lake…I think I must have a thing for lakes considering the amount of marathons I have run around them (Furzton Lake, Caldecotte, Windermere….) On the completion of each lap, we collected a coloured hair bobble to show that we had completed each lap…it was almost like a little game, running around and collecting them :) Yep, anything where I’m navigating, getting stuck in mud or in some way collecting things on route becomes a game to me and adds a sense of fun.

What I really liked about this event was the huge mix of different people doing different distances, of different ages and abilities. I haven’t done any events in ages where there has been such a diverse mix of people. There was a 10k, half and a marathon. It was nice to see those attempting their first event and seeing them out on the course, tacking the hard bits and pulling through it and onto the finish. It took me back to when I first started doing events and how it was all so new and completely unpredictable. It was nice.

Despite my loss in focus in the latter stages, I felt I was running quite comfortably and I was happy with that. I do like Go Beyond Ultra, the organisers of this event. I’ve previously done their Northants Shires and Spires Ultra and they’re a bunch of really nice people. Ultimately I enjoyed a really lovely training run.

Ooooooo and before I forget, this was my 118th event of at least marathon distance :) 'Da daa daaaaa, da da daaaaa' (118 theme tune in case you couldn't guess ;-) )