The bald facts first: I finished in 4 hours 28 minutes and 12 seconds. My splits, at the end of this account, show a reasonable first half, but that I failed to keep up the pace in the second. My average pace was 10.10. I was 18934th overall, the14930th man and came 1099th in my age group. Speaking of age, it seems the 101 year-old was in fact only 94.
I slept quite well the night before, only waking when I heard the cat drinking from the lavatory bowl, and after an anxiety dream in which I was late for the start because I was librarian at a rabbinical college, had gone to work before the start, and, caught up in the management of their collection of rare Judaica, had lost track of time.
In reality, I woke at 5.30, ate some porridge and toast, then drove to Haywards Heath to catch the train to London Bridge. At London Bridge I had the bright idea of using the loo before catching the Blackheath train; so did several hundred other runners, and we all queued for a single automatic loo, which wasted lots of time, not least because it cleaned itself between each user. I still caught the train to Blackheath in good time to arrive at the blue start with an hour to go. In 2005 I was allocated to the red start; I much prefer the blue. I changed, wandered around a little, watched the elite starts on the big screen and then headed for my pen. I crossed the start line at 9.49, only four minutes after the gun, which is good. I've taken that long to cross the line at much smaller events.
But we ran for about quarter of a mile down Shooters Hill Road and then slowed to a walk. Someone said they'd had to close off part of the road for coaches, creating a bottleneck. This was not the only time we were held up: just after the Cutty Sark we came to a walk again. The early miles through Charlton and Woolwich to Greenwich were easy and, in spite of the walking I was hitting my nine-minute mile target easily. At about mile 9 I passed the Masai. Then, after passing through Deptford, the first rain started. The forecast had only predicted showers, but this was very heavy rain, all the way through Surrey Quays, Rotherhithe and Bermondsey, though by the time we reached Tower Bridge it had finished. By the half way point on the Highway I had started to slow, reaching it in 2:08. I can never pass this way without remembering those evenings over twenty years ago I and many others would spend demonstrating in support of the printworkers sacked when Murdoch moved News International to produce newspapers behind razor-wire and police cordons
Then the long slog down the Highway and round Docklands, through Limehouse and the Isle of Dogs. Up till now I'd felt fine, but now my feet, my left calf and my knees began to hurt. I lost some time when I stopped to take off and adjust my soaked left sock and shoe, so hard to undo. The miles go by slowly in this stretch, ending with the winding bits round Canary Wharf. Then the route turns to the west, at last heading in the right direction for the finish. By Poplar it was very hard, and I'm not really sure how I kept going, except that every runner who has got his far thinks how silly it would be to give up now. On the way back through Wapping, Tower Hill, Lower and Upper Thames Street and the Embankment, I focused on the blue line on the road, which is supposed to indicate the shortest distance. By this stage there are walking casualties all over the place, and I wasted a lot of energy swerving to avoid them.
At mile 23 it started to rain again, very heavily, and continued until I reached Parliament Square, but then stopped so I had a dry finish. I collected my bag, and changed by the Royal Artillery monument in St James's Park, and then walked slowly and painfully to Victoria, where I bought a sandwich, and caught the train back.
It was a solitary run: I didn't really speak to anyone else, apart from offering some encouragement to the odd runner here and there, including one who asked me in the Upper Thames Street tunnel how much further it was. I hope I reassured him and he managed to finish.
London is odd. The crowd support is quite extraordinary. Runners are offered jelly babies, orange segments, even beer by the spectators, just as one might feed zoo animals. I feel ambivalent about this: on the one hand it is impressive that people, some there to support family members or loved ones, some to support a charity, but many without any personal connection to the spectacle, should come and cheer the runners on. Why should they cheer a slow middle-aged man like me? There is an atmosphere of a village fête spread over 26 miles of roadside: the amateur bands, the pubs open early, the banners, the morris men, even bell-ringers, all need the insights of an anthropologist to be understood.
For the BBC's, highlights of whose coverage I saw in the evening, the marathon is either for elite athletes, or fund-raisers. There is no room there for the amateur at my level. I don't begrudge the charities the income they raise, and ran for the Blue Cross myself in 2005, but I do wonder. The big charities seem over-slick and PR-directed, while the efforts of the smaller fry to emulate the big fish have a tone of desperation. The fundraising mines the rich vein of mawkishness in the British psyche, and in no case more so than the childrens' charities.
I was disappointed with my time. The trend, I'm afraid, seems to be to slow down with age. Though better trained, I was only three minutes faster than my last 2005 London attempt and, leaving Beachy Head out of the equation, I was faster in the Isle of Wight (2006) and the Neolithic (2007), both harder courses.
The splits:
5 km 0:30:11
10 km 1:00:01
15 km 1:31:01
20 km 2:01:25
Half 2:08:13
25 km 2:34:30
30 km 3:07:24
35 km 3:40:52
40 km 4:14:00
Finish 4:28:12
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