The body yells 'stop', the mind legs it over the line

I suspect it's the sort of thing that I'll remember more fondly with the passing of time but as I sit here writing a couple of hours after finishing my first marathon I can best describe my feelings by paraphrasing Marvin, the depressive android in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

"The first six and a half miles were the worst. And the second six and a half, they were the worst too. The third six and a half I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into sort of a decline."

To be fair, the first six were fine really but, having set out with a friend, Nicola Cochrane, to finish the right side of four hours, I began to feel the strain of a pace I was unused to from training almost the instant the seventh mile began.

Our chat through the race took the form of an extended scheduling conference. She had where we should be and when in order to finish in 3:55 taped to her wrist while I went for four on the dot. Almost every mile marker prompted consultations about how we were getting on.

By mile 22 Nicola, a second timer who turned out to be more resilient than me, was still up for the occasional bit of banter, mainly about how well it was going, but by then I had pretty much retreated into my shell. One of the very first things I ever read about training for a marathon suggested that chatting with friends is great but, its author cautioned, there comes a point when you'll just have to concentrate on getting one foot out in front of the other. By the Stillorgan dual carriageway, that was me all right.

I wasn't helped by overdosing on energy gels (something I clearly recall quoting somebody as warning against a week or two back) so that I felt quite nauseous through the latter stages.

In the last mile, though, the many parts of my body that were yelling "stop!" finally seemed to twig that it would be better just to get on with it and haul me over the finish line. The clock said 3:59 something but having started a couple of minutes after the official start, the final figure should be a little better.

Meeting friends and family afterwards was a feeling so good that it temporarily outweighed the pain and illness. Their delight in my having hit the target time was wonderful.

Then I thought about a conversation a couple of weeks back in which it emerged that a four-hour marathon translates, according to the running calculator at mcmillandrunning.com, into about 21 seconds for 100 metres which wouldn't have necessarily have gotten you a gold in this year's World Championships . . . for those aged 95 or over.

So, now I've a decision to make. Retire or raise the bar. Maybe next year I'll be able to keep pace with the best of the octogenarians.