Sunday was the Greater Manchester Marathon 2015. As many of you already know, the training plan went to pot during the last couple of months and we were not feeling at all confident before the event. Sunday was a pleasant day weather wise, cooler than the previous day and a good day for running. The event started on the dual carriageway near White City, close to Old Trafford football ground.

    

The actual start line was the big sign over the road, which was all about the race especially for the day.

And we were off! We arrived at the start just a few minutes before the race actually started and happened to find a pacemaker with a big 4:30 flag on her back and tucked in behind her.  We headed briefly towards Manchester along Bridgewater Way on one carriageway and then headed back along the other carriage way.

We kept the pacemaker in sight – she helped us keep the pace down at the start. It is very tempting to get carried away with everyone else and the excitement of the start then set off much quicker than you had planned.

We then went down the Trafoord Wharf Road, past the new Media City set for Coronation Street and then back past the new Hotel Football  before heading down Chester Road.

From there we went onto Woodlands Parkway in Timperley before heading into Altrincham.

The route back took us through Carrington before going back to Stretford and back to Old Trafford.

We managed to run without stopping for 21 miles. Unfortunately then Andy got cramp in his leg and he had to stop for a while and then walk. We spent the next four miles with a combination of walking and running but at a slightly slower pace. Of course by stopping we had also ‘lost’ the pacemaker that we had been following, which made the run seem much harder, especially as we were rather tired by now. Andy was determined to run for the last mile without stopping, and so he did!

We made it to the finish and even managed a little sprint up to the finish line. We finished the Greater Manchester Marathon 2015with a gun time of 4:45:45 and a chip time of 4:36:54 which we were really pleased with! Our original plan was to aim for somewhere between 4:15 and 4:30, so despite the lack of training and having to stop and walk, we were very close!

    

The Greater Manchester Marathon 2015 course can be seen below:
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