Just a quick post today because I want to get into some game creation later this afternoon. It’s been a fairly quiet week by necessity because I needed to spend a few days eating, sleeping and dozing after the marathon, and I’m looking forward to an even quieter weekend.
Underneath Tower Bridge on Monday morning. I felt really lucky to be staying right next to this location as it actually plays a very important role in the big game I’ll be releasing next year. Brilliant to be able to take some photo references!
Two weeks’ worth of earworm playlists:
Saturday 25th
Wham! – ‘The Edge Of Heaven’ Elton John – ‘Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting’
Sunday 26th
Blue – ‘All Rise’ Girls Aloud – ‘See The Day’ ACE+ – ‘Riki The Legendary Heropon’ Ocean Colour Scene – ‘Profit In Peace’
Monday 27th
Melanie C – ‘Northern Star’ Tom Jones and The Cardigans – ‘Burning Down The House’
Tuesday 28th
Duran Duran – ‘Ordinary World’ Duran Duran – ‘Starting To Remember’
Wednesday 29th
Tom Jones and The Cardigans – ‘Burning Down The House’ Anita Ward – ‘Ring My Bell’
Thursday 30th
Sacre – ‘The London Marathon’
Friday 1st
Melanie C – ‘Northern Star’
Saturday 2nd
Tina Turner – ‘Proud Mary’
Sunday 3rd
Abba – ‘Dancing Queen’ Spandau Ballet – ‘Gold’
Monday 4th
Avicii and Aloe Blacc – ‘Wake Me Up’ Kiki Dee – ‘Star’
Tuesday 5th
Sacre – ‘The London Marathon’ James – ‘Come Home’
Wednesday 6th
Sacre – ‘The London Marathon’
Thursday 7th
The Sugarhill Gang – ‘Rapper’s Delight’
Friday 8th
Sacre – ‘The London Marathon’ The Power Station – ‘Some Like It Hot’ Limahl – ‘The Neverending Story’ Meat Loaf – ‘I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)’
This one still has a working phone, which may indicate it still gets some use in its small village setting. The box itself is also fairly well-kept, so it seems the local council gives it some love every now and then.
I have still got a LOT of aches, pains and stiffness in my legs, but there’s a tiny bit of gradual recovery every day. I’m managing to shuffle round my daily short run route at a very slow pace, and hopefully I’ll be able to plod round parkrun on Saturday without taking a horribly long time. I was able to brave the foam roller again as well after my run this morning, and hopefully continuing the habit of doing that every day will keep the stiffness at bay long-term.
I have a slight bit of post-marathon blues now. I think it’s because I don’t know if or when I will ever be able to run London again, and it’s been such a long journey that I feel sad it’s over. I think I will feel a bit better when I run other marathons and take on more of a mindset that there are lots of great ones out there, but London really was something else, especially this year when I had such a great experience. I will definitely be throwing my hat in the ballot for future editions. Maybe some time in the future I’ll get lucky again.
I’m taking this week very easy and slow. I’ve got a bit of day job work and am doing some initial prep for the software development course I will be starting soon (very excited! Will blog about that properly soon). I’m also looking forward to an incredibly quiet weekend once Geth and I are back from parkrun! I have plans for emptying Sunday to the extent that I don’t have to do anything at all 😀
I saved up so that I could have a couple of blowouts on the Hallowe’en and Christmas Locket collections this year! I have so many new spooky leggings to wear this month, including these pink cartoony ones.
Life was going at a million miles an hour all summer and into the early autumn, so it feels a bit odd that this week it’s just… quiet. It’s much appreciated though!
After months of worrying about various ailments, struggling with long runs due to the hot summer, mental games, highs and lows, and readjustment to a world that contained races once more, it was finally marathon day. I accepted the place for my second London Marathon nearly two and a half years ago. That is a long time to think about a single race. I don’t really know how I’m going to adjust to NOT thinking about it.
But on Sunday, it was time to stop thinking about it and actually do it.
I had a three-goal sequence for this race, as recommended:
Goal A: sub-6:30
Goal B: beat my 2019 time of 7:13:44
Goal C: finish
(The idea is that if it all goes wrong and the wheels fall off, you can still hit the second or third goal and feel like you succeeded.)
