Edinburgh Marathon
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| A fine Scottish Morning |
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| Awesome photobomb by Elizabeth's sister in the start corral |
I had heard a lot
about the Edinburgh Marathon and none of it was good, but when a long time
running friend of mine asked me to train and pace her for her first marathon I
could not resist her request. The training would be via email as she lives in
Greece and I am in England, but we would meet for race day in Edinburgh while
she was home visiting family in Glasgow.
Her training went
great! I was so proud of how she stuck to her schedule, got past minor aches
and pains, and only missed a couple of short runs. Her heart was absolutely in
it from day one and never flagged.
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| Happy, excited runners at the start |
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| Off to a good start |
By the time we met,
the Edinburgh Marathon Festival was in full swing. All over town were people
wearing their 5K and 10K medals and shirts from the Saturday races and the
happy parade of runners with their expo purchases were streaming away from the
Hub. My trainee, Elizabeth, was very excited to see her first expo.
Unfortunately, it was comprised of one tent with a weak assortment of items
pulled from a local running store. She was able to pick up a couple of items though and
we were having fun taking pictures and chatting about our plans for race day.
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| Gosford House |
The
course itself was better than I expected. Pretty ocean views and the loop past
Gosford House were lovely, but the wind off the North Sea was stiff and this
was a good day. I would not want to run this course on a bad day! The
volunteers were wonderful, as was the crowd support.
I won’t
go into detail about the events on the course, but suffice it to say Elizabeth
was amazing. She became more ill and distressed (but not in danger of
dehydration, I would have made her stop if that had been the case,) but refused
to give up. She told me to go ahead and leave her, but there was no way I was
going to abandon a sick runner on the course. We passed many aid stations, but
she pressed forward. Thankfully, I was in contact with her sister, via cell phone, who was
waiting at the finish line. She was worried sick, but ready and waiting with
everything her sister could need.
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| Elizabeth perked up for a picture with the 20 mile sign |
We were
down to a walk as we approached the 20 mile marker. So close, and yet so far to
go. My heart was breaking for my friend. She had worked so hard and was ready
to meet her finish time goals, but it just was not going to happen. She had
worried and fretted about so many things, but
this had never even occurred to her!
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| I love sections of out and back where you get to see the lead runners! |
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| The course definitely had its moments |
We
counted down the final miles with Elizabeth breaking into a running stride as
often as she dared. Despite her awful circumstances, she remained more cheerful
than I would ever have been. Sadly, though, the race finish was terribly
anticlimactic. We managed to finish well under 6 hours and with more than 40
minutes left before the course closed, yet they were already out of all but XS
shirts and goody bags, and did not so much as hand us a bottle of water. I was
shocked, but more worried about Elizabeth. When we went to get our bags, we
discovered they had been unloaded from the transport trucks and left in a
field, in the pouring rain. My bag was totally soaked through. Thankfully,
Elizabeth’s sister had brought her clothes and she was able to shower and get
cleaned up.
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Elizabeth really didn't want to post for this picture, but I pulled her
into it anyway, knowing she would want it someday :-) |
The
race is a point to point with shuttle buses that bring you back to Edinburgh. I
had prepaid for the shuttle tickets, but it was a waste of money since there
were not charging anyone for the shuttles or even looking at tickets. The walk from the finish to the shuttles took about 30 minutes, which was ridiculous! Then, when the
rain started, water was pouring in from holes in the roof. The drive back to
the city was something like 45 minutes, and we were dropped off way at the edge
of town and had to walk a considerable way to get back to the center.
The
race is clearly being managed by non-runners that do not even bother to look at
other races to see how they are run. The most shocking announcement being that
they had decided not to publish race results. The uproar this caused was
unbelievable and there were calls by top runners to boycott the race in the
future. A few days later, they give runners the choice of signing in and opting
to have their results made public. So many people did so that they ended up
publishing all the results. They also say they are sending out appropriately
sized race shirts to those that did not get one, (not holding my breath on
that as it has been a month and no shirt has shown up.)
All in all, I do not recommend this race. There are so many wonderful places to run in the UK and so many races that are properly managed that I would skip this one and just enjoy visiting Edinburgh on a non-race day.
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