Virgin Money London Marathon 2015

Months and Months of training; mile upon miles of pavement covered; daily routines of waking at 4:15 every morning, five to six times a week with the sole purpose of getting out onto the streets by 4:30am to train before heading off to work.
This is what it took to get me through running my first ever marathon. My marathon of choice; the London Marathon. Why? to respect the memory of my mother; to improve my health; and to show those who never thought it possible that I could do something as extreme as running a marathon.
So is that it? Do I now rest on my laurels and enjoy normality again?
Well; for me running is normality, which; in turn; means that I shall continue to stick to the routine of waking up at silly o'clock each morning, and I shall continue to push the boundaries of what my body is capable of doing.

So how did London go?
In short it was awesome; but I don't do "in short" so sit back, strap in, and enjoy the read! :)

There is a lot to think about when you attend such events'.
Travel, accommodation, food, luggage, costs, etc... etc... etc...
Thankfully; due to living in Ealing for a few years; I know of one or two little handy bits of vital info that make my life a ton easier when visiting anything in London.
The most important thing is where to park the car. There is a handy little parking lot that I know of that is open 24hrs a day, and charges only between the hours of 7AM and 6PM. £1 per hour mon-fri, £3 for the whole day Saturday, and £1 for the whole day on Sunday. A lot of other long stay parking lots charge you a hell of a lot more money for this kind of parking facility so it was a no brainer, park the car up on Friday afternoon, pay the few quid for the rest of the day, and then use the RingGo app to remotely pay for parking on Saturday and Sunday, no worrying about returning to the car to buy a new ticket or anything. Job done.
We also had the luxury; and borrowing a very close friends' flat in Earls Court, literally one block away from Earls Court tube station. Bonus!
Saturday saw us (us being myself, the wife and the boy who is 4) waking up nice and early to get to the expo in order to register, and collect my goody bag etc.. Doing this with the wife was fine, doing it with a bored; and very irritable; 4 year old not so fine.
We got back to the flat for just after midday and then did nothing but chill out and relax.

6AM Sunday morning and my eyes shot open; it was here; it was race day. Finally all the miles, hours, early morning, were all going to be coming to one big day. One big effort of running my first ever marathon.
My phone was awash with facebook messages and emails from people all over the world wishing me good luck and letting me know that my mother would be proud of the activity I was about to undertake in her memory.
I got myself showered, changed and ate a nice little pre-race breakfast; a bagel with peanut butter and banana; and then got my race pack ready.

I loaded my hydration pack with 1.5ltrs of water, 3 High5 Energy+ sachets which provide electrolytes, carbohydrates and Caffeine, and 3 SiS gels. This is my super juice recipe, though i must admit, in such volume, it does get rather sticky and sweet in the mouth after a while, especially when it gets a little warmer later on in a long run. I think that in future I will take a bottle of fresh water too just so that I have something to freshen my mouth out when needed.
I left the flat with wife and child still soundly asleep in the flat; I tried to wake her to let her know I was leaving, but I knwe she would be off again soon without me there to get er out of bed.

After a train journey of nearly 45mins to an hour I arrived at Greenwich station, and began the walk up to the Red Zone starting area with the rest of thousands of runners who had joined the train at different stations.
I managed to meet up with a few of my charity team, but soon departed in order to drop my bags with the luggage cart, get myself mentally ready and then hopefully try to find one of the virtual running buddies from the on-line running community of which I am a member (www.therunningbug.co.uk). Alas this meeting didn't happen as I had to quickly attend the loo, and was forced to vacate the area that we were to meet at. As i walked toward the provided toilet area I was struck by a wall of people, the dreaded queue for the loo! Let's just say that if you were in a "bind" and needed to hit the head quickly, you were in trouble. I have never seen such queues, they were ridiculously long! Thankfully though, the guys have it easy, a cordoned off  area containing multiple portable urinal facilities. In, out, within a matter of a few minutes, unfortunately I knew that if I tried to go back to the meeting place to see my friend from the running bug it would take too long, she would be gone, and I would then be fighting to get to my starting pen so i just went and found the pen and waited for the start.
How I wished I had actually gone to try and find her now! I must have stood on that starting area for about an hour! or at least that's what it felt like, and it wasn't warm either!
Thankfully though I met two guys from my charity team and stood chatting with them for the duration. Really top guys, looking to try and run the same; or similar; times to me.
We saw many a strange sight though, large guys dressed as women, a guy dressed in a massive cartoon nurse outfift (see the attached pic), and just a lot of strange things going on which you would only expect to find at such an event; it just added to the spectacle of it all though, and it was awesome!

