So on Sunday 22nd of February I finally got going with this year’s running, which was great given the amount of organising that’s gone on before!

I’d chosen Brighton to be first race of the year having seen it a couple of years ago and thought then what a really nice race it would be, being beside the sea, which was a very romantic point of view from someone who’d not even ran 10km let alone close to 22km at that time. With my first half marathon completed last year in Birmingham, it made sense to look up Brighton which was at the start of the year and from my memory a flat race, which would make it possible to get my previous time of 2hrs 6mins 30secs down.

So after booking and the usual excitement of what we could look forward to had evaporated, we realised just what could go wrong. Our biggest concern was that a seafront in February might actually not be a great place to be, as exposure to serious rain and wind could make things very uncomfortable. Next on the list was that Brighton as nice as it is, is a long way from Leicester and so not a great place to get from if you’ve run for 2hrs and feel more like a sleep than a 3hr drive. Oh, and 13.1 miles is a long way too.

Waiting to start the run, worries about the weather were soon forgotten, apart from the cold wind which I coped with fine in my base layer, whereas, Jamie and Matt who I ran with took a little longer to “warm” to it. Pre-race my plan was to try for between 9min to 9:30min miles to try and get as close to a time of 2hrs as possible.

After a long wait for our section of the queue to get going I was soon running at a steady pace and hit the first mile at 9:20 with Matt running alongside me. Between 1 and 2 miles my right hamstring felt increasingly tight so I eased up as we made our way through the city centre but still came to 2miles roughly on time. Once out onto the seafront up I mainly followed Matt, going past him just before we turned to look back to the pier (by now in the distance) that we’d need to run to and beyond. Keeping pace on this section of the race wasn’t too hard, whereas the monotony of running in a straight line to a marker a long way away was more tricky. Around 8miles Matt shot past me pointing forward and looking comfortable. At 9miles, still running at 9:30min miles, I looked down to the lower section of the seafront to see people crossing the finishing line, which is a bit heart breaking whatever race you’re running. Still the pace carried on and at just before 10 miles we dropped down to the lower level and headed toward the finish line (1st tease) before turning with it clearly visible.

It was around this time that I felt my right foot had blistered badly, with the sock separating from my foot I knew I was in trouble and an intense pain shot through my lower leg. After a long painful run toward 11miles the course became more undulating (read hilly) and my left foot also began to hurt badly. The final 2.1 miles were up and down, which was tough going having thought the course was all but flat, was almost unbearable due to the pain from my feet which from experience I knew was them bleeding.

The final straight on flat was more a case of finish as quick as possible to stop my feet hurting, so somehow I managed to sprint the last 150m or so to complete the race in 2hrs 5mins 3secs. It was a couple of minutes more than I’d wanted but as my first proper race of the year, and the state of my feet I was really pleased on the day. Matt had come in around 50secs quicker than me, but also hurt his knee that he’d been concerned about prior to the race. Jamie came in comfortably 15-20mins after us, using the race as part of his London Marathon training that he’s doing for charity.

Around 6,000 people ran the event, and I came in somewhere just over the middle, which given my feet and the strong field that turned out I was happy with. I’ve received some small donations for taking part in this event, if you’d like to donate too then as usual go to www.justgiving.com/ian2009.

Now onto preparations for Morocco and Mount Toubkal!