Three Forts Marathon

Three forts was my first marathon back after 100 miler. This was 4 weeks after 100 miler so I didn't know what to expect.Pre race I was talking to my mate James and he was saying I could run a good time there, he won it last year in 3.13. I somehow got this in my head which was very stupid of me. Drove to the race, hour and half to Worthing which wasn't bad, was a sunny day. Arrived at the marathon,was quite a small one with a field of 240 odd. I was chatting to a guy on the start line who was doing his 2nd ever marathon and had googled James from last years marathon and now followed his blog. The marathon started at 10am, I ran the first 2 miles in 2nd place, then it hit me as we approached a steep hill and had to walk the hill. This is when I realised I did not have it in me today. I carried on running by about mile 8 I was in bits and it was getting hot. A DNF did actually cross my mind with another 19 miles to go as was 27 miles long. This was a very hilly course, the first 11 miles was into wind and then the 2nd half was a cross wind. In the end I manage to finish in 4.09.50 http://www.threefortsmarathon.org.uk/3forts-results-full-a.asp. What I learnt yesterday was you need time to recover after a 100 miler as I was lacking lot of energy, so it was a good learning curve and a good training run. I am suppose to be doing the Essex marathon on Sunday but I will see how I feel on Saturday.I want to run it as it's quite close to me but will have to see how I feel. I have just had my first ice bath which should hopefully help the legs recover. Looking at yesterday's results 3.25 won it so it proves how good James' time was last year.