We finally set off on the start, I think it must have taken us about 5-10mins to get over the actual start line, but within minutes of starting there were already blokes darting off into the bushes going for a pee!! I know we were stood in the starting pens for a long time, but grief!
Within a few kilometres i knew that my race strategy was shot, there were just too many people running to be able to stick to any form of pace, or actual running form. Every step you took was a game of trip or be tripped, and the amount of people who have no actual consideration for what; or who; is around them is just crazy. I always try to have a look around at what is surrounding me before I start to make a move to overtake someone, or to take a gap I can see; and if there is anybody near me, I signal to show that I'm going to be making said move so that those people know what is happening. A lot of people; and I have found this in every race I've done so far; just either bolt into a space, elbowing their way through, or slowly meander across the road sideways; left, and right; without a care in the world."we run forward people, not side to sodding side!" I didn't say this out loud mind, it was merely what was screaming in my head.
I had planned to run my first 10k at a pace of 5:19 per km; and apart from the first km I was managing to hold a pace that was under that target, so felt that I was in a good place at the time. It was when we broke into the second quarter of the race that I started to think that my finishing target of 3hrs45 was very much a distant dream. This broke me a little I must admit. All the support from all my running friends; all the belief people had/have in me to be able to run quicker than I was doing; it was all being blown away; it made me feel like I was failing them; and my mother. I wanted to run this marathon as best I could, and then I realised that at the end of the day, I was. There was nothing I could do about the crowds, or the pace, or anything. The only thing I could do was to run as well as I could, and so that's what I did. At least I still felt fine!

I continued on my run as though nothing was troubling me, every now and then getting my selfie stick and phone set up so that I could take some snaps of the event as it happened; I didn't want to take any vids as I didn't want that to destroy the memory reserves I had freed up in my phone. Ah the selfie stick. If you ever want to cause a stir in a main event such as this crack out a selfie stick! The amount of people that suddenly came alive within the runners was amazing, and the crowd went mental too. There was cheering, laughing, comments being shouted left right and centre; it was brilliant, and really made me chuckle.
"oh wow a selfie stick!"
"look that guy has a selfie stick!"
"oh wow, he's running with a selfie stick!"
Grief; seriously? Take a trip into town on a night out and every second girl has a selfie stick in her bag ready to whip out for some duck faced pouty photo opp at the bar, or in the toilet (!?); whip one out at a major sporting event; something that you would want to capture for the rest of your life and people find it surreal! Maybe I have the wrong kind of priorities! lol. Or maybe people just don't think about these kind of things enough.

Before I knew it were were at the 21km marker. 21km? Where did that go? I did not feel like i had just run a half marathon. I hadn't even looked at my Garmin properly which was strange as i normally time check every few hundred metres; but I guess that was due to the fact that I knew there was no point.
It was then though that i suddenly had a very big injury scare!
A sharp pain suddenly started bolting through my right foot; like someone sticking a big fat thorn into my foot every time I landed on it. "Oh no!" I thought I had just given myself plantar fasciitis; or something of that nature, and I began to stress; there was no way I could run another half marathon on this kind of pain! It took me about 3 or 4km to adjust my stride, work on how my foot was landing; what was making the pain go away, and what wasn't. Eventually it just went away and I was back to normal.

The rest of the run was pretty standard really, I just pressed on where i could, slowed up where I had to etc... but then it happened; somewhere between 10 & 6km to go to the finish; closer to the 6k mark I think; cramp! I've never had  cramp set in whilst running, but this pain just started to grow in the muscle on the upper right hand side of my left quad/knee area. It was agony, but I didn't want to stop. surely if I just ran through it it would go away right? Wrong! It just kept coming, sneakily fading for a few metres, lulling me into a false sense of security and then coming back and bighting at me again and again. I had started consuming the spare gels I had with me back at the 15km to go marker, my plan being to use one gel per 5k for the final 15km distance.
The first gel I took whilst running, the second I had to slow down considerably, and by the third; and final; gel I was reduced to walking; I had failed! I knew now that my hopes of a minimum 3:45 finish time were slipping away with every step I took, and it was soul destroying. Walking next to thousands of people watching; I wanted to be anywhere else but where I was at that point. Then I opened my ears, and listened to what was happening around me; it was those thousands of people watching that pushed me back into gear:
"COME ON GO!"
"DON'T STOP!"
"KEEP GOING, KEEP GOING, YOU'RE NEARLY THERE!"
I was on the verge of tears with the thoughts of my failure, but those screams and shouts hit home. I was nearly home! I didn't want to stop! I could go!
The cramp eased slightly and I pushed my legs to run once more and as soon as I did the crowd at my side went absolutely ballistic "YYYAAAAAYYYY!! THAT'S IT, GO ON GO!"
I have never felt such an uplifting feeling in all my life. To be supporting in such a manner by people who I had never met, never seen before, and would probably never see again in my life; it was simply amazing. I did walk again once or twice, but merely for a few seconds to ease the cramp that just wouldn't let up in my left leg.
When I did run, I just managed what I could, until I got to the final few hundred metres where I pushed through the pain in order to get over that line as quickly as I could.

