Matt's American Adventure: The Marathon

A couple of months ago, Kate casually mentioned in a conversation about our upcoming holiday that we would be participating in the Pittsburgh Marathon, and as you can imagine this was quite a surprise and the response I gave was ‘are you out of your mind?!’ or words to that effect....

It was then explained to me that it would actually be the Marathon Relay, and it was going to be a way of paying tribute to Kate’s grandfather who passed away in 2005 and be a good way of raising money for the NCCC. So I agreed and started upping my running routine. However, closer to our departure date I got two shocking bits of info my loving girlfriend failed to mention to me; the first was the fact that the leg I would be expected to run would be around 10kms  (way above what I was used to) and the other was that the Marathon would be on the SECOND day after flying in.  This did not fill my heart with glee. With this new information I then began to try and run the entire perimeter of our 500ha soft-release cheetah enclosure at the NCCC, which was around 10km. By the time of us flying out I could get around it somewhat uncomfortably in around and hour and 10 minutes, far from spectacular!

As my previous blog explained the journey out here had left me feeling half dead and the night before the marathon Kate was also feeling the effects of a long two days of traveling.  We would spend the night at Rob’s house (Kate’s brother) in the city and we both hoped we would awake in the morning feeling much more with it.

The alarm went of at 5.30am, we dragged ourselves out of bed, put on our relay tribute shirts to Kate’s grandfather and some coffee and bagels later Rob drove us and Kate’s sister Allie into Pittsburgh. Kate and I we were feeling pretty good…. Allie who had also been wrangled into doing the run at short notice and not a morning person was understandably not overly happy with proceedings!

It is here I should mention what a beautiful city Pittsburgh is with its bridges and attractive skyscrapers and as we entered the city we found plenty of activity with runners making their way to their starting positions.  It was also a clear sunny day and starting to warm up Africa style.

Our first stop was to drop Allie off at her relay exchange point as she would be running the second leg, Kate’s cousin Erin at this point had just set off at the start of the marathon on leg 1 (Erin would continue and run the half marathon).  I was then put on a shuttle and taken to my exchange point where I would wait for Kate who would be running leg three. I had anticipated to be quite bored waiting for Kate to arrive but the atmosphere was really great with spectators and waiting relay runners cheering and clapping the professional runners as they ran past as well as giving the incoming relay runners lots of support. It was here I started to feel carried away with the spirit of the event and had thoughts of continuing onto the finish line after handing over to Kate’s cousin Kari on the final leg. I was wide wake, I felt good and wanted to rise up to the challenge of my rivals.

The clock read 2h.38min and our team number was called over the speakers and I spotted Kate in the distance….my turn was up. I gave Kate her medal, a quick kiss and I was away! Playing in my ears was inspirational music I had pre-chosen specially and I felt the eye of the tiger within me!

However, I had been running for around five minutes when I started to feel something wrong with my legs, a pain right down both of my shins, aka ‘shin splints’. It suddenly dawned on me that whilst training in Namibia I had been running on dirt roads and now I was running on tarmac.  I was now seriously worried I wouldn’t be able to make the exchange point let alone the end of the race. I slowed my pace down and hoped to run off the pain and thankfully, slowly but surely my legs started to recover. I had aimed not to stop even once but felt I had to be careful and so I stopped to stretch my legs out. After that I was able to pick up my pace and make some progress on some runners who had overtaken me, including a relay woman in a tutu. Pictured below is one of her relay team mates:

It was getting pretty hot at this point but there were plenty of fluid stations along the course with volunteers handing out water, Gatorade and oranges. There were also lots of local residents standing outside their houses cheering us on and spraying their hosepipes onto the course.

My stamina levels felt really good but every now and then my calf muscle felt a little strange  (I did something to this muscle working in the weeks just before flying out) and I knew it would be unwise to try and go to the end. However, I decided to really make an effort and try to finish my leg within an hour, I was also determined to catch the tutu woman!

I had no idea how long I had run for and found myself running along a long street; right at the end I could see shade tents (which I knew were present at the exchange points) and a gathering of lots of people. I thought it must be the exchange point and therefore I was on the final stretch of my leg; so I started gunning it, tutu woman in my sights. I was flying past runners and eventually the pink blur of the tutu whizzed past and behind me, victory! However, upon reaching the scene of activity I discovered that it was not the exchange point and simply a larger fluid station with a street band and happy on lookers............Bollocks!

As I ran around the corner, I was faced with another extremely long street. But there was no way I was going to let anyone who I had passed overtake me again, especially the tutu woman! So I dug deep and kept a steady pace. I heard one onlooker clapping support and shouting ‘2kms to go!’ and I have to admit those two kilometres were hard. But thankfully my legs held up and I made it to the exchange point where I handed over to Kate’s cousin Kari who gave me my medal. I had finished with a time of 59 minutes and 40 seconds, with tutu woman behind me!  

After catching my breath and chugging some water I jumped on a shuttle that took me close to the finishing line. The traffic now was slow and by the time I got dropped off and walked over to the family reunion area Kari had long finished and I was the last to meet up with everyone, which included more of Kate’s family. Kate greeted me like a worried mother who had lost her child in a Mall....no faith! I was introduced to everybody; her cousin Geraghty had run the entire Marathon, and her Aunt Beth, Uncle Jim along with Erin’s mother Barb had run the half marathon.  

Obviously we were all very tired, but back at Rob’s house his wife Bev had prepared a pretty spectacular spread of food to refuel us.  Kate’s parents were there as well as her Grandmother who was extremely grateful for our efforts in memory of her husband, Harry. It was a great feeling to have been a part of it plus we have raised quite a bit of money for the NCCC. A successful day all round I think you would say :)

So Harry’s Harriers total time total time was 4 hours, 28 minutes and 8 seconds, finishing 545^th out of 924. Not bad considering and something to be proud of!