Everything went very well until the preceding day. We arrived to Liverpool in good time on Saturday just to hear that the football match we were supposed to go was postponed to next week. It wasn't such bad news considering the coming race although my travel mates might disagree with me. So far so good, I thought. So instead of football we just walked around the city like regular tourists. We had lunch at a nice Italian restaurant and took a look on some UNESCO World heritage sites, the cosy Dock area and the Beatles museum. The only problem was that this sightseeing tour took hours and nearly 10K. So when back in hotel again we were too tired to go out for dinner. All I had with me were a few apples and a packet of raisins, so I ate those for dinner. Wasn't such a good idea I got to learn afterwards.
On Sunday morning I got up early to do some jogging but the hotel door was still closed. I tried to get breakfast but it wasn't open either. Finally 1.5h before the start we got something to eat and jogged then to the start area. I had an urgent need to get to toilet but there was no way to get there before the start. I could feel the raisins coming out but all I could do was to go to the start and hope for the best.The beginning of the race was awful. It was so packed that I had no chance of getting anywhere. I was walking when I crossed the start line and jogged the first kilometre nearly a minute slower than I had thought. After the first mile I passed some running teddy bears and then the voluminous ladies with their trendy water bottles running in a perfume cloud. There were some thousands runners to pass and I jumped to the car lane in order to do this. Hopping in and out between the posts and moving sideways as much as forward cost me both time and energy. I felt frustrated and exhausted when it finally started to loosen and I reached people running the same pace with me.
Maybe a mile or so I could enjoy running before my stomach started to cause problems. This unpleasant feeling grew and grew and after a few kilometres my bowel was the only thing I could think about. I started to look around for some bushes but an idea of going there during the run felt like quitting. If I had to do that it would definitively mean quitting. I felt horrible but I was so determined that somehow I could keep on running for some more miles. After 9 miles it wasn't a matter of choice, I just couldn't bare it anymore and had to jump to a nearest bush. I saw nearly a hundred runners passing me and felt frustrated. All the trouble for nothing.As I slowly started to jog again I felt much better and after a while I gradually reached my target pace again. At 15K I was about two minutes behind my schedule. No chance I could catch that time but I decided to try to keep that pace on the remaining 6K. It went well and I finished the same two minutes behind my target time. After quitting the race once I was happy with that. Time as such was a disappointment but taking into account the stop I had to make and the slow start it wasn't that bad. Time I used for running was about a minute better than in Birmingham (my first half marathon), so a small improvement anyway. Based on the chip times I was 4th in the women's class but I was never really running for the prizes because I started 2-3 minutes behind the first runners. If I ever again try to run a certain time or for a top3 position I will have to start from the start line or just behind it. That's the only way to make it. Results
