Tallinn Marathon – Girl Running Crazy

At mile 8 I was still hopeful
But at mile 9 my right leg really wasn’t so sure
By mile 11 my jog had turned to a distinctive shuffle
At mile 12 I was walking…
…and at mile 13.1 I was well and truly OUT

Just 2 and a half hours after I had started the Tallinn Marathon, I was back in my hotel room, physically and emotionally broken, having only completed half of the course. I wasn’t sure how much cider and wine I was going to need to deal with the situation.

It turned out to be a lot, luckily I had good company…

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It was never going to end well. I was undertrained and injured. But my head was in a different place to my body, in fact, it was so far away, it may as well have been on a different planet. Through a combination of really not wanting to go running, being too busy, and carrying some kind of leg injury that quickly shut down my late attempt to get marathon ready, it really should have been the one I never started.

But I did start.

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Tallinn is actually a very beautiful city, and with the weather bright and sunny, and some Chaser buddies around me, it really could have been a lot worse. After a lot of thinking, and trying to figure out how I felt about the situation, I realised that although I didn’t run the full marathon, and I didn’t get my BQ (which was the reason for signing up in the first place), I still ran half of it and had a really good weekend in a place I had never been before.

The marathon is part of a weekend of events that consists of a kids 5k on the Friday evening, a 10k on the Saturday, and the marathon and half on the Sunday. The marathon is 2 laps of the half, which starts later in the day.

The kids 5k in full swing

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Beginning in Freedom Square, the route takes you around the city and heads out along the coastline for around 7 miles, before switching back to the city again. It was actually better supported than I expected, I thought it would be quite low key with less than 2,000 runners in the full and around 3,000 in the half, but there were people cheering along the route and a few bands making some noise.

It’s pretty flat, and a great course for a PB, although it could get quite windy by the sea in different conditions. There’s also a smell, a kind of putrid dead fish type of smell that gets worse as the day goes on and really puts you off your caramel macchiato caffeine gels. Be warned.

I was feeling OK for the first 8 or so miles, I was running slowly, but I felt OK and was even enjoying running again. But somewhere on the way back to the city, my right leg started to hurt and my hip flexors felt tight, I was getting slower and slower. It was frustrating, and I was trying to calculate how I could adopt a run-walk strategy to the finish but, by 12 miles run-walk was more walk-walk. It wasn’t happening.

As Freedom Square got closer and closer, I had to make a decision. And I knew what the decision needed to be, I just didn’t want to admit it. I could have carried on and shuffled around, but I really didn’t see the point, I was injured, I was going to be painfully slow, and I was already back near the hotel. As my watch hit 13.1 miles, I pulled out.

Tallinn is a well organised event, I can’t take that away from them, but I wasn’t impressed that they wouldn’t let me get off the course very easily, and they wouldn’t give me any water despite having run 13 miles in warm conditions. It didn’t help my mood. Plus, as I hadn’t officially downgraded to the half, I didn’t even get rewarded for my efforts despite having run the half course.

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Well yes actually, I do. And I deserved one. So I got one. And I wore it allll night. Thank you to Paul and Lorraine, who managed to sweet talk the Estonian medal police into letting me have one, it made my day!

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Although Mike unfortunately couldn’t run due to injury, the rest of the Chasers ran really well with a sub 3 PB for Paul, a sold BQ for Rob, a great run from Emma despite hurting her back 2 days before, and an awesome PB for Lorraine in the half.

What then followed were a lot of drinks, some dinner, some more drinks, some silliness and some music.

There’ll be other marathons, and other opportunities to get a PB and a BQ but, right now, I’m a little bit over 26.2. I’ll face up to the fact I’ve signed up to a mountainous marathon in Gran Canaria next year a little later…

In just 11 sleeps time I’ll be heading to Estonia to run the Tallinn Marathon. Tallinn is the last chance to get a BQ for next year, which is one of the reasons why I entered. So, how’s training gone? Well, it’s been pretty non existent to be honest. And I’m not sure I care.

Genuinely, I haven’t run more than 12 miles in one go since London and I haven’t done any training of significance over the last few months. Again, don’t care.

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I’ve committed to a marathon training schedule for the last 7 seasons in a row and I forgot what it was like to just do whatever the hell I wanted. Stay in bed on a Sunday morning, get drunk and dance on tables on a Friday night (not my fault), fall off said tables on a Friday night (definitely not my fault), go out for dinner with my friends on a Tuesday instead of going to track. Just to say yes to things I would normally say no to..

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Sometimes, life happens. And life did happen. Sometimes you just have to go a little crazy to get through it. Sometimes you realise how lucky you are to have some pretty awesome friends to be crazy with. Because they’re friends with you because you’re you, not because of how many miles you’ve run. Sometimes you realise there are more important things in life than running. Yeah, I said it.

I was never sure if I really wanted to run Tallinn, purely because I just didn’t want to do the training. But somewhere along the line I entered anyway and just decided I would see what happened. I got sucked into the idea of a weekend in Estonia and the promise of a post race party, it gets me every time.

Of course, I’m not one to sit still for 5 minutes so I’ve still been sweating it out in my lycra at 7am with the best of them, I’ve just been doing different things, a bit of running sure, but mostly anything but running.

I could, and probably should, downgrade myself to the half, but I just can’t bring myself to do that. I know I’m not going to run a half PB anyway, and the half doesn’t start until midday, so I may as well just spend the morning jogging round Tallinn…

Being so underprepared is strangely liberating because there are absolutely no expectations at all. I almost broke myself training through the winter for the London Marathon, I was bang on form and still managed to f**k it up. This time there’s nothing to lose.

So, I’m going to Estonia, I’m going to run a marathon, I’m going to get drunk and I’m going to try not to miss my 6am flight to Croatia. And I don’t care how long it takes me. Because I really have nothing to prove this time. Not a damn thing.

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