It was 9:00am on an unusually warm Welsh morning as I found myself standing at the starting line of my first ever marathon wondering exactly how I ended up here. About 18 months ago I turned up to Changing Room 4 at Pomphrey Hill for the first New Year session of the Up & Coming group. Following a change in job and birth of my son, both of which annihilated my free time, I had lived a pretty sedentary lifestyle for 5 years. At that point my sole aim was to be able to jog around one of these parkruns everyone was posting about on social media. The fact I now had 26 miles in front of me rather than 3 miles is testament to what an addictive sport this can be.

I had typed ‘4:30 marathon’ into Google and followed the Runners World plan for the very scientific reason it popped up first in the results. I had followed the training, other than for a week of illness, religiously and felt surprisingly calm and optimistic as the starting gun went off and we shuffled forward towards the start line. The only niggling doubt in my mind is that I had yet to run beyond 20 miles so everything in the last 10 kilometres was going to be a bit of a surprise.

About three minutes after the gun had gone off I had finally got across the start line. My plan from the start was to stay with the 4:30 pacer in line with the training plan I had followed. It turned out she was quite popular and to avoid running shoulder to shoulder I decided to run about 10 to 20 metres in front.

The course itself started as any other major city run heading out along the wide dual carriage ways of the city centre up across the major bridge passing supporter packed streets which was enough that you did not even notice one of the very few uphill bits of this course near the start. Almost like magic though the run turns to beautiful Magor countryside as the concrete jungle of Newport disappeared. Unfortunately for my race plan when I looked over my shoulder so had the pacer I was relying on. I was feeling quite comfortable though and running well below my half marathon pace so I decided to just keep with what I was doing.

The race itself was a good mix of quiet, but slightly lonely scenic sections, followed by short sections where there was some large, loud and excellent support. Combined with the very flat course I think this allowed for quite a quick time if you were careful not to get carried away. I have never been sure how rivalries work in running clubs but there was excellent support from some of our local frenemies, with shouts of ‘Bristol’, as well as from some familiar club faces who I assume had finished the accompanying 10k. This allowed me to hit the halfway mark a little bit faster than I had trained for and be able to keep the pace up the 20 miles before heading into the aforementioned unknown.

Well at the 20 miles marker I was feeling good and thought another hour of running was well within my means. About half a mile after this mile marker though my body felt like it had hit a wall. I naively realised later that this phenomenon is actually known as ‘The Wall’. I tried everything to get going again but unfortunately had to change to a walk/run strategy for that final 10 kilometres. A parkrun length from home the pacer had caught up with me. I thought back to all the times I had turned up on Saturday morning at Pomphrey Hill, not in the best of states and decided I could dig deep and stay with this group until the end. Unfortunately I only managed about a mile before resigning myself again to a walk/run finish. I saw a few other Emerson Green runners on the final switchback which got me to near the end ready for a final sprint finish in front of a still populous and loud crowd.

In terms of a race review I thought it was an excellent event. It is certainly the shortest I have ever waited for a toilet and bag drop at any large running event. Good aid stations, scenic flat and fast route (I believe there were a few PBs from EGRC members) and great support. The medal and t-shirt were above average as well which is what running these events are really about. It is one of the nearest city marathons so will probably be a repeat fixture in many members’ diaries.

I found this last bit quite difficult to phrase correctly without sounding that I am disappointed with my achievement which could not be any further from the truth. I did vow in the immediate aftermath never to do a marathon again. Once the bank holiday morning had come I found myself thinking what if I had gone off slower, had done an extra 22 miler in training, had eaten a bit better and ran a bit lighter and so on. The next thing Google is in action again looking up marathons. There is definitely some unfinished business with this iconic distance hopefully an itch that can be scratched with a successful ballot for London 2020. Failing that another visit across the border maybe in order.