Running a marathon has always been one of those life “must do’s”. I always assumed that it was inevitable that one day I would run one; surely these things just ‘happen’. However, by the time of my 46th birthday it hadn’t happened and, given my fitness at that time had achieved an all time low (thanks Garmin for the brutal truth), it seemed a marathon was becoming increasingly unlikely.

That was the trigger. That night I entered the Loch Ness Marathon, and just to make sure I didn’t chicken out, I told Facebook and Instagram. There’s no going back after that!

I did consider a few other events before settling on Loch Ness. Initially I had planned to run a city marathon, but the London ballot is too unpredictable and marathons abroad became expensive very quickly. I figured that if I couldn’t have cheering crowds to motivate me then the next best option was to do something where the setting was beautiful and spectacular. Loch Ness certainly fitted that bill, and after I’d read the reviews from previous years I was sure that it would be a well organised and memorable race. The date was set: M day was 2nd October 2022.

One of the advantages of being more massive and less fit than ever before is that improvements come very quickly. I started in the January dark, doing an awkward run/walk shuffle around for about 4 kms at a time. My plan at this stage was to pre-train; to get good enough to start a ‘proper’ training plan in the Spring. Fairly quickly I fell into a routine of doing two shortish runs during the week and a longer run at the weekends, although at this stage 7 kms counted as a long run! On Monday nights I ran around the very dark running track while my daughter was at hockey training. Track running really helped with building confidence, pacing and avoiding injury, even if I did have an irrational fear that I was about to run into something (or someone) in the pitch dark!

I had intended to follow a more prescriptive training scheduled as my fitness improved. I had been given Chris Evans’ book ‘119 Days to Go’, which as the title suggests provides a day by day training programme lasting 17 weeks. Sadly my ability to follow a daily training plan was limited by my inflexible (and sometimes unpredictable) work/life routine, but reading the book was still helpful. Not least it gave me the confidence to not run too much. It also reassured me that being able to run 7 miles at steady pace with 5 months to go is comfortably ahead of the training curve.

Then the injuries started. Perhaps it is age, but I seemed particularly badly afflicted by niggling injuries for the majority of my training. If I am being honest with myself, I suspect the real underlying cause was being too heavy. I had planned to lose 10Kg before starting training, but that never happened. I therefore ran 1000km over a year putting far more strain on my body than I should have done. I lost around 7 weeks of training to injuries including, patella tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, a calf strain and odd back spasms. I learnt that compression socks and patella bands work well, and I also re-learned that when something hurts it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to stop. By the end of my training I’d say I was at a constant 3/10 on the pain scale across my various ailments. But I found that was sustainable.

My biggest worry throughout my training year was that I might not even make it to the start, and even with weeks to go that was in doubt. I gave up all hope of being ‘ready’ and was ultimately just happy to be there at all. Over the 10 months of training I ran just under 1000kms. I did around 8 runs that were longer than a half marathon and my longest run was about 35kms. A few years ago I cycled from Land’s End to John O’Groats. After training for that I realised I trained far more than I needed to. The reward for that was the event itself was relatively straightforward and pain free. For the marathon the opposite was true. I was underprepared and I certainly didn’t have enough long runs in my legs. I knew it was going to hurt, but at least I made it to the start!