I listened to the howling wind in the night and as Simon was getting up at 5am I didn't really get much sleep as we felt obliged to see Simon off at 5.30 am and prepare his bread and jam pre race food. It was still dark but not raining, the wind had dropped and the weather forecast had changed yet again. The day looked relatively bright and the sun was shining when the darkness disappeared. We bought tickets for the marathon buses to take us to the start, but I decided buying any ticket is a waste of time in Malta as nobody ever checks them.
Our bus went off at 7.30am arriving at the Ancient city of Medina at 8am where the start was. The start of the half marathon being 9.15am by which time Simon would have been pounding the streets for nearly 2 hours. It was still dry and sunny at the start although a bit breezy and we had time to wander into the old city of Medina and enjoy a few sites.
The race on the whole seemed to be well organised except for the fact you couldn't work out which direction we were going and their was no time markers. So it was a free for all start for 3,000+ runners which resulted in a lot of congestion and it took a while to find a comfortable running space. Simon's Marathon however was a much less congested race with only about 700 runners.
The steep downhill over the first few miles suited my downhill legs and I was a little worried I had gone off too fast. Luckily the congestion slowed me down a bit. I tried to enjoy the views of Medina and landscape was surprisingly green and lush. All was going to plan and then after a few miles we found out why the landscape was so green and lush as month's worth of rain dropped out of the sky, rivers of water flowed down the hill and we splashed away along with the accompanying gale blowing us ( if we were lucky ) in the right direction. The route was lined with musical bands who had to find sheltered venues, so it was a jolly, soggy run. Still we now hear the runners in England this morning were were freezing and soggy, so we were fine. The rain stopped and the sun made brief appearances and soon Simon was running past our apartment in Sliema and to the finish line in 3hours 13mins 24 secs a PB by 24 mins!
Graham soon followed doing a 1 hour 33 minute half marathon and a little bit later I appeared with a PB of 1 hour 49 ! Wahoo PB at my age ! but it was down hill with a following wind.
The only casualty was our supporter Elly who fell over and broke her camera, disaster!
We soon recovered with a more leftover Pizza and decided to get on the bus to the opposite side of Sliema where we wandered along the coast enjoying the bright sunshine and Italian ice cream!

We returned to our apartment for some rest waiting for the results, was there a chance of any prizes for the Le Goods? The vet 60 lady title was won in a time of 1 hr 58mins last year but that was last year. I waited in anticipation for the email to go to the award ceremony, but by 7pm food was calling. We returned after dinner to find the results now published Graham and I had both come 3rd in our age category, we were pleased with that, but no prizes for 3rd place.