Newport marathon 2024

On 28th April, I ran Newport marathon – or Newport Wales marathon to give it its full title. I’d trained to run 9 minute/ miles, to give me a time below four hours – a London marathon good for age qualifying time. Then, three weeks ago, I realised the qualifying times had changed and it was now sub-3:55 to qualify. I’d toyed with the idea of just going for the sub-4 – still a great achievement and a PB. But I wanted that London good for age qualifying time. I’d had a rest week, I’d had a sports massage and I was wearing Nike Vaporfly trainers. I needed to run 8:50 pace.

On the day of the marathon, the rain at home was torrential. But I still coated myself in suncream – as well as Vaseline for chafing. As we crossed the Severn Bridge into Wales, the rain stopped and the sun started to come out.

In the past, there has always been a 10k and a marathon at Newport. This year, they’d added a half marathon too. My husband was running the 10k and my eldest was running the half marathon. My son had done really well with his training at the start of the year, then he’d got injured. He’d tried to train through it, but had to stop running a couple of weeks ago.

We got one of the last parking spaces in a multistorey near the start line. Then I joined a massive toilet queue. Luckily, there were urinals for the men, which were quick and eased some of the pressure. When I got near the front of my massive queue, it turned out it wasn’t for all of the 20 toilets in the block, but just for five of them. Some people had formed their own sneaky mini queues for the others. Usually, I would then join the queue and go again, but there wasn’t time. There was also a big queue for the bag drop, but my husband dealt with that, as his race started at 9:45. We briefly chatted to a couple of the club members, then headed for the starting pen.

The marathon and half marathon were run together and followed the same route for the first six miles. My son and I were in the same starting pen. We waited together, but had agreed we wouldn’t run together as we both needed to concentrate on our own pace. The race started on time and we were off!

This year, they’d changed the course. It was apparently meant to give more opportunities for crowds. Controversial opinion – I don’t think it did. It was worse. They’d cut out my favourite bit of the course – the little town of Magor, which had lots of crowds.

The course started with a mile loop of the town centre. Of course there were crowds, but you don’t need crowds at mile 1, you need them at mile 17. But we were stuck in the middle of nowhere at that point. There was a little bit through a Newport suburb too. We got to run across the fantastic Newport City Bridge, which is spectacular. There I saw a lady from our club. She was probably the only one who knew I was aiming for the good for age and she told me I was definitely going to get it. I really appreciated that.

Randomly, the course entered the Newport Stadium. I thought we were going to do a lap of the track, but we just skirted over the top of it, which was underwhelming. Around this area, the path was far too narrow for the number of runners. Then we were heading out into the countryside. At six miles, the two sets of runners went off in different directions.

We were at the start of two very big laps of nothing-ness. The lap starts with an out and back, so we could see the faster runners heading back as we were heading out. Then as we headed back, we saw slower runners heading out. Then up the middle of us came cyclists supporting the leading runners. At the end of the out and back was a big crowd of people. They were shouting everyone’s names, which was really encouraging.

I’m pleased to say that I’d got my music spot-on. I’d put a lot of thought into my playlist and it worked perfectly. That’s a whole other blogpost coming soon.

There was a huge number of water stops on the course. With the two laps, we passed some of them twice. The ones on the out and back, we passed four times! I think there was one giving out gels and one giving out full-size bottles of Lucozade, both of which we passed twice.

I’d got my own drinks with me in a hydration backpack thing. I’m new to using one of those. There’s a blogpost coming soon… I was fuelling by alternating natural Go Bites with Bloks energy sweets. Go Bites are easy to digest, but not easy to swallow. Bloks are a bit too sugary to rely on completely, for me at least.

From 10 miles onwards, I was intermittently thinking my legs/ feet/ stomach hurt/ I need the toilet. But it was all very short-lived. And I never stopped for the toilet!

I run with two watches – my Garmin on my left shows my average pace and my Apple Watch on my right shows my actual pace. I was running at about 8:45 pace. I’d worked hard to try to keep the pace down. I had this silly meme in my head – ‘time in the bank in the first half is an outstanding loan with a gangland moneylender and they’re going to demand time back with interest’. But I was running really comfortably, so I decided to just stick with it.

At about 10 miles, a man said to me ‘you’re my unofficial pacer’. I wasn’t aware, but he’d been running along beside me for a while. We then consciously ran together for six miles. It was nice to have someone to run with. We didn’t talk much, but we definitely helped each other with the pace. But then I lost him and carried on. At 14 miles, we started on our second lap of the big loop. In total, we were running that same loop for 15 miles – from six miles to 21 miles.

At 20 miles, I had a dip in energy. Luckily, that was by the Lucozade stop. So even though I had my own Lucozade, I got a bottle and was able to drink more than my own rations. At 21 miles, my pace finally dipped to 8:59. But my time was looking good. I calculated that, even if I ran the rest of the race at 9 minute/ mile pace, I would still get the good for age qualifying time. At 22 miles, I started feeling nauseous, which wasn’t fun. I realised I had to lay off everything apart from water for the last few miles.

Then I was basically just hanging on until the end. My legs hurt, I was tired and I wanted it over. From about 23 miles onwards, it felt like about half of the people around me were walking. Strangely, my way of dealing with it was just to go as fast as I could. Keep up the momentum and it would soon be over. The mileage signs didn’t seem to be making much sense. My watch said I’d run much further than the 23 and the 25 signs, but the 24 was OK. At 25 miles, it was back over Newport City Bridge. It wasn’t as enjoyable this time. Then I was just looking for the finish line!

I spotted my husband and son at the edge of the crowd. I thought I had less than half a mile to go. I shouted to them that I just wanted it to be over. I was broken. The finish line would be there any minute. Any minute… Definitely any minute…

When I finally saw it, my watch was well over 26.2 miles and it was still miles away.

I crossed the line in 3:54:14. My watch said I’d run 26.64 miles. I’d run that last 0.64 miles at 8:10 pace. I was so glad it was over. I really had given everything I could. I’d achieved my aim of running sub-3:55.

I was grateful for the support and friendship of two club members at the finish line – one I’ve known a really long time and one I’d never spoken to before – while I waited for my husband and son.

My husband got a 10k PB, but my son struggled with his injury. The first half of his half marathon went OK and the second half went badly. But he finished!

Now I’ve just got to wait to see if I can get myself a London GFA place.

On 8th May, Newport marathon issued a statement to say the course had been measured too long by 276 metres (0.171 miles). The organisers have been in discussion with the organisers of the London marathon, who will adjust good for age qualifying times. I should get about 90 seconds knocked off my time (they say 94 seconds for 4 hours and 82 seconds for 3.5 hours).