The Land Rover Malta Marathon

One of our Club members, Rebecca Parry recently ran in The Land Rover Malta Marathon and very kindly sent us this report. Perhaps it is an event we should arrange a Club trip to next year, particularly if we have the same bitterly cold weather as we had this year!

The Malta Marathon went really well – 4.24 according to my watch, which will be a pb by 19 minutes and the sub 4.30 that I wanted. Since I only managed about 6 weeks of proper marathon training (coming off a good base of mileage) and only a 2 week taper I was pleased with that.

The race started just outside the ancient walled city of Mdina, in the middle of the island. It mainly followed an inland route, avoiding the capital city Valetta, before the last three miles or so were around two harbours, finishing in a nice touristy spot where there were good crowds. There were quite nice views for a lot of the race. The worst bit was after about 30km when the route was over quite a few flyovers where we were exposed to the heat and traffic fumes.

There were three events taking place, the marathon, starting at 8am, a walkathon starting at 9am and a half marathon starting at 10am. The finish was to close at 1pm though, which meant that any marathon runner taking over 5 hours would not get a medal! An incentive to keep going if ever one was needed. However this seemed a bit harsh when the half marathon runners could seemingly plod along doing half the distance in three hours and still collect their reward.

The three races were to follow the same route for the first 6km. We marathon runners started first and after that first 6km our route veered off. Some of the roads at this point were poorly surfaced. I almost suffered a disaster soon after this turning when I trod on the edge of a pothole and ricked my back. I did not know whether to continue at that point as running was a bit uncomfortable but I kept going, using my stomach muscles to hold my core together, and did not notice the back pain after a while.

This extra loop took us into country lanes, around the national stadium, through a craft village and a small town. There seemed to be a match on when we went past the stadium a second time. There were only a couple of hundred marathon runners so the field got quite dispersed and I ended up seeing the same few people. After 27km we were back to the half marathon route. By that time the half marathon runners had started and had done 6km. I had expected to be a bit demoralised to see fresh athletes bounding along but, as it turned out, a lot of them were struggling and it gave me a boost to be able to overtake a few people who were looking worse than I was.

The main problem with the training that I had done was that I had not managed to get in enough 20 mile runs, in fact only really one. I therefore knew that I would run out of steam with about 5 or 6 miles to go and so I put in a few walk breaks up hills and when I felt like I needed it. By the time that VLM comes around I will be able to maintain a good pace for longer (I hope).

The medal is the biggest I have ever received. It is about a half centimetre thick and the circumference is about the same as that of a coffee mug. It was nice that we had someone waiting at the finish to put the medals around our necks. I had to take it off after a while as it was so heavy! Upon returning to the hotel and after a shower I had a paddle in the outside pool to try and help my legs to recover. I was rather stiff the next day but this was mainly because of my back and not so much my legs, so perhaps it helped a bit.

I discovered from the local paper the next day that the lead car had taken the leading runners the wrong way so they did an extra 3km or so. The north Africans that won the race still finished in under 2.30 I think!