GLA-EDI-Double Marathon 14/03/08

Yesterday I was back in supporting mode when Dirk (last year’s well trained Devil supporter) and I set out to support Thomas to the finish of the 1st GLA-EDI-Double Marathon. I must admit that for the first time I think I would have preferred to be running! Not necessarily this race but in general. And Thomas only has himself to blame for this as he has infected me with the running bug.

It didn’t help either that he had been a bit tense the days before the race, realizing that the recent races had taken their toll and his legs took their time to recover especially from last week’s HM. He even took 2 whole days off running and immediately showed signs of withdrawal… He was even grumpier than usual when he had to get up early yesterday morning. He got all his gear ready and gave us – again – strict orders not to do anything that could get him disqualified. He was following the race rules by the letter after checking with the organizers in an email, i.e. carrying all your fluid supplies, only refilling at the checkpoints with whatever you leave with the organizers at the start, carrying all your compulsory gear including torch and space blanket. It turned out later that most competitors did the same with bag packs on their shoulders, but there was the odd one who did carry only a rather small bump bag getting his bottle exchanged regularly by his support at various points …

Anyway, at the start we saw Maggs who was first to register. We then saw Lucy Colquhoun and I said to Dirk, this was going to be the winner – unless Jezz Bragg was also turning up. And of course I was right, but I guess that was not hard to predict! She won the race in a great time of 6h: 50min. Though she was followed closely by Kenny V initially and then John B until just after Linlithgow when she managed to shake John off. Well done Lucy! Back to Thomas though…

We saw him for the first time just before Kirkintilloch when we were on a bridge to take photos. He was gesticulating something to us so we headed off to catch him again at Twechar just before the 1st checkpoint (CP), but he just wanted to tell us that his fellow runner was Crazy German No 2, Andre Reibig, incidentally running in long skins as well … (Note to Andre in case he reads this: Thomas is known as "Crazy German")



There we also met Debbie and Cairn, Marco who was running the first 20M of the route on his own and Kenny V’s family. Off we went to Bonnybridge where Thomas kept complaining about his sore legs and how heavy they felt. I actually expected him to stop somewhere behind Falkirk as he had said before that if his legs were not right he would not push it. Though I thought that this might not be good psychologically even if it was only meant to be a “training run”. We rushed off to the Falkirk Wheel and saw him coming up the hill when we pulled into the car park. So we sprinted across to take some photos and were greeted by a much cheerier Thomas, smiling for the first time. The reason was that friends of ours had come to the Wheel to cheer him on; well at least someone can cheer him up even if it is not me! :-)



We then decided to go to CP 3 at Linlithgow. And I am glad we did as it turned out that the energy drinks that the runners had given to the organizers at the start to be handed at the various CPs were stuck in traffic! So we double-checked with the marshals that it was o.k. for us to refill Tom’s bladder (hydration bladder that is) and when Thomas was still reluctant to let me do it after he arrived, I confirmed this with the marshall again. In the end he was in and out of the CP in no time and he was surprised how little time the refill took. By this time Thomas was in 4th place, Crazy German No2 nowhere to be seen. Thomas was about 8min behind Kenny who was in 3rd place.

At a CP:


As he seemed to be running on and did not mention stopping after 30M we decided to see him every 30-40min from now on to cheer him on and give him an update on how far to the next CP, how far in total etc as his watch had stopped working at some point. It was then that we started to tell him how far he was from 3rd place. He gained 2 min on Kenny by our next stop and another 2min by the following one. I really thought he could do it and catch him, but in the end Thomas was unable to close the remaining gap of 4min that separated him from Kenny. But as we later found out Kenny was on a mission himself. Apparently Thomas had overtaken him in the Fling last year after Inversnaid so there was no way he would let that happen again.

Our last stop was 5M from the finish and we shouted out to John who was in 2nd place “only 5M to go” and he shouted “whaat? 5M? Oh no!” We got a similar reaction from Thomas later and it turned out that they must have been given rather positive distances at the last CP so expected to be much closer to the finish … So much for the truth, but we can learn and next time we will say “just over 4M to go” …

Thomas finished in 7h: 22min and was delighted. He did not expect to finish at all and getting such a good time despite his sore legs was great news. He does not mind to be just 4min behind 3rd place and never thought that he might be so close to a “podium finish” anyway on the day. Given another day and better legs I am sure he would have been up there.



At the end of the day Thomas invited us for a meal at our favourite Chinese. It is only a 5min walk from our flat but given the circumstances we had to drive and park in front of it as he was unable to walk properly!