On the Saturday afternoon, the road trip began. First stop was Cannock, where I met up with Kate and Ian, who I was travelling up with. Thankfully, Ian volunteered to drive the rest of the mammoth distance, so I could have a bit of a rest. Next stop was Manchester to pick up Les, who I practically emotionally blackmailed in to doing the run as well!!! On reaching Middlesbrough, we checked into the Best Western hotel, which was located next to a building site. Which had a lot of scally kids on it.
Things had been planned out quite well - I'd looked up an Italian restaurant near the hotel and booked it for the Saturday evening for pre-run carb loading. We headed down to the restaurant, and then all ended up having pizza instead of the intended pasta. Still the food was good, and the drinks and chat after were the perfect build up to the the big day.
After an average night's sleep (not because of the hotel - it was pretty comfortable - the problem was nerves), we had an early start, with breakfast at 6am. As part of the hotel deal, we had transfers to and from the race site. Despite the awful directions provided to the meeting point by the travel company, we found the coaches in time for the departure at 6.45am. The weather at this point wasn't great - it was raining constantly. The journey to Gateshead was hassle free, and we arrived at the race site to more rain with almost 3 hours to spare. Most of this time was spent trying to keep warm (courtesy bin bags) and find shelter from the rain, which we got in various places, including by the university, and at the nearest metro station.
We slowly made our way to the baggage buses to dump our bags, and then made our way to the start line. We did think we were going early, but the sheer volume of people and buses meant that this took a while. To put things into perspective, there were four or five colour zones, and I put my bag on bus no. 22. There were 54,000 people doing the run, and the start line was 1km long. After the warm up (which was nearly impossible to do because of the amount of people), the run began. I was in the green zone, fairly close to the back (and rightfully so!). It would have been a little more pleasant if we weren't drenched from head to toe, but it couldn't be helped. It took me half an hour to cross the start point, and the first few miles went fairly well. The atmosphere was electric, and despite the rain, the roads were lined with spectators, which made it easier to keep going.
Around the 6 mile mark, the weather started to clear up, and the sun actually came out. It was pretty strong, but didn't stay for long. I had other problems though - both my knees gave up on me. The right knee has been problematic for a while, and I've been receiving physio on it. However, over the past 2-3 weeks, the left knee has become quite painful during training. The same pains returned at this point in the run. I tried to carry on, but the pain was almost unbearable. From this point on, each mile ended up being a mixture of walking as quickly as possible, and running as far as I could. Needless to say each mile got longer and harder.
After 10 miles, things became very hard. I didn't feel as though I had any energy left, and when I was trying to run, I noticed that I was literally dragging my feel along the floor. Again, as hard as I tried, I couldn't go much faster. The 11th mile was all uphill, and by this point a lot of people were walking. We also had to move out of the way a few times for ambulances that needed to pass - some people were more unfortunate than me and ended up being severely injured. Just before we got to the 12th mile, there was a very steep downhill section - unfortunately, because of my knee problems, I couldn't even run down here. However, on reaching the 12 mile mark, there was a straight stretch to the finish, and I did force myself to run this (albeit very slowly). During the last mile, the heavens opened, and the rain started to hammer down, making it harder. For the last kilometre, markers were placed every 200m, and after 12-and-a-bit miles, every 200m seems much, much longer. I finally crossed the finish line, with my time being a not so great 2 hours 46 mins. But the main thing for me was to cross the finish line, which I did.
After completing the run, I headed over to the Macmillan tent for a chocolate bar, drink and a chat - seeing the Macmillan supporters along the roads cheering me and the other runners on really made a big difference, and gave a big push to carry on. Following this, I met the others (who finished way before me!!!) for a chat and catch up.
We then began our trek back home. After another mile long walk to the coaches, we were transported back to Middlesbrough, after which Ian very kindly drove us back home (via a service station where we had a well deserved Burger King for lunch/dinner!!). All in all, it was an amazing experience - I may even do it again......
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