Having had a bit of time to reflect on Sunday’s race, these are just a few of my thoughts.

First of all – just to says cheers to the folks on Twitter for all your positive comments – much appreciated.

General reflections

• There is always an unknown quantity about the marathon, no matter how well you think you have prepared.
• You can train yourself to be mentally stronger and push yourself harder than you think you can.
• What could be called a “bad” race experience, can in fact be a catalyst to improvement and a chance to reevaluate where you’re at with your training, diet and fitness.

What went wrong?

My poor hubby must by now be “race postmortemed out”. Bottom line seems to be that, having considered other factors such as the heat which could well have played a part, he reckons I need to improve my ankle stability and the tracking of my knee. So I need to do strengthening exercises with weights and balance exercises on my wobble board and the Wii Fit.

What’s next?

I have 6 months until my next marathon in Dublin in October. Sunday made me re-evaluate where I was at with my running I think if I’d had a half decent time I would probably have meandered on with my training much as before. Sunday galvanised me into action and made me realise there’s stuff I need to do if I seriously want to improve my running – and I DO want to improve. So looking forward:

• incorporate strengthening and balance exercises into my routine
• increase amount of stretching I do – flexibility is an issue
• maintain a base weekly mileage of about 30 miles a week
• reduce my weight by 1 stone

So in fact rather than being despondent about Lochaber I think I needed such an experience to catapult me into thinking seriously about what I wanted to get out of my running and how much I was willing to put in and what changes I was willing to make.

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