My thoughts and fears had been focused on this race for so long that when the day finally arrived it felt as though I had been preparing for it for ages. Having been in Porto with my London Frontrunner friends since Friday I had enjoyed the opportunity to explore the city and see some of the sites. However, by Saturday afternoon I was feeling nervous, large butterflies flapping within my stomach. We ate dinner on Saturday night, which was enjoyable, but all of us had the following day’s run on the mind, with most of the concerns being about the temperature. It had been 24 degrees, warm and sunny in Porto for the previous couple of days and this was set to continue on Sunday. Would I be able to cope with the heat? I had never really trained under such conditions apart from the odd training session and this was my principle concern.
The following morning we left our hostel as a phalanx, a huge group of 90+ London Frontrunners, sporting our distinctive red and white vests. Although I was still nervous I felt braver with my friends around me. It felt like we were comrades, heading out to battle, ready to face the difficult task ahead. It was cool in the early morning but the sun was already out and the air was warming up. When we got off the bus by the start line, I sat on a wall by the River Douro and watched the large shoals of fish swimming in the water below. The race would mostly be along the river, which flows through a steep-sided gorge and is dotted with some stunning bridges, including the double-decked Ponte Dom Luís I which we would be running over later. The setting was certainly impressive.
We had about an hour’s wait before the race was due to begin and all of my nerves had re-surfaced. I queued for the toilets and then entered the start funnel, looking around me for other Frontrunners. The announcements in Portuguese made little sense to me but the atmosphere was similar to the start of previous races that I have run in, with lots of tense but excited people finding our positions, checking our laces were tied and doing last-minute stretches. Fearful thoughts raced through my mind – what if my knee injury recurred, what if I collapsed from heat exhaustion and what if the organisers couldn’t get hold of Chris if anything went wrong? Before I knew it though we had started and I had to push all these doubts and fears to the back of my mind and focus on the running.
The early stages of the race felt significantly harder than I usually find them on half marathons. The temperature had reached 26 degrees and there was very little shade anywhere along the route. I was sweating profusely after not very many metres and although I had put sun cream on prior to the start I was worrying about my skin cooking in the searing heat. The water station at 5km was very welcome and I doused my head and face as well as taking a drink. My leg muscles felt much more tired than usual and the cobbled road surface felt like hard work; at one point I accidentally kicked a loose stone onto the pavement, luckily it skidded harmlessly across the empty path.
I don’t remember much about the first half of the race, other than impressions of the bright sunshine, views of picturesque old houses and boats by the river, the sound of feet pounding the ground and the wobbling of the Dom Luís Bridge as we all ran over the lower deck. The running began to feel a bit easier after the 10km water station; this may have been psychological but I definitely felt lighter in my legs, as though I had got into my running rhythm properly. This early part of the second half of the race was my favourite, as I enjoyed the warmth of the sunshine, the sounds of the cheering spectators and the sights of Porto town.
The euphoria did not last though. At about 16km I started to feel really low on energy. I had brought one sachet of energy gel with me, which will usually be enough to sustain me for a half marathon, but having taken it just after the hour mark I was not really feeling its benefits. My body felt slow and sluggish and, more alarmingly, I started to feel cold at about 18km in spite of the still intense heat. By now though I knew that the end was in sight and, with each kilometre feeling longer and more difficult than the last, I gritted my teeth and carried on. I knew that I was feeling a bit fragile because when I ran through a tunnel where a sound system was playing the theme from Chariots of Fire, I teared up a little bit. At one point some (exceedingly handsome!) firemen were standing on one of their engines and spraying their hose over the road and I gratefully ran through their cooling mist.
The end of the run was frustrating because, as a number of us commented afterwards, there was a fake finish line! I could see an orange arch made of balloons ahead of me at what appeared to be the end of the track, and I assumed that this marked the finish line. However, as I got nearer to it I realised that the track bent around the corner beyond the arch; the official finish line was a couple of hundred metres further along. By now there were loads of people cheering the runners down the home straight, and they encouraged me as I somehow put in a final burst of speed to charge over the line in two hours and one minute dead. The time was a full six minutes slower than the personal best that I set in Reading earlier this year, but I was pleased to have finished my first ever international half marathon and my first race in such challenging conditions.
I walked through the area after the finish line in a daze, feeling physically exhausted and extremely hot. After collecting my medal, a goody bag and some fruit, I walked down to the river’s edge, took my trainers off and paddled in the shallow water, which felt blissfully cool to my tired feet. This had been the toughest half marathon of my running career to date, but on balance it had been an enjoyable experience. Seeing my fellow Frontrunners finishing one by one (and chatting with the ones who had already finished) added to the sense that we had collectively achieved something special and that we had survived a difficult challenge. It was good to know that, now the hard work was done, we had the rest of the weekend to look forward to!
In the end all of my worries failed to materialise. I did get a tiny bit sunburnt on my back where my vest had moved during the run, but the rest of my body was fine. My knees felt fine afterwards, apart from the usual tired aches which I feel after running such a distance. No emergency phone calls had to be made to Chris or anyone else and I did not have to be carried off the course on a stretcher. I had survived a tough challenge and confronted some of my fears, which made me feel really good about myself. I want to keep on pushing myself and facing my fears, proving to myself that in spite of my lack of self-belief, I am capable of achieving my goals.
I really want to thank all of my fellow London Frontrunners for being such amazing buddies, training partners and friends; without you all I know I would not have been able to achieve what I did in Porto. Everyone who has spoken to me, encouraged me, helped me train or had a drink with me in the pub after training has helped me to evolve as a person, to learn more about myself and to learn to love myself that little bit more. My transformation from the body-phobic couch potato that I used to be to the person who I am today could not have happened without your support along the way. Having an environment where I feel safe to be open and honest about who I am means everything to me and even in these supposedly more LGBT-friendly times, having such a space is as vitally important as ever. Thank you all for your continuing friendship, encouragement and support; together we are stronger!
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