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Sadly, though with a modicum of relief too, this is my last hypnosis for running race report until after the Summer. Having run 4 big city marathons in the last 6 weeks, my next marathon is now not until September and I will not start training for it for a couple of weeks while my legs recuperate – I’ll be cross training in the meantime.

Katie and I flew to Edinburgh on Saturday and got ourselves booked into our hotel, the Sheraton in the centre of the city was a short walk to the start of the race and once we ordered some pasta via room service and slumped into the huge bed we got an early night under our belts.

Really, it was the leisurely walk up to my start area that made me realise what a vast marathon this is – second only to London marathon in the UK – with over 25,000 runners taking part. The walk meant we had to navigate our way past all the pens and baggage areas in the various destinations at the high side of Edinburgh overlooking the city.

I got changed, applied my Vaseline, ate my banana, downed a shot of Beet-It, strapped on my running belt, covered myself in sun cream and handed my bags in at the start. As we got closer to the start, we managed to get a quick photo in before Katie headed back into the city and I bid her farewell until I returned.

There was a marvellous atmosphere, the runners were all in high spirits and the sun shone. I mean it really shone. Here is a picture of me running in the early stages of the race, looking very pale as the sun beats down; hat and glasses were essential for me on this day, I am in the red vest number 1038:

Because so many people had told me it was a fast course, I thought I might have got a personal best in this race, but the exertions of previous weeks were soon felt in my legs to be honest and as it got hotter as the race went on, my energy and ability to keep my pace up was gradually zapped away.

Somewhwre between mile 14 and 16, I felt awful, I mean really awful. I was overheating and feeling very sluggish, so I made a conscious effort to slow things up and decided to just make it to the end in one piece. Here are my race stats from my Garmin anyway:

The course was great despite some very uneven surfaces through some farmlands in the second half of the race. It was probably just how I was feeling at the time, but I was not appreciating that surface at that time. The beaches around Edinburgh are glorious, the views spectacular and the countryside was glorious.HEre I think you can tell my legs were not being picked up as high as usual as I tired:

Additionally, the crowds were nothing short of brilliant. At several places people had pulled out hosepipes and were spraying us down, in addition to the water stations the locals were handing out loads of water and sweets and there was loads of encouragement. I think you can see how wet through I am in this picture:

My favourite spectator of the day was a man holding a can of Tennents who saw I was struggling at mile 22, he said to me “c’man big felly” hahahaha, I really loved that and when I thanked him, he simply smiled and said “nae bother.” As I wrote on facebook, that kept me grinning to the end of the race.

I thought that I would be lucky to come in under 4 hours such was my sloth-like pace in the final miles, but to my surprise and bewilderment, I spotted that I was not far from sneaking in under 3 and a half hours, so I mustered up all my energy for a sprint finish and did indeed come home just under 3hrs 30mins; my official time was actually one single second under!

I got the shuttle bus back to the city after a bit of a lengthy walk to the bus (good for my cool down I told myself on the day) and then walked back to the hotel after being dropped off.

When I first put on my medal, I loved it, a little bit of an unusual shape compared to the other medals of the year:

Then when you turn it around and point it, it looks a bit like something else… Not sure what:

We stayed in Edinburgh for another day, hung out with friends, ate well and drank plenty to celebrate.

The last six weeks has been some wild adventure. The marathons have been amazing, I got two personal best times and I have really enjoyed being in some fabulous parts of the country. Edinburgh was the best place I could think of to end this multi-marathon series of mine.

I have raised a healthy amount of money for my chosen charity, and now feel prepared for some further running challenges… Who knows, next year I may even attempt to bust the 3 hour mark…

I’ll be back soon with some more posts of the hypnosis for running nature.