Yesterday, I ran the London Marathon for the Lavender Trust (donations still being accepted here). I managed to get round the course in 3 hours 54 minutes and 41 seconds – a personal best, or PB as we experienced athletes prefer to say. I have only ever run London and it is a great one to do because it's pretty flat and you have tremendous crowd support, plus it's brilliantly organised. The only downside is that those in the Mass Start run in such vast numbers that every runner does a lot of weaving. This sounds rather trivial until you realise how much it adds to the distance you run to cover the course. This year for me it was an extra 0.4 miles. Two years ago, when I last did it, it was an extra half a mile. The phrase, 'Insult to Injury', does spring to mind, as you stagger up towards Buckingham Palace, look at your Garmin and see you have covered the official course length of 26.2 miles but still have what seems like an eternity to go.
The other great thing about the London Marathon is the results page on its website. Anyone can log on and call up anybody's result. You can see not only their finishing times and where they were placed, but also their times and speeds at 5km intervals and at the halfway point. You can also look at photographs of each runner at various stages on the race. If you look at Ed Balls and me, you will see 2 middle-aged men in agony, running with heads bent over, looking like a couple of tramps scanning the road for discarded cigarette ends. Sadiq Khan on the other hand looks like he is out for a gentle jog around the park, smiling and looking perfectly relaxed. I can't believe those photos of him with his medal are taken at the end. He looks as fresh as a daisy.
You can also search the results by age group and gender, and this is the real purpose of this post. I have run 6 London Marathons now and after every one I, like thousands of other finishers, have logged onto the results page to see their own result and compared it to others they know have taken part. This would include friends and family, celebrities and the elite runners. What has always interested me is how I did relative to the older runners in the field. I think this comes from a desire to keep my own achievements in perspective, but also to give me inspiration and a sense of what is possible in my later years. So, although this year I ran my best time and feel a bit smug because I did a faster time than certain people, this is what I feel I really need to note:
I was beaten by 126 men in the 60-64 age group.
I was beaten by 47 men in the 65-69 age group.
I was beaten by 8 of the 138 men over 70 who completed the course!
I was beaten by 7 women in the 60-64 age group.
I was beaten by 5 women in the 65-69 age group.
I did manage to beat all 33 women over 70 who completed the course.
This year, to beat the fastest man in the 60-64 age group I would have had to knock well over an hour off my time (his actual time was an amazing 2 hrs 48 mins 46 secs) Incredibly, if I had wanted to beat the fastest man over 70, I would have had to run better than 3 03 50! What's more, this was 10 minutes faster than the fastest man in the 65-69 age group (3 13 50).
That so many older people are achieving such remarkable times in the arduous discipline of marathon running, comes as an instructive counter to the familiar story that rising obesity, lack of fitness and ill health are gripping the nation. You can't run sub 4 hour marathons at any age without prolonged, regular training involving long (13 mile plus) runs. If you run seriously, you will know that up and down the country, running clubs are putting on well organised, competitive running events every weekend over various distances. Each event will normally have hundreds of participants, of all ages and all shapes and sizes. More and more people seem to be catching the running bug.
Perhaps we need to raise our expectations of what we can physically accomplish in our later years and change our view of 'old age'.
No comments:
Post a Comment