Dublin City Marathon: The kindness of strangers

Yesterday saw me run my first ever Marathon. I'd entered the Dublin City Marathon a few months ago and had been training hard for it, I'd overcome two injuries in that time Achilles Tendonopathy and a Hamstring tear and was making good progress running four days a week. Every Sunday I run my long run and four weeks ago was up to eighteen miles. Then during a evening dancing Ceroc my left knee went on me and I suffered Patello Femoral Syndrome, which feels like someone is sliding a white hot knife in to the front of your knee just below the kneecap...It bloody well hurts! So I had to rest for a week and then went in to the gym and started on 20 minutes on the cross trainer, it was heart breaking. A week later I built up to an hour on the cross trainer. Last week I got back on the road and was shocked at how hard it was to run even three miles at a slow pace, I did it again a couple of days later and it was better. At the end of the week I finally succumbed to the nasty cold/mild flu thats going around. So it was a slightly nervous Jamile that found himself amid thirteen thousand people on the start line of the 30th Dublin City Marathon. I hadn't slept all that great the night before and was dosed up on Beechams, I reasoned that in Namibia I would be exhausted and have to carry on, if I couldn't do a Marathon when I was feeling low, ill and tired then I'd have a big problem.
I was happily surprised to find that in the first half of the Marathon I was actually making good speed and moving up the field. At 12 miles I was feeling strong and running well, then at mile 13 it was like someone had powered me down. I surely started loosing pace and although I kept running the pace was well reduced. The highlight of mile 14 was when a small boy came out of the crowd at the top of a hill and held out a large orange boiled sweet to me. It was a real boost and helped me pick up the pace. In a window as I ran past stood three large boxer dogs one looking out of the window face on, the second was side on to the bay window but resting his head somewhere behind the net curtain on the first dogs back. It looked like it was one dog with a white body and a brown head with a broken neck! But funniest of all was the third dog that sat behind the second slumped against his friend with his head resting on his friend backside fast asleep! I wish I'd been carrying a camera, it was hysterical.
For anyone who has had their faith in human kindness turned to a cynical hardness I say to you run a Marathon. I saw time and time again total strangers offering me sweets, drinks, oranges from their gardens or tables they set up themselves by the side of the road. People stood in the street for hours just to cheer, clap and urge on total strangers; children lining up to high five the runners as they passed. My spirits were raised at mile 18 when I saw my wife and two friends waiting to cheer me on at an unexpected point. I didn't walk until 30Km, I’d been trying to ramp up my pace since the power down and it wasn't working. So with a heavy heart I decided to walk for five minutes, after which I ran again a bit quicker. I had to walk about three more times and every time I started running again I was a little quicker. By mile 22 I was running again and having just seen my wife for second time I began to ramp up the pace again, by the time I crossed the finish line I was running as fast as I could. I felt elated, exhausted, in pain and very happy. My time wasn't the point, but for those who care it was 05:05:16 its a start.
Today I woke up to find a swollen ankle with a bruise on the lateral aspect of my foot just under the lateral malleolus (the bony lump on the outside of the ankle). My foot feels like its been beaten with a rubber hose and I hope its a soft tissue injury not a stress fracture. Either way the treatments the same so I'll not waste my time in a A&E. My psoas muscles are stiff and sore (They run from the top of the lumbar spine to the femur) but otherwise I'm fine, I loved the Marathon and looking forward to getting stuck back into training hard. My next Marathon is next month.

Possibility

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." TE Lawrence

I've always believed this to be true. Laurence time and time again did what people thought to be impossible, but as Mandela said 'It always seems impossible until its done'.

The begining

Some comments from competitors from the 2008 and 2009 Namibia 24 Hour Ultra marathon...

"We compared shocking blisters and talked of our experiences through the night. One of the competitors had seen in the beam of his head torch the terrifying stare of a hyena."
Bill Martin and Pete Holdgate 2008

"This year half the competitors were pulled from the race, you should be aware that there is a degree of fortune required to finish."
James Dormer 2009

"I have been told that I looked like a ghost when I was carried into the tent and when my body started to cramp and shake Amy put me on IV drip. People who manned CP3 said it resembled a war zone, as if in an episode of M.A.S.H.! People passing out, people staggered into camp on feet that cannot be described in words, snakes crawling through camp and even under some of mattresses the participants sat on!......

