8th Place in European Marathon Champs
I’m back at home now but still buzzing from Sunday’s race! 8th place seems a little bit surreal and the reaction back home has been incredible and I certainly didn’t expect all the attention I’ve got these past couple of days. I really enjoyed my few days in Barcelona and the general vibe in the team hotel has been good and it’s great to be able to say I was there.
The marathon itself went pretty much went as well as I could have hoped with perhaps the only exception being a little scare at 2km to go (more on that in minute).Below is my race day as happened for those that are interested…
Pre-Race...
My day started at 6am (4hours before the race) with a quick shower to wake the body up before then heading down for some breakfast. After fueling on some muesli, fruits & yogurt (my usual food of choice, porridge doesn’t seem be popular in Spain!), it was then back to the room to start drinking my high sodium drink, the idea being to retain as much water in the body as possible. Not especially nice tasting drink but if you like sea water you might like this! At 7.45am we left the room (I was sharing with Dan Robinson) briefly to hand our drinks bottles which we mixed up at the previous night. Then it was back to room to finish off the sea water! At 8.30am we took the bus to the course and headed to the designated athlete area which was located in a local leisure centre next to the start finish area. It was then just the waiting game… staying relaxed and most of all cool, which was helped by the wearing an ice jacket for part of this time. The idea is keeps your core temperature down as much as possible so to delay the inevitable process of over heating during the race. I kept my warm up shorter than normal today but I didn’t find temperatures at hot as I expected, I feel good and light on the warm up and I know I’m ready to race. I head back into the athlete area and pop the ice jacket back on for a few minutes. About 20mins before the start we go through to the final call room wear they place our timing chip into the back of our front Bib. A few of us spend the last 10mins to continue to keep the core temperature down by apply bags of ice to our body, then the call comes for the officials and we start lining up to be lead out on the course, it now that things can go pretty quiet and people stay to focus on any last minute race rehearsals in their mind. We have been taken out a little late so there barely time for a couple of strides to keep loose before they start lining us up.
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