Yesterday I finished off this year’s marathon (and most likely the last one I’ll do). I ran in the Halstead and Essex Marathon which was held yesterday, on Sunday 10th of May 2009 in Halstead, Essex.

Halstead is a small country village just a short trip north of London. To get there from London I had to take two trains but all in all it was only an hour trip from Liverpool Street station so it was short and enjoyable. Along for the ride were my parents since they were staying over in London for the weekend and wanted to come with me for support. We arrived in Halstead in a timely fashion and what really struck me about the village was that it is incredibly beautiful. Each and ever garden in the village is pretty much immaculate and even the acres looked like they had been groomed with scissors. So when I saw the village I knew that the running path was going to enjoyable and at least I’d have something nice to look at :)

I wasn’t the only Icelander in the race as Óskar Jakobsson og Hávar Sigurjónsson also took part so there were three Icelanders in a group of less than 500 racers (seriously the world keeps on proofing that it’s really small).

Before running the race I had decided to spend about two to three months with aggressive and strict training so I wouldn’t have any issues at all. This didn’t work out at all. In February when I did the Tough Guy race I busted my knee really badly and had yet to recover completely so I’d been easing into the training process but was again hindered by a trip to Iceland, exams and endless job application processes so all in all I got about two weeks of strict training done before the run. Not the best choice and I reaped what I had sown, not much at all.

I started of the race at a fair pace keeping myself in the faster echelon of racers but as the track turned out to be much hillier than I had expected I gradually slowed down. The fact that the track was hilly was a really bad issue since that meant going uphill exposed my calves to stress and I’m highly prone to calve cramps and going downhill put impact on my knees. My thoughts were basically “Great I’m screwed either way, but I’d do best to continue”.

About midway through the race I’d fallen further and further back in the group and was most likely in the middle of the whole group. My knees felt bad in each step, my calves ached and my thighs were pretty much numb. But I decided to stride on because I’ve never given up on anything that mattered in my life and I wasn’t going to start now. The race started being about getting from one mile marker to another and by the last six miles it seemed that the distances had inceased exponentially. But I finished the race nonetheless.

After this I’m pretty sure that complete marathons are not my thing, I’ll stick to half ones if I take part in one in the future. My knees just can’t handle the pressure of running such a long distance.

My favourite contestant by far was the guy running as Superman, he didn’t go over too fast but he finished and in style:

Because I was running the marathon I wanted to use the opportunity to raise funds for the charity organization CHILDREN with LEUKAEMIA. CHILDREN with LEUKAEMIA is one of the UK’s leading charities and is dedicated to fighting against the most common childhood cancer.

To advertise the race and donation drive I set up a simple site: LondonHlaup.com. All in all, people donated close to £200 to the charity which I’m really glad about.

If anyone wants to donate to the Children with Leukaemia charity despite the marathon being over, you can do so directly through here: http://www.leukaemia.org/donate/online

Related posts from the blog:

• Articles of the week (15/2009 & 16/2009)
• Tough Guy 2009
• Financial Humor – May 2009
• Financial Humor – July 2009
• Article of the week (25/2009): Have stock markets run away from reality?