Great North Swim and Great North Run

My Great North week, really was pretty great. Starting out with the Great North Swim and finishing with the Great North Run.

At the beginning of the week it was the Great North Swim. We were staying in a self catering lodge not far from Windermere to use as a base. All the advice on the day was to not drive and try to park at the event so we decided to walk the 3 miles to Windermere which proved to be a pleasant warm up for the swim.

We were there pretty early, time enough to mill around watching the organisers going through the safety briefings and things. I was in the first wave on the first day and I felt pretty privileged to be the first one out. It seems that most people in the first wave were all new to this outdoor swimming malarkey and after going through into the holding pen we all just stood around nervously, not sure what was going on. A couple of people dipped into the lake to acclimatise but most of us (including me) just nervously waited for the starters gun.

I wish I did have a pre-race dip into the water though because the moment I hit the water my breath was taken away, and for the first quarter of a mile my chest felt tight and I felt like I was going to drown. I didn’t though, and eventually I started to enjoy myself.

I’m a confident swimmer but I couldn’t bring myself to do anything other than breast stroke. It is my strongest stroke and when I was younger I won several races with it but alas, the front crawl is faster and over the distance people who I thought I might beat thrashed past me. Dr. Hillary Jones (of GMTV fame) was one of those people who went past me at about the half mile mark, I tried to keep with him but I couldn’t bring myself to front crawl.

In the end I finished in 00:41:43. A time I am pretty pleased with. When I was training in the pool I was covering the mile distance in about 45 – 50 minutes. I finished overall 2777th fastest person out of 4581 people who completed the swim over the two days.

I enjoyed the day, and the experience of the whole event was brilliant but the competitive side off me is not happy about finishing in the bottom half of the grid. I have already applied to do it again next year and vowed to have an open water front crawl I am confident with next time.

The Great North Run was at the other end of the week was something awesome, I have never taken part in anything so special. Fifty thousand other people all taking part in the same event was pretty amazing and I felt proud to be there.

Driving early in the morning to park the car at the finish line, my Satnav guided me down the route of the run. It made me really nervous to see the route that we would be running but it did help me visualise what was upcoming, where the water stations where, where the hills where, and most importantly where the finish was. Parking up we bussed back to the start to join thousands of runners and spectators all being whipped up into some kind of running frenzy by the announcer.

As I mentioned in earlier blog posts, I was in the green group at the back which was, (I’m told) almost a kilometre from the starting line, certainly it took me nearly twenty minutes to walk to the start line from the green zone pen after the gun had gone. The green group was not filled with the fastest runners in the world either and once we finally got underway I did get bogged down with slow movers who were not as keen to get to South Shields as I was.

My leg was a constant worry during the build up to this event, and I hadn’t really run on it for two or three weeks prior. The leg ached a bit in the morning so I made sure I warmed up thoroughly and also took the warming up short cut with lashings of Deep Heat slathered all over. The leg muscle tightened up during the first few miles but eventually I forgot about it and was able to do the distance without another twinge.

I was really surprised how many people were badly prepared for the half marathon. All the information provided by the great run people had outlined how hard the event was: Don’t run if you haven’t run any more than 8 miles, keep hydrated, don’t drink booze the night before etc. etc. (I have to be honest I broke many of the rules on being fit to run, and had I not been as stubborn as I am I might have not run this year) but at about the 3 mile mark people were already walking and it wasn’t much long after that there were fallen runners being tended to by paramedics. I remember one man who looked to be of a similar fitness, build and age to me stumbling off the road and into a tree completely delirious with fatigue or heat exhaustion (a pack of paramedics pounced on him so I guess he survived).

The final mile dropped down onto the coast and along the sea front and was lined by so many cheering people it was a real boost, I decided to go for a fast finish. I saw the “800 metres to go” boards and I stepped up a gear, and was running for ages before the 400 metre boards came up. I hadn’t really appreciated that 800 metres was half a mile, I had just got wrapped up with the joy of seeing the first sign that was in metres not miles. I nearly killed myself with that half mile sprint finish.

In the end my time was 02:04:57 which is a time I am happy with. I finished overall 14,244th out of 37,541 finishers. Top half of the grid is much more pleasing.

They also had several timing mats over the course and my times recorded were.

5k 00:28:41
10k 00:58:18
15k 01:28:14

Which means at the first mat I was doing 9.2 minutes per mile (or 6.5mph) second mat I was slowing and doing 9.38 minutes per mile (6.4mph) and by the third mat at 15 kilometres I was doing 9.46 minutes per mile (6.34mph). So much for trying to run negative splits. I am pleased I kept my speed above 6mph though because often during training I would trundle along at 5mph.

The experience was amazing. Going over the Tyne bridge with the sun shining, fifty thousand other people all doing the same thing, and the Red Arrows flying overhead, was one of those moments I won’t forget. It is difficult to sum up my feelings at that moment in words but it was brilliant and something I am going to have to do again.

Two days later and the aches have arrived. Nothing too bad, though it has taken most of the day for the seized muscles to cooperate. I’m going to give myself the rest of the week off and then I am getting back into the training. With a couple of half marathons under my belt it is probably time to set my sights on a full one.