michaela

We tweeted earlier this week about our Brewer, Michaela, and her quest to run the London Marathon. Today was the day, and the Beerblefish team joined Michaela’s husband and friends on Tottenham Marshes to cheer her on.

I think it’s important to put this in perspective. Running a marathon is a massive effort. It’s not just about the 26.2 miles on the day itself. It means giving up virtually all of your free time for at least six months and spending it running instead of doing whatever else you enjoy. It means being careful about what you eat and drink. It means not just going on long runs every weekend, but also getting up in plenty of time to eat before you go out and then spending another hour or so getting cleaned up sorted out when you get back – it’s basically a day out (or at least it is at my pace!)

And then you get to the race itself and it’s amazing – people cheering you on all the way around, people giving you jelly babies and shouting your name, high-fiving kids as you run alongside the barriers and rounding that final corner onto The Mall and seeing the finishing line ahead of you. I know all this because I’ve done it – ten years ago.

Except this year it’s different. The runners have had a whole year’s build-up since the results of the ballot for places came out, uncertainty since March over when and even whether the race would go ahead at all, and then finally they ended up doing it “virtually” – that is, actually running the marathon distance, but at a place of your choosing, so as to stop crowds gathering in one place. 

For even the most hardened professional athlete, that would be tough. How do you manage your training schedule when you don’t know when you’re aiming for? How do you figure out your strategy for where to run your race? Is it better to run a linear route like the normal London Marathon course, or should you do laps of somewhere? What’s the optimal lap length? 

Michaela’s had to deal with all of this. To me, it seems like several years ago that she did the Richmond Park Half Marathon as part of her marathon training, when it was actually only in February. She’s kept her legs ticking over all the way through lockdown and moved onto the really long runs in September – she even paid a visit to the Beerblefish stall at Forty Hall Farmers’ Market last month, halfway through the longest run of her training.

To add to all of this, there’s the solitude. Long-distance runners are used to eating up the miles on their own – if you’re really lucky, you might find a like-minded lunatic to run with you at least some of the time – but it’s rare to be on your own in the race itself. Today, Michaela ran seven laps of a route around Tottenham Marshes on her own, starting at the lovely Waterside Cafe, with her support team cheering her on each time she passed. The weather was awful – wet, cold and windy – but she kept going, as she put it, “one foot in front of another.”

Michaela wasn’t just doing this for the privilege of solitary running round reservoirs in the rain, though. She was doing it in memory of her mother-in-law, Margaret, and her Uncle Alan, both of whom died of cancer. She wants to raise money for Cancer Research UK to try to prevent other people from going through the same as they did and, at the time of writing, she’s raised an amazing £968.39 but she’d love to get to her goal of £2,000.

Michaela had her running app tracking her every step of the way and in the end she actually overshot – she literally went an extra mile! She crossed the world’s shortest finishing line (and possibly the only one made of masking tape) in 4h46m – a Herculean effort and a time that most first-time marathoners would be pleased with under normal circumstances.

She celebrated by spraying a bottle of prosecco (mostly in her ear, I think!) and then drinking a beer out of the back of the brewery van. Always classy at Beerblefish.

Needless to say, everyone at Beerblefish is hugely proud of her and really pleased for her that she’s achieved her goal.

If you have a couple of quid lying around, Michaela’s fundraising page will be open for donations for a while yet – she and Cancer Research UK would be very grateful for anything you can give.