Race Report: Yorkshire Marathon

 

Question: if two runners of roughly equal height and weight, who have banked almost identical training over 6 months, tackle the same race will their results be roughly similar? Will the benefit of prior marathon and course experience triumph over the racing debutant? Or will youth prevail?

 

Spoiler Alert: no and no and obviously yes.

 

As Alex and I have been preparing for this race for over six months and it being Alex’s first marathon and (non Harrier internal) race, we travelled north with some excitement. I’ve run this race before and enjoyed the relatively flat and fast course, and it was easy to get into, so up the A1 we went.

 

The course starts in York, wandering past the Minster and Betty’s world famous (apparently) cafe and then out into the reasonably picturesque countryside. A loop around Stamford Bridge (the village of battlefield fame, not the footie stadium) at roughly half way and an another loop at 18ish miles, then sees you back into the city and up to the start / finish at the university. No real hills to blame mention. The city and villages had good support, but for my second time round the bagpipers at 10 miles failed to be piping as we went past (you can decide for yourselves if that’s a good thing or not!). The sun was shining, so bring it on!

 

Our running plan was loosely based on coming in under 4 hours and to stick together for as long as I wasn’t holding Alex up, although I was kind of hoping to be with him at the end. 

 

Obviously we set off too fast, or at least too fast for me. We raced through the city and out past 10k – already I knew I was going to be toast. We went through half way and 16 miles together, before I did the decent thing and sent Alex on his way. Shortly after my wheels came off. I cannot describe the last few miles of my journey to the finish as anything resembling running. Toast I truly was.

 

Alex, on the other hand, motored on easily beating the 4 hour target, although he was slightly annoyed that the 3:45 pacer – who he passed in the sprint to the line – turned out to be a couple of minutes slower than advertised.

 

A well organised, small city, event. Decent support, not too pricy. A nice t-shirt and okay medal. 

 

All in all a great day for father and son both!

 

Results Highlights (3526 Finishers – I think)

 

Pos	Name	Category	Gender Position	Cat Position	Gun Time	Chip Time
1	Benard Bosuben (unattached)	SM	1	1	2:22:56	2:22:56
70	Samantha Antell (unattached)	SF	1	1	2:54:21	2:54:18
908	Alex Hill	SM	819	432	3:48:24	3:46:24
1700	Rob Hill	MV50	1396	156	4:16:54	4:14:55