Windermere Marathon

This is a somewhat overdue post since Windermere Marathon happened at the end of May and it is now the end of June, but better late than never.  We had a mixed day out for a variety of reasons but it was lovely weather and a nice accomplishment to have under the belt.  I came down with what seemed to be a cold on the Wednesday before and then turned into a chest infection which I am still recovering from a month later and had a horrific cough. Fortunately, it seemed that exercise suppressed the cough to some extent and I only coughed at the points where we totally stopped and didn't need the cough mixture I was carrying in my bag.  You'll notice in the pictures that I look quite wrapped up - this was more to deal with the photosensitivity that I have as a result of my medication - I had arm protectors on as well.

We did well on the first half of the race, hitting halfway in just a little over 2h and only walking up one very big hill (where there were bagpipers playing!).  I took a few selfies while we were running and a picture of the amazing scenery.

The second half was a lot harder.  Mr JKS began to struggle and was having problems keeping his heartrate at the right level, so we ended up doing a lot of walking with a bit of running.  Unfortunately, by the time he was feeling ok again, with about 6 miles to go, my legs had seized up totally from the hard first half and then walking, so we were only able to continue this to the finish.  However, there was an ice cream van at about 21 miles which we'd heard about in advance, so had some cash ready, and had a "cider refresher" between us which was just lovely as it was very hot.  There was also an unofficial feedstation with a chap giving out flapjack and sweets from the boot of his car in a layby and that was also very much appreciated!

We were pleased to finish and get our medals!  We crept in just under 5 hours which is really quite respectable in my opinion for a hilly course.  Overall I enjoyed it although I didn't feel that I got a full experience of running around the lake that I have swum up and down several times now.  The first half was the most picturesque through lovely rolling countryside, but no views of the lakes.  The second half was mostly along pavements next to the road that goes along the lake, so there were glimpses of the lake, but not very close and more views of the traffic.  But it's pretty cool to have run/walked around the lake as well as swum it :-D  Oh and the goody bag was excellent - local beer, nice neckbuff, kendal mint cake, teabags, a pen...and we enjoyed doing a "smaller" more friendly race to our Brighton/Milton Keynes marathons earlier in the year.

Unfortunately my post marathon recovery didn't go quite to plan and I ended up with a knee injury by running before all of my niggles had been ironed out.  4 weeks later I'm still not running, and we were incredibly disappointed to miss out on doing Coniston marathon (although we still had a fab 24 hours in the lakes with swims in Coniston and Derwentwater and some paddleboarding and lunch at our favourite cafe in Glenridding). I'm really missing running though and not totally sure on the prognosis :( On the plus side, the extra time for my swimming has been good.  And I still owe the blog a post on swimming!  Maybe later this week...