LSCA Business
Jan McArd, one of our Past President’s exceeded her expectations recently... I never really thought I would ever run a marathon and had no real desire to do so, after all why would anyone want to run 26 miles 385 yards? That’s about the distance from where “14 gentlemen were engaged in accountancy” at 24 North John Street to Knowsley Safari Park……… and back! Having started my running “career” in July 2015, I found myself getting swept along by my fellow Wallasey Athletic Club runners to enter the ballot for the London Marathon. Fortunately, I was unsuccessful in the ballots to run it in 2019 and 2020, but in a moment of madness I put my name down for the club ballot, as each affiliated running club gets one London Marathon place. Imagine my surprise, my I was “lucky” enough to be drawn out in December 2019 (a rude awakening on my return from Qatar having been to the World Club Cup) for the club place at the 2020 London Marathon. The marathon training started in January 2020 and went well, hitting 18 miles before lockdown forced the London 2020 marathon to be cancelled. I ultimately deferred the place to April 2022 only to find that they moved it to October 2022. Thinking I would never actually get to the London start line, in my second moment of madness, last year I signed up for the April 2022 Manchester Marathon. Thinking I would restart the training after Christmas, as a general practitioner, the January tax return madness returned once more, and it was February 2022 before I started in earnest. After “running every day in February” to raise some funds for Cancer research (https://fundraise.cancerresearchuk. org/page/janm-run-56-giving-page) I had to crack on. Although I usually 26
run twice a week with Wallasey AC, do parkrun, and run on a Sunday, as well has running club road races and crosscountry races, even running in the National Cross-Country Championships at Parliament Hill in London at the end of February, I felt my marathon training was a couple of weeks short of the plan. I managed two 20 mile runs in March before the tapering started. “How is the tapering going” people asked? Errr
just like any other day really, eating sleeping and running! The big day came and I was transported to Manchester on Sunday 3rd April by my support team of friends and family. My training runs showed that I should be coming in at 3 hours 45 but as this was my first one, I had no over ambitious target, just to “run as well as I can, in under the magic four hour
