#287 - #288 - Enigma Christmas Marathon Race Reports

Marathon # 288 Enigma Christmas Day two done! A dark grim wet day at the Lake of Doom today and my legs were not in the mood for it at all today, tired and dead from the off and it was all a bit of a struggle, mind you the mince pie a lap strategy seemed to just about motivate me around! Lol Oh well, can't really complain, two years ago would have been a PB time and now that's my struggle and not really feeling much like it time! Hopefully will serve me well for the longer challenges ahead...

Marathon #287 Engima Christmas Marathon Day One done! Pleased with 3:49 odd as really wasn't feeling it today, legs felt a bit dead, hamstrings a bit stiff and lacking much go. Whilst as usual I set out far too fast I managed ten miles at sub 8:00 and then held on for grim death for a moderately reasonable time and to be honest once I knew a sub 4:00 was looking certain even eased off somewhat. A far cry from some of my marathons of yesteryear where hanging on for grim death and easing off meant beating six hours! Great to see so many of the regulars today and thank you to whoever brought the cakes and goodies!

Pre-Race

It's getting on the for the end of the year, there isn't too many alternatives on the race calendar, so must be Enigma time again!

Race

#287 - It gets tricky to write about what is basically the same event over and over again... back at Caldecotte for the umteenth time, and whilst we often tend to grumble and groan about the "Lake of Doom" we keep showing up as it is nice to see all of our running friends who are here at these types of events. This was a decent run bearing in mind my legs felt really quite dead the whole weekend, perhaps a bit of DOMS from the Malaga marathon the week before where I'd gone as hard as I could basically, but wasn't feeling it at all this weekend. But what is pleasing these days is that the not really firing on all cylinders ended up being a 3:49 which I was pleased with. Ate far too much afterwards mind you as the table had more than the usual goodies brought by runners, many mince pies and cakes...

#288 - Horrible day today both weatherwise and running wise. Rain started after maybe two hours after a bright start and was just plain miserable, windy, rain, grim and dark and I had many moments of "so what exactly are you doing here" kind of thing. To compound things and to make up for the lack of energy I seemed to have I stuffed myself with mince pies... which was fine for the first couple of laps, but after the rain fell (there is no kind of cover or gazebo at these events) then the food got a bit damp and damp mince pies aren't great, but still ate them and then again wondered why as they weren't terribly nice by the end! Took every excuse I could to walk along with someone rather than actually run and could quite easily have just called it a day when the rain started falling.

Pulled myself along to the finish though in one of the worst times of the year really. Was just a bad run on a bad day I guess. I think most of the problem was that I was never really committed to this run, I half thought about just doing the one event this weekend rather than the double, and even driving there I almost just turned around and thought a day at home would be nice. Rest up for the ultras coming up kind of thing... but was glad in the end I guess that I did, always good to see the folks at the lake!

Things I Learnt

• Not great legs can still yield decent times
• Stop eating so much on runs, you don't need it!
• Maybe think real carefully about if you need to do doubles or not sometimes!
• Running faster means less time in the rain!