As always looking forward to the girls weekend away ( Whirlwind) but love Valencia and always ran well there, weather is on the hot side but it’s a flat/fast and enjoyable course. You just need to get over the initial surge and find your rhythm. The Airbnb with my friends was lovely, great hosts and a short walk to the beach, also somewhere different to where we normally stay so I was hoping quieter.
My mileage was low and ticking over, with a jog the day before and to collect my race number which was crazy queues in itself and getting sunburnt in the process. We decided to go back to the same eating place as last time which served fabulous Vegan burgers, sadly I think that the Cucumber & Ginger water with ice was what caused stomach cramping and a very sleepless night. Not what you need before a marathon, sadly it was what happened but decided regardless I was going to do my best to finish the race as a lot of training, organisation, childcare etc had gone into the preparation.
My two friends Jo and Karen ran the 10k and I set off for the marathon, bumping into Tom Stevens a friend now based in Sweden and Steph Twell on her debut for the distance. For them they had better races, for me the 2nd half was tough burning up and stomach churning. I picked myself up and took the positives that I wouldn’t DNF and would aim to improve on last years race. I finished in a respectable time of 2hrs 50.05 ( 34th lady) and still disappointed but need to accept not all races come to plan. It wasn’t a total wasted trip as we all finished our races, had a great time.
