Dorney Lake Marathon – 6th Oct 2024
The 6th October saw one of our own take on his 1st marathon. See how he got on….
– Race Report by Matt McCarthy-Dorney Lake Marathon race report by Matt McCarthy
One of my running goals at the start of 2023 was to run, walk or crawl a marathon.
I joined TRAC in the April and booked some races, focusing mainly on 10ks.
As the year progressed I considered signing up for a marathon at the Goodwood Motor Circuit in December but decided to marshall at the TRAC organised Alan Green Memorial Race on that day instead and run a unofficial solo marathon a couple of weeks later along the Bristol And Bath Railway Path. This started my ongoing battle with toe blisters and my main running goal for 2024 was to just enjoy running, so signing up for an official marathon was not prominent in my thoughts but at club sessions people were preparing for their spring marathons and asking me which marathon I was going to do, so in April after getting an offer for £10 off a RunThrough race, I looked to see what marathons they did and booked Dorney Lake for the 6th of October.
The flat course and late morning start time appealed to me. The race started in waves with my predicted finish time of between 3 and 4 hours starting at 11am.
On the day I set my alarm for 7am and was on my way there by 7.30am, stopping off at the services to eat my lunchbox of granola. I arrived just after 10am and got my race number.
The event was well underway with lots of runners doing laps of the lake. The marathon was 4 laps and there was also a half marathon option.
I did a bit of a warm up but wanted to conserve my energy for the race so didn’t do much running.
Between booking the race and leading up to race day I was unsure what time I should aim for and what pace I should set off at. I didn’t want preparing for the marathon to take over my life so opted against a training plan but upped my weekly mileage and got in a few decent long runs over about an 8 week period. I was building confidence when I got ill just under 3 weeks before race day. After missing a week of running I got back out there even though I still wasn’t feeling well and unsure whether I needed to get some good runs in to get back to full fitness or taper as planned.
Come race day I felt sub 3 hours 10 minutes should be my target and set off to run slightly quicker than that pace during the first half as I expected the last 6 miles to be a struggle.
The temperature was pretty ideal and the fine rain in the air at times never got worse but there was enough wind to make running even splits tricky. I still felt strong at 20 miles but then got discomfort in my right hamstring that turned into sporadic painful cramp in both legs. I slowed the pace but it got worse so I stopped to stretch which was agony and I thought I wouldn’t be able to continue. I decided to try and somehow managed to get going but the sharp pain kept reoccurring so I’m not quite sure how I made it through the last 3 miles without stopping again and keep my pace quick enough to still finish inside my target time, with an official time of 03:09:37.
That is a fantastic time for your first marathon Matt and hats off for digging deep at the end! For someone just starting their running journey you have a very bright future!