Brighton Marathon 2013

I couldn’t persuade my 12 year old to run this year’s mini mile race (he’s faaaar too old now 😉  ) so it was just the girls today. Last year, they were in different age categories, but today they were in the same race. I don’t think Flo had counted on Olive being up with her any time after the start line…. (that’s Flo in no 2002 and Olive 2003) so she wasn’t having any of that and started to take off! They ended up only a few seconds apart which prompted Olive (aged 8) to celebrate all day and avoid taking her medal off until bed time, and Flo to sulk because, although she’d beaten her ‘little’ sister, it wasn’t by as big a margin as she’d have liked. I just can’t think where they get their competitiveness from 😉

Onto the main marathon and I always forget how much you have to concentrate to catch a glimpse of clients/friends/anyone you know. Absolutely loved it though and realised when I got home that I’d been watching races and trying to spot people for over 6 hours! God I love Brighton. What an amazing place which really comes alive on marathon day.

This was the brilliant Ros at mile 11 – she could at least have pretended to look tired! Ros finished in a breathtaking 3 hours 47 minutes. Now that’s an impressive time for anybody, but when you factor in the fact that she only started running 2 years ago when she was 49, it’s truly fantastic.

So the next time you train with Ros and she pushes you a little harder, it might just ease the pain a bit to know that she worked sooo hard, both in training and on the day, to achieve such a thing.

Other than oozing pride over Ros’ achievements, there were also all the usual costumes (how that man runs a full marathon with a life size tiger on his back, I’ll never know), the fabulously encouraging volunteers and the endless stories of inspirational journeys which got these runners to the start line (never mind the finish line).

Tragically, when I got home I read about the 23 year old Londoner who collapsed and died part way through. One of my lovely clients is a consultant in A&E and was working on the marathon course. She was telling me that absolutely everything was done for him, right from the spot where he collapsed to the operating theatre. I guess it just goes to show that despite the thousands of people who run marathons every year, it doesn’t take away from the enormity of the task. Condolences to the poor runner’s family.