My journey to complete my first ever marathon started in Paris this year, supporting some of the bats as they made the long slog round the course. It was the day after sitting in the hotel reception whilst Bernie & the others entered the Wachau marathon for Bernie’s birthday. At this point the longest race I had done was the Westbridge 5 the year before but for some reason when asked the question I thought it would be a good idea to run the full marathon so agreed & entered there and then.

My friends Dad had just lost his short battle to cancer so in memory of Malcolm & for my friend I decided to use the race to raise money for St Giles hospice which was also my motivation during training.
May came with my first half marathon and training was going well.

It has been a hard summer training and some days have not gone well to the point where a few weeks before I could not be sure I would even get around the course.
Austria arrived, it was such a good weekend I almost forgot about the small matter of the marathon, that was until we were sat in the taxi on our way to the start. Nerves started to appear and I realised there was no way out, I had to get to the end.

The marathon was a point to point race that ran along the river which was a lovely site at first, however the longer the road went on the less I liked looking at the river. For me I found the second half quite lonely as there were clearly not as many runners going as slow as me.
I remember going into Krems which was where the race ended, I had never been so happy to see the finish line until I realised that I was to run straight past it as I still had a big loop of the town to do before finally crossing the line.

I owe a big thank you to Paul Phillips who ran with me for the first half of the race & encouraged me to keep going.
I should also thank Jim who has been like a personal trainer to me but also the Sunday morning 8 am runners who always muster back for me & never complain.

On a positive note I raised over £400 for a great cause & can honestly say that I am not completely put off by the idea of another marathon!

Lisa Holland