First you feel like dying. Then you feel reborn.
(Anon.)

Following my last (not so) long training run, I just about made it home. I felt awful.

A week ago, I realised that I had forgotten to book my flight to Hamburg. Maybe the Universe was telling me: Don’t go.

Last Sunday morning, I still wondered should I really do this.

Registration on Saturday was out of this world. The queues went through two huge exhibition halls and the big space between them. I’d never seen anything like it. The course was the same as every year. Very beautiful, especially the first half, along the Reeperbahn, the river Elbe, the harbour, the inner and outer Alster lakes. Very daunting.

The morning was freezing cold, not a cloud in the sky.

I was placed in the very last starting block. I might have placed myself there when I registered. My aim was to make it over the finishing line in time.

The mix of people around me was fascinating. From smokers to featherweight men and women who didn’t seem to touch the ground when walking, never mind running.

By the time we started, the elite runners were nearly half way back home. We could watch them on a giant screen.

There were itches and slight pains in my knees, in my hips, under my feet. They were gone after a while and replaced slowly but surely by breathlessness and exhaustion.

There must have been a hundred people along the route who shouted out my name telling me that I looked brilliant, that I would make it, that I was almost there, and that I just had to push on, At some stage, a spectator came out, grabbed my hand and run along with me.

There are details I don’t remember at all. The run through the tunnel at the main station. The way up Hamburg’s never-ending heart break hill. The water stops. The toilet stops. The salt tablets and the gels.

Eventually, I made it over the finishing line in good time (for me:).

I walked back to my hotel, taking in more of the sights of Hamburg, stopping for an early dinner.

I was exhausted but felt great. I had beaten my own doubts.

No injuries. Finished in good time. Able to eat and walk back to my accommodation.

I talked to Pádraig, family, and friends many of whom had tracked my run – which turned out to be slightly faster than last year and at a pace I had rarely surpassed during my much shorter training runs.

I couldn’t have done this, the training, the trip to Hamburg, the race, the time away, without the help and encouragement of my family and friends. I am so grateful to them.

Pádraig gave me a big thumbs up in a video he sent me.

I don’t think life is a marathon. Life is much harder and totally unpredictable. But finishing last Sunday made me feel that I’m still rocking, in for the long run.

Not just for the winners, even for me it was a Marathon of records.

First I felt like dying. Then I felt reborn.

Whatever it is, bring it on.