I had done it. I had just completed my first ever marathon; the London Marathon.

What was good was that the time I clocked on my Garmin read 3:52:25, and the official chip time placed me a second quicker at 3:52:24; I found that rather remarkable actually!

Overall I absolutely loved the entire thing; the crowds; the spirit, everything. Unfortunately I did pass two very unfortunate guys at different points, one who was covered in a foil blanket and laid out in the recovery position; he was completely gone and didn't even look like he was breathing; and then another much later on who unfortunately didn't look like he was actually still with us. It might have been the angle at which I saw him, but it honestly did look like they had covered him completely; which would normally only indicate one very unfortunate outcome; I do hope that it was merely the angle at which I saw that incident though. 

Some of the other good points though was meeting some more fellow charity team members who I ran with at different points, and shared a good few minutes of conversation with (something my wife finds remarkably crazy!).
I also had a funny moment on Tower Bridge where i was taking a few selfie snaps of myself; and those around me. As I started to bring the camera down to pack up, an Asian chap suddenly appeared next to me and shouted out sadly that he had missed the photo op..."no no, smile again!" I shouted as i quickly whipped the camera back up and caught a few snaps with him. He loved it; he was funny!
I also got to run with Tigger and Winnie the Poo at one stage, as well as a young girl who I saw bouncing around behind me as I took more selfie snaps at a different stage in the race. I noticed her in the picture and carried on taking pics for her, pointing out that I was doing it for her, to which point she yelped joyfully and did a little jump and funny face, ran up beside me and giggled like a little girl...she was class!
I think my favourite moment was whilst we were running through the second of two tunnels; apologies for not knowing my London locations well enough to name the tunnel; but there were no supporters in here, and they were playing music, the Happy song by Farrell (I think; again; apologies for not being "down with the kids" on this one, but I'm normally more of a metal, rock and trance man really). I do like that song though and found that its beat was just perfectly in time with my running at that point. It was as if I were one of those guys that have started this new viral trend of run-dancing on treadmills. I was bopping along as if i had just started my run, felt fresh, fine, and didn't have a care in the world, even though we were miles into a marathon at this stage.
This young lady ran up beside me and calmly asked; with a huge smile on her face:
"Are you dancin!"
I looked down at her (so many short people), smiled and simply replied "I am indeed!" lol
She laughed and pressed on with a little wave. She made me smile; I loved it!

I know that I struck a few low points through this run, but I have come to terms with my result, and how the race actually went.
I do not feel like I have failed in my mission to do what I wanted to do; and that was to commemorate my mothers' loss in the most extreme way I could think of. I had done! I had just run a bloody marathon! It wasn't too long ago that I was smoking. It wasn't too long ago that I would have thought you bloody mental for even suggesting that I run for a bus, let alone go jogging every day, OR, try to run a marathon.
To achieve a sub 4hr marathon on my first attempt, with crowd conditions as they were, and with the issues I faced later on with cramp is an absolutely brilliant achievement; and one that has tought me a few things too.
I know why I got cramp too; or at least I think I do. I normally run in tights, or in shorts, with compression tights on underneath. For this race I ran in a new pair of racing shorts, with no tights, no compression on my thighs or anything. I think that this is what caused the cramp; but it has just made me see that I need to work more on my overall upper leg strength now, and continue to train my muscles more efficiently.

So that is my marathon story; I hope you haven't fallen asleep!
Now then...where is that events book I got? It's time to start training for my next challenge; running 50k & greater!
Stay tuned folks!
PS: enjoy the pics :)