My first marathon

After 6 months of prep, I arrived at the hotel which I booked near Derby, UK. The race being the next morning at 9:00 at a 20 minutes drive from the hotel.

I put my gear in the room, I go get some food outside, I eat alone, which feels very strange and nice when you have a family with 4 kids.

Then I start preparing my "kit" for the run next day, I got all sorts of stuff : running t-shirts, running shorts, hydration vest, 2 flasks, airband, anti-chafe paste, cap, sunglasses, electrolytes, you name it and 🥁 no freaking running shoes except my xero bare foot shoes ... 🤬 !

No panic, its 22:30, what are my options :

1. Buy shoes ? All shops around are closed, it's saturday evening.

2. Go get my shoes from home ? With the return it’s a total drive time of more than 6h : this would reduce my sleep time too much.

3. Sleep ? And find some shoes tomorrow at the race ?

4. Run in the barefoot shoes ?

I chose to sleep and hope for shoes 🙏

On the morning I went there and I asked around on the big parking lot but nobody had anything usable 😭 so I run in the damn barefoot shoes. To be honest I already ran a 10K in the same style of barefoot shoes a few years before so why not ? But 42.2k ?

Well I survived, my feet didn’t show any visual damage but it hurt on the left for a week !

Yeah, that’s me !

Now I don’t have a choice, I have to do another marathon with proper shoes, my time was not so good : 4h22 for the Tissington trail marathon with an ascent / descent of 700 m / 706 m.

I’m sure I can do better with proper shoes, let’s find out next time !

Consistently good is better than occasionnaly great.