What a race, the Namibian Ultra Marathon in 2009. Out of 23 participants only 12 made it to the finish line."
Joakim Jonsson 2009

"If bitten by a venomous Horned Adder or a Namibian Puff Adder, it could result in the loss of a limb and potentially death if anaphylactic shock kicked in! Faan went on to explain “It is common that the first runners’ vibrations alert the snake, and subsequent runners would be targeted.” The warning hiss will be your only indication that you are too close, and the unfortunate runner that stands on the startled snake will quickly get the point…two of them to be exact… and your Namibian Ultra Marathon Race will be over and you then enter a very different race… a race against the ultimate competitor… the ticking clock!"
Andy McMenemy 2009

Reading the above you may well wonder what inspired me to enter the 2010 Namibia 24 Hour Ultra Marathon, a 24 hour race across 128 Km (three back to back Marathons) of the worlds oldest desert.
It started while I was on a Aer Lingus flight about six months ago. During the flight the attendants made an announcement saying that they were going to collect change for the charity of the month, that charity was the Laura Lynn foundation. I'd never heard of the Laura Lynn foundation but what I heard moved me greatly. The foundation was set up in memory of two daughters of the McKenna family, Laura and Lynn who died tragically within two years of each other. Laura was born with a hole in her heart and died just 4 years old, in her short life she had endured two serious operations, six months in hospital and sadly did not survive her third and final heart repair operation.
Her Mum Jane describes her on the Laura Lyn website '‘a very happy, funny, beautiful little girl. A real Shirley Temple with her mass of curls, she always had a smile and made us all laugh so much – she was so cute and so brave’.
Lynn was 13 when she was diagnosed as having Leukaemia, it was on the day that little Laura passed away.
Jane says ‘’Lynn had a wonderful 3 weeks in which she knew she was dying, wished it could be different, but accepted it with dignity, aged just 15. She had great courage and huge acceptance. She lived every minute of those weeks to the full, which is how we should all live our lives. She taught us how to live and how to die. It is why we are where we are, and why we survive. While our own situation is very sad, there are many families coping with far worse. Our hope is to help those families out there, whose children have life-limiting and/or life-threatening conditions, and are coping at present with limited support.’’

This was the first time I heard about the Laura Lynn foundation, I gave what little money I had on me but as I left the plane and walked down the steps the story stayed with me, and with it a growing certainty that I had to give more, do more. It struck me as scandalous that there is not even a single children’s hospice in the whole of Ireland. This despite there being over 1,400 children with life limiting and life threatening conditions, such as cerebral palsy, profound brain damage, meningitis, HIV and cancer each year and over 354 children's deaths a year in Ireland. Yet no where for these children to spend their last days except in a hospital surrounded by busy staff in a clinical environment often with no where for their parents to stay.

So at seventeen and a half stone and not having run in years I looked about for a significant challenge. I was certain that I would be able to do a Marathon and also wanted to do something extreme that would be a true challenge. I found the Namibia 24 Hr Ultra on the web, it turned out that it was being raced that week, which gave me a year to sort my self out and train hard. I thought long and hard about the challenge, it is not something to take lightly. In fact it was after a month of hard contemplation before I finally made the commitment and entered the 2010 Namibia Ultra Marathon.

The training went well at first and I slowly but surely started dropping in weight. I found a training plan for novice marathon runners on a website written by Hal Higdon a very well known marathon runner. Unfortunately after a few weeks I developed Achilles Tendinopathy a condition effecting the Achilles Tendon, at this point I had lost half a stone and was feeling better for it. I rested for a few weeks and rehabilitated using swimming and stretching exercise building strength back into my lower legs. When I returned to running kept to the flat runs and built up slowly again to running the hills. The weight kept coming off and all was going well until a niggling old hamstring injury reoccurred forcing me once more to rest. However in a few weeks I was running again. Three weeks ago I managed to get my third (and I hope final) injury. I was at this point running four times a week up to 36 miles a week, my long run on a Sunday was up to 18 miles. Then I got a little over ambitious during a evening dancing and damaged my knee…Not a happy chappy! I rested and then started training in the gym again working on the cross trainer. This week I returned to the road but kept the distance down as I am due to run my first marathon on Monday 26th Oct the Dublin City Marathon. I'm now down to fifteen stone eight and can't wait to ramp up my training.

http://www.lauralynnhospice.com/about_us.html

If you'd like to sponsor me please follow the link below

http://mycharity.ie/event/jamile/