Two Sundays ago, Bev and I completed the Seville Marathon in 5 hours 55/58 seconds respectively. That was a little behind the male runners, both Ethiopian, who completed the course in an incredible 2 hours, 3 minutes and 59 seconds – their race ending with a dramatic photo finish.

In terms of our placings, I was 11,994 and Bev was 11,993 out of 17,221 participants, so, there were an awful lot of much younger runners than us coming in behind us. Within our 65-69 age categories, I was placed 98th and Bev was 11th. I know that she could have done much better had she not held back to coax me along. For I was really struggling in the latter half of the race having been unable to do much training beforehand, including through my having to make a two-week visit to Nepal over January/February. When it came down to it, I was very happy just to get around the course without cramps and hitting ‘the wall’.

Next up in our ‘Year of the Sixes’ challenge will be Barcelona on the 15th March. It’s a lovely marathon (if that is not an oxymoron) which I ran this time last year. Between now and then we’ll train as much as we can, including in my case running a few times up and down the magnificent Portstewart Strand while on a family visit a week beforehand. Unfortunately, both of us returned from Seville with a nasty little cold – I hadn’t factored in the possibility of illness when planning to take on six marathons this year – that has grounded us at the start of this continuation training period.

Let’s hope the weather on the strand is as fine as it was on the day this picture was taken!

Pipal Tree has three major sources of funds – The Big Give, gifts in Wills/in memoriam and personal challenges such as The Year of the Sixes. You can sponsor Bev and me through the link below:

https://pipaltree.info/marathon