“I’d much rather say hello. Hello to a new adventure”
– Ernie Harwell
I look back through these ramblings on occasion and it has only just dawned on me that I have never written about one particular race, Great Langdale marathon. This was my first race, of any distance. We’d recently trekked to Everest Base Camp something I had dreamed of doing since being a kid, and of course once an ambition is fulfilled it leaves something of a void. So, I persuaded Duncan that what we really needed to do was a) start running and b) do a marathon. We’d tried a bit in London, and it was rubbish, we tried a bit more in Oxford and it was still pretty rubbish.
I wasn’t a sporty kid, I’d cycled since I got my first bike age 5 and I’d always loved it, although strangely never felt the need to race. At school I was a rubbish runner, I spent most of the year dreading the annual humiliation of coming last in whatever race I got put in for sports day. Until the year that some genius came up with the idea of rolling a ball furthest down the track, and that was the only ‘race’ I signed up for that year, foregoing last place in the egg and spoon race, for last place in rolling a ball. I would run on occasion at university in Winchester along the water meadows – well they inspired Keats to poetic greatness perhaps they might inspire me to athletic greatness – spoiler alert they didn’t! As a confused English Literature graduate, I went through the regular commissions board for Sandhurst military academy – don’t ask – and almost died during the 500m ‘sprint’ test, it took me 2m 14s, the cut off was 1m 50s, the fastest finisher did it in 1m 13s. My broad approach to the sprint given my lack of training was to imagine running for a bus, but whilst being chased by a bear. Fair to say my early days as a runner were not auspicious.
Flash forward to age 30 in 2011 and having recently moved to Woodstock just north of Oxford I decided that a sport I had been rubbish at for most of my life was just what I needed to fill the void labelled ‘adventure’. I had watched the London marathoners coming down the mall on that home stretch whilst living in London and I had been inspired by their grit, 26.2 miles….. woah! I didn’t really have the inclination to run in the city though having had my fill after 6 years there so I hunted around….. Langdale! Ron Hill called it ‘The world’s toughest road marathon’, perfect; at least if you are absolutely clueless. Undeterred by the quote on the race website from a runner suggesting that ‘I would suggest it is probably not suitable for a first time marathon’, I signed up, well mentally at least, I couldn’t sign up on finding this gem until about 4 months later. Finally done though, September 2012 game on!
My first run was around a field behind the house, part of Blenheim Palace park, it was approximately 1 mile. I had a cotton vest from H&M, an unsuitable hoodie, regular socks and a pair of cotton jogging trousers and some cheap as chips running shoes purchased from Sports Direct of course – chafetastic! It was fairly hideous, breathless in the January chill I slogged around the field and wondered how the hell I was going to run 26 miles in the Lake District. My hope was that because I have so many memories in the Lakes, including family roots (Grandad M’s side are all Cumbrian) and I have always felt at home in the fells, it would get me round. Over the coming month I began to understand that it would not be so simple. From April we began the classic marathon training program, via ‘marathon rookie’ of course, four days a week laps of Blenheim Palace park, including the seemingly never ending ‘sheep gate’ drive, which on Summer days hummed with the smell of sheep poo. Running down said drive broadly felt like this……..
So the months passed, we gradually got better, ran longer, got proper running shoes that didn’t rub our feet to buggery and running clothes that didn’t chafe everywhere. We learned about gels and bought those bottles that you can hook around your hand – I got irritated with it shoved it up my arm like a bracelet and then grated my knuckles on more than one occasion trying to get it off. I got a sports massage for the first time and was in agony for the next two days. I still bothered about things like; not running in the rain, getting wet feet, random aches and pains, weighing myself after each run and re-hydrating appropriately (that last one is probably sensible, but hey ho).
A week before the marathon I invested in a lovely new pair of socks, black with blue dots. Knowing no better I wore them once to walk around, in assumed they’d be ok, and decided that in spite of having perfectly good other tried and tested socks I would go with these new and amazing compress sport socks which promised I would dance to the finish line all through the virtue of aforementioned blue dots….. Yeah, not going to lie, I still can’t resist fancy kit, but I always road test it thoroughly first.
So race day arrived, premise was simple, two laps of the Langdale valley and its surrounding villages, half marathoners get to stop at the pub after the first lap, marathoners get to bypass the pub and do a second. It was boiling hot, but beautiful. Joss Naylor started the race (I had no idea who Joss Naylor was at that point, hell, I didn’t even know who Mo Farah was at that point until I watched him to sweep to victory in the amazing Olympic 10,000m final a few weeks previously on the TV ) and approx 300 runners set off on the challenge. Of course like all novices I read all the great motivational quotes, devoured Eat and Run (figuratively!) and Born to Run, and imagined myself crossing the finish line like this…..
