What am I doing?
Why am I here?
Why am I running through an industrial estate on the first Sunday in April?
When will this pain end?
All these thoughts and many more are going through my head as I reach the final five miles of the 2023 Brighton Marathon.
My mind drifts from the pounding of the concrete road in Hove and back to a conversation nearly 12 months prior and a flippant remark about signing up for the race. Again, the why's started flooding back?
In April 2022, I was sat at work, enjoying a break from the usual day to day and into my inbox slides a message from a couple of colleagues; a suggestion to sign up for the Brighton Marathon and run it as a workday out. At that time, I had only been running for a few months and only completed a 10 km effort. In fact, my entire running journey was based upon keeping Lucy, my better half, company as she wanted to run the Colchester 10k event. To that point, we had completed the Sudbury Fun Run and were on track for Colchester in a few weeks. In my bosses mind, I was a runner and so a great candidate to sign up for a marathon!
Back to the present and I realise another mile has ticked by, and I remembered my go-to mantra; “Continuous Forward Momentum”, regardless of what happens, just keep moving forward, one step at a time. It was this mantra that got me to the start line, through all the ups and downs of the winter training, through those niggles you get when you start taking on a challenge such as this.
Now, it is important to note that I have a habit of not exactly doing things in a calm and measured way. So before hitting the start line I had taken part in various off-road events but had never tackled the full 26.2 miles on road.
With that in mind, I did not have a goal I had committed to either, secretly I would love to go under four hours but opted to run it socially and enjoy the moment.
We were now within the last couple of miles and the bleak industrial units had been replaced with the Brighton sea front and lines of beach huts. With the beach huts came crowds, this was just what I needed, some extrinsic motivation. With every meter, I edged closer to the finish the crowds got larger and louder and my pace got quicker. By the time I could see the finish line, I was buzzing with energy, so much so that I stopped to help a stationary runner and get him going again. With one final, what felt like a sprint but no doubt looked like a fast hobble, I crossed the finish line. The marshal's ushered me through the finish funnel to collect a medal, a t-shirt, some other motional material and a bottle of water; that was really what I required. Once the adrenaline had eased I looked back at the clock, 3 hours and 53 minutes. The official time turned out to be 3 hours 52 minutes and 28 seconds!