Kielder Marathon Completed

For those of you who don't know me I'm a keen runner for both fitness and enjoyment.  I've completed the Great North Run twice now which is a half marathon with my best time being 1h 32m 10s.  I've always wanted to complete a marathon and this year I decided to train and hopefully complete the Kielder Marathon which is knows as as Britain's most beautiful marathon.

I trained solid for 3 months increasing the distance on my Sunday long runs until I knew I could complete the distance.  Race day was Sunday 6th October but unfortunately I had a gum infection on the Friday before and was on both antibiotics and pain killers for the weekend which completely wiped me out and it would have been stupid to attempt the distance the way I was feeling.  I was extremely disappointed not being able to complete the marathon and get my medal and T-shirt so I though I'd email the organisers and see if I can complete the run the Saturday afterwards and prove that I completed the distance with a GPS watch.  They were more than happy and agreed to send the medal and T-shirt to the reception where I could collect upon finishing.

So, today I completed the full 26.2 miles in 4h 9m 7s which was one of the hardest runs I've completed not due to the distance but the elevation.  I've included my report for the Garmin website and a few photo's from the run below.  It's safe to say that now I've checked this off the list I think I'll be sticking to half marathons and trying to get my time under 1h 30m.