Running yourself into the ground

If you're a beginner, or you've done a half marathon before, you might get some tips. This week, I'm going to share my experience of my first ever half marathon - last year's Great North Run.

It was a pretty memorable day. It was all going so well before I ended up in hospital.

Just over three months of training completed, I followed the dietary advice, taking in a small breakfast of porridge and bananas in the morning after a pasta meal the night previous, before being taken to Newcastle to begin the Great North Run.

I helped myself to the free Powerade being handed out at the start. As advised, I'd been using the same product in the run-up to the event.

Four or five miles in, I took another Powerade. It was going pretty well. I knew the need to keep hydrated, and as far as I knew, Powerade was better than water.

At the water station, I stopped – merely to say hello to Middlesbrough Paralympians Tanni Grey-Thompson and Jade Jones. I didn't take any water.

On I ran. And, coming up to mile 10, I helped myself to a handful of jelly babies from the Bupa Boost team outside the hospital. Little did I know that a couple of hours later I'd be back there!

The last 3.1 miles were nothing compared to what was coming. My knees felt like they were grinding bone against bone. All my efforts were going into completing the run. I passed my family who were stood a mile from the end.

I spent much of the final mile trying to get Mr Blue Sky on my MP3 player to give me the boost I needed.

And, as I crossed the finishing line, I celebrated like I'd won the bloody thing.

As an aside, there's a service available to participants where you enter your running number and it brings up all the pictures snapped on the way. The average amount was 9-10 pics, if you're lucky. I was snapped 23 times, mainly because I was jumping around at the end like I was bloody Mo Farah.

At no point did it occur to me that I hadn't taken on any fluids since around the water station. That was miles back.

Approaching the finishing area, ripping the chip from my trainers, my body was broken, my head was spinning. I collected the finisher's pack – containing a bottle of Powerade, which I sloshed back eagerly. Woozily, I met one of the blokes I'd arrived at the start with, and we both set about finding our respective other halves. Little did we know we were supposed to meet them where they were a mile up the road. Neither of us were thinking straight.

We decided to wait it out. They, of course, would come to us.

So I sat down. And started to feel really, really ropey. Properly ropey. Think “I've had too much to drink and the room is spinning” ropey. But this wasn't a room. This was bloody South Shields sea front. The world was spinning.

In times like these, what goes down, must come up.

And, being mainly Powerade and jelly babies, it was multicoloured. A Technicolour yawn, discreetly dispatched into the turf.

“Do you need a medic?,” someone asked. “No,” I spat, wiping the blue and orange goo from the corners of my mouth.

We ended up making our way back towards where our families were. Which is what we should have done at the start.

By this time, the last stragglers completing the Great North Run were shambling over the line to applause from a patient crowd wearied by a long day.

I was walking the opposite way, past the Bamburgh pub, before seeing my five-year-old daughter approaching with her auntie, my sister-in-law, close behind. I'd never been happier to see her. My daughter, I mean.

Still running on the last drops of adrenaline, we embraced, and started making our way back to the car, where I was likely to be received as a hero and given a feast fit for a returning knight to Camelot.

Unfortunately, that was not to be, for moments later, I once again sank to my knees and heaved my poor little stomach out. Orange, blue, sinking into the green of the grass. Looking up, faces, concerned faces, wondering why I was being sick in front of them while they were eating food.

I'd chosen to have my moment right in front of a family watching on from a gazebo sited at the foot of their garden.

They could not have been nicer to me. Taking me in, giving me a seat, offering me a drink – which was declined – giving my daughter food and drink – readily accepted, then waiting with me until I'd feel better. That didn't happen. My sister in law, noticing that the roads were about to reopen, went to get the car to bring it down, so I could take my seat, return home and be received as a hero like a returning knight to Camelot.

Meanwhile, I was being sick again, explaining simultaneously to my daughter that everyone puked up after completing a half-marathon, it was completely fine.

Then, before long, a bloody ambulance went by. And those nice people who took me in had a word with the paramedics, who helped me aboard and at once conveyed me to the field hospital. It all sounded very MASH. I'd expect to be given the once over, given some fluids and sent on my way where I could return home, eat a feast and be received, etc, etc.

The bloody field hospital had closed.

So, with a duty of care to their patient, the paramedics took me to the hospital, who had set up a special ward for GNR runners. An idiot ward. Full of sprained ankles, snapped Achilles tendons, and idiots who hadn't taken a drink since Brockley Whins.

I was stuck on a drip, with saline and anti-sickness drugs, and I slept for half an hour – after having a good old sob at the fact my daughter saw her superhero dad taken into an ambulance.

The anti-sickness drugs kicked in and I was desperate for a drink. The doctors dealing with me said “aha, I have just the thing!” - and returned with two bloody bottles of Powerade, which they insisted I drank before being discharged.

That day, I learned a very valuable lesson.

Powerade may be better than water, but it helps if you drink it, a little bit at a time, throughout the run. To take on a whole bottle right at the end sent my blood sugar all over the place which brought on my bout of sickness.

I can honestly say – that will never happen again. I hope this reads as a cautionary tale. For those reading just to have a laugh at my expense – take your best shot!

If you're running the Half Marathon at Sunderland at the end of the month, your information packs are on their way out and you should have completed your final long run. For us now, it's the taper!

I'm running 54.5 miles in 2013 for charity - for more information see richardruns2013.wordpress.com