Just over a week ago the world of running races was dominated by the London Marathon. As much as I love the London Marathon, since leaving the Met, there is no chance for me to get the MPAA ballot. I didn’t have much luck with the Comets RRC ballot either. Then I’ve found the amount of money required to raise for a charity place is far too challenging. So, I waited patiently for 8 days to take part in the Milton Keynes Marathon (as I got through the first-come-first-served process) on the Bank Holiday Monday on 1st May to do my 18th Marathon race.
John also
came along to do the half marathon race. We were also joined by our fellow Comets RRC member Anthony Andrew and he also took part in the full marathon distance.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the birth of Milton Keynes as a town. According Wikipedia, before 1967, the area was rural farmland with a couple of dozen small villages. 50 years on, Milton Keynes has now over a quarter of a million population and is the HQ of the National Rail and Open University. Other than that, the local Football Club MK Dons is unfortunately still stuck in the 3rd tier of English football !
This was the 8th Milton Keynes Marathon. I’ve been doing it for 4 years now and I have witnessed the organisation of this event is getting better and better each year with more and more participants. It is still a relatively young event but hopefully as years come by, it will become an iconic event as big as the Great North Run or even the London Marathon.
I rested very well the night before at the Hilton Double Tree Hotel right inside the MK Dons Stadium where the Marathon and Half Marathon took place the next morning. Everything ran really smoothly (the biggest advantage of staying at the hotel is that we just used the toilets at our hotel room without having to queue for toilets at the stadium). This year, the organiser followed the style of the London Marathon with the starting pens divided by barriers. In the past, they just put up the colour signage. Runners could move to the faster pen or vice versa freely. This year, security staff checked the pen colour on runner’s bib before allowing runners to enter the right pen. I think it is a human nature that people tend to become more compliant when they see someone wearing a uniform and a Hi-Viz jacket !
The race was divided into 4 waves with the fastest runners in the
red pen who started first. There was a couple of minutes’ intermission before the 2nd wave runners in yellow pen were allowed to start. This was followed by runners in the blue and green pens. This staggered start worked perfectly as I didn’t feel any congestion at all from the beginning to the finish even though over 6,000 runners started together in the full, half and relay events.
When I started, I was running alongside the 2 hour half marathon pacer. I was doing OK in the first few miles but it also meant that I was going a bit too fast of my targeting time of 4 hour 45 minutes because I was doing 9 minute a mile pace. I was not training for such pace. I told myself I needed to slow down otherwise I would burn out too early. By mile 6, I let him go. From mile 6 to half way, I maintained between 10 and 11 minutes a mile pace. I crossed the half way mark in 2 hours 16 minutes. At that point, I saw the 4:30 pacer overtaking me so I stupidly decided to try to catch him. Unfortunately, my legs didn’t perform the same pace as the first half of the race. The 4:30 balloon was getting smaller and smaller from my eye sight before it totally disappeared. From this point onward, no matter how hard I tried, my pace could never go under 11 minutes a mile. I was praying the 4:45 pacer would not overtake me.
Things started going very wrong from mile 16. I didn’t know why, my pace dropped to over 12 minutes a mile. Only God knows what happened there. I only managed to recover my pace to sub 12 minutes a mile in the final 2 minutes which saw an unrealistic goal of 4:45′ go out of the window. By mile 25 with 1.1 mile to finish, I was on 4:34′. There was no way I could finish the final 1.1 mile under 11 minutes with a pair of very very tired legs. When I turned to the inside of the stadium for the last 200 metres, I heard the shouting of John on the top of his lungs. This had definitely lifted my spirit up. John does have a big voice. I saw the finish line right in front of my eyes but I couldn’t run anymore. All I did was digging and digging forward until I crossed the finish line. My official time was 4:48’04” but when I looked at my GPS watch, it was longer than a Marathon. I had done 26.30 miles. Maybe I didn’t run straight line along the route.
Milton Keynes is not as flat as London but not as congested as London so it is still a PB potential. Back in 2014, I gained my PB in Milton Keynes in 4:28’27”. It still leaves me a fond memory. John finished his half marathon in 2:37’11”. For full results, please visit:
http://www.resultsbase.net/event/3926/results
John and I have decided we will go back next year !!