Because of course, I have the grace, speed and genes of this dude…….
The first thing to point out here is that in spite of my love of trail running, the Great Langdale marathon takes place entirely on the road. I didn’t start trail running until 2014, but that’s another story. So off we set along the road, the first mile is flat, before the first climb….. oh that climb – valley end is a brutal half mile slog up a 25% grade hill, super runners ran it, we walked….. slowly! After that first climb the course follows the road around Blea Tarn before dropping down into Little Langdale, the course is then pretty much either up or down. One chap in a Wallace and Gromit jersey which read ‘Keep up lad’ snuck into a pub for Guinness part way. Fair to that Langdale is not a typical marathon, it’s mainly locals, super low key and pretty friendly.
By the end of the first lap I was sore, miserable, chafed and my lovely new socks had rubbed my feet to buggery, so I switched those up at the halfway mark for the tried and tested ones. Mum asked if we were planning on continuing, yep, ‘fraid so can’t quit halfway. Being a novice at the whole game I also took the advice of gel companies to eat one gel every 20 mins until I was practically sick, I think I consumed around 15 gels (for comparison I ate just 5 at Lakeland 100), to this day I still struggle with Torq rhubarb and custard gel. Duncan got foot cramp and had to take his insoles out, that apparently helped. I was just battered, sore hips and crampy adductors (and not brave enough then to just run through it, if only I had known then, that was actually just a little ache…….!). So in the end we took 5 and a half hours, and that was approx 5th from last. I was sick as a parrot from the gels, and aching all over. My finish line……
A bit more like this.
I didn’t walk right for a week. I vowed never to run again. It took approximately 8 weeks for me to actually start running again, and I use running loosely, as I ran only a couple of times a week for most of 2013 for about 3 miles a time.
I returned to Langdale for the half in 2013 and crashed and burned; I managed 2hrs 18mins, probably unsurprisingly given my fairly haphazard training. Again it was a miserable experience, Duncan bested me by 8 mins in spite of even less training than I had done, dammit! I joined a running club a few weeks later to try and improve, the first night there was like school sports day all over again, the session that night was 10 x 400m, I was last on every single lap by some margin, I also thought I would pass out and my bum ached for the next three days. I stuck at it though and gradually I began to improve, in 2014 I got carried away and raced too much, but I did return to the Langdale Marathon that September, I felt confident that I could take an hour off my previous time, foolish maybe……
I finished in 4hrs 16mins.
1st lap in 1hr 59m
2nd lap in 2hr 17m
In this moment, cool in dress and shades……. In the interest of transparency though I was laid out on the grass with stomach cramp about 30s later.
It’s still my favourite race in spite of being on tarmac, in spite of or perhaps because of, the slightly higgledy piggledy organisation – it’s started late on all three occasions I have run it. I love it because of it’s quirks; it’s carefree, it’s not quite accurate, local kids come around on bikes high fiving, local adults heckle you from their balconies “FULL OR HALF?!”, “Full”, “Go on lass!”, and you might have to untangle yourself from another race mid way. It’s not a race for those who want PB’s (unless like me it’s the only road marathon you are willing to run), it’s a road race with a trail running vibe. And I now know who Joss Naylor is; a bloody legend that’s what……
Joss Naylor, 81, aka ‘Iron Joss’. Points of interest: he has no cartilage in one knee, suffered a broken back as a child and during his Wainwrights attempt his shoes rubbed through to the tendons of his ankle, he kept going and his record remained unbroken until 2015. Fact: He is tougher than 99.99999% of us.
Oh yeah, and then this is the view in the last three miles (you can’t see the finish until about 200m away which is serious mental anguish.)
If there’s a road race with better finish line views than this I’ll eat my insoles.
I will go back to Great Langdale marathon hopefully sooner rather than later, for someone not particularly bothered by times, I am itching to run a sub 4 hr marathon here, and I want to see the view from the top of that first hill again and then, again.
I have since had varying degrees of race success, so maybe I should try another egg and spoon race, I’d take a ladle, that’s what hindsight can do for you ;o)
Celebrating that perfect finish and this glorious view from the summit of Side Pike high above the Langdale valley.
Jess the Running Lynx 