Geth handled the London travel logistics on the day. This is an important part of his crewing role in these situations because it means I don’t have to waste mental energy working out tube times and so on. We got off at Maze Hill, which was the station recommended by the official app for the green start, but it would probably have been quicker getting off at Greenwich. I’m noting that here so that if either of us ever do the London Marathon again, we might have a chance of remembering!
The walk to the start was well signposted…
These ‘please do not pee’ signs were everywhere on the way to the start. Some people forget basic manners when it’s race day, unfortunately.
We arrived about half an hour later than the app told us to, which was quite deliberate. Most runners like to use the portaloos a couple of times before the start, so they need lots of extra time! My magic bladder is a bonus in these situations… Anyway, I didn’t want to be hanging around getting anxious for too long, so we aimed to arrive about ten minutes before my wave pen opened, which was perfect. We spent a few minutes watching some of the red start runners getting underway before I said bye to Geth and headed into my pen.
I looked as nervous as I felt.
I only had to wait about ten minutes before my wave got going, which was such a contrast to 2019 when I was shivering in the queue for over an hour! It was fairly easy to find my comfortable marathon plod pace as well, as most other people in the wave were also ‘back of the pack’ runners from 2019 and lots of them were walking. This was a big improvement on my GNR start three weeks previously, when I went out far too fast for the first mile due to a surplus of adrenaline!
We quickly joined the faster runners from the blue start after a mile, which really increased the atmosphere, and mile two was just as fun as it was in 2019…
The hump marshals at mile two are one of my favourite parts of the whole race. Their call-and-response warnings are endlessly imaginative.
We even had a GNR-style ‘oggy oggy oggy’ chant from the marshals at hump seven! I’m so glad I was able to switch from the red start (I’ll explain more about my pre-race logistics in a later post) as I would have missed this bit if I hadn’t been on the blue/green route.
The first quarter of the race (slight downhill into Greenwich town centre, slight uphill towards the meridian) was really just about comfortable plodding and taking it step by step, as there’s still a long way to go at that point (though I absolutely was not thinking about that. Mile at a time – that’s the only way to think during a marathon, otherwise you’ll go mad!). My foot pain showed up between miles four and seven, but I stayed calm, as I knew from training that it would go away after a while (I think this is because it eventually goes a bit numb). Better to get that out of the way in the early part of the race, rather than it being a problem in the later stages when also dealing with other issues.
The skies behind the Cutty Sark were a lot brighter than the last time I did the race!
After the Cutty Sark point at mile seven, my foot felt a lot better, and I was able to continue ticking off the miles using my practised strategy of fixed-distance walk breaks and refuelling at every mile marker. Miles eleven and twelve were recognisable because we’d walked along the same route for parkrun the day before, and I was really looking forward to the nearly-halfway point at Tower Bridge because I knew I would be able to see Geth waving from our hotel room window!
Geth took this photo from our hotel room window. I’m on the far left.
The bit after Tower Bridge is one of the toughest, because you can see all the faster runners going through the twenty-three-mile marker when you’re only at mile thirteen! I was looking out for our friend Ed at this point but I didn’t spot him. He did apparently spot me though!
That is the ‘halfway’ sign in the background. Mixed feelings here certainly – it had already felt like a long day out at that point.
I knew the bit around the Isle of Dogs (roughly miles fifteen to nineteen) would also be tough, because it’s a fairly depressing area and there’s not as much crowd support. However, there were enough people around me that there was still a good atmosphere (something that was not the case in 2019), and while I was getting very tired, none of the issues that had plagued me in training were acting up. I was really pleased to get through Canary Wharf and past the twenty-mile marker, though I did have a bit of a mental stumble at that point, as six point two miles is roughly 10k and so it sort of felt like there was still a whole long race to go! I really had to focus in order to keep hold of my ‘one mile at a time’ thoughts.
I was also starting to feel really nauseous by mile twenty-one, for a couple of reasons. In the run-up, the London Marathon organisers had encouraged runners to carry their own water so that people would use fewer water bottles at the stations, and so I wore my hydration vest for the race as I had done in training. However, because it was such a long day out, I was getting more and more bloated from the water intake, and so the straps on my pack were getting very tight (though I didn’t realise this till later!). I was also taking a lot of energy gels – eight in total, as I take them every three miles – and I’d only taken five maximum during training runs. All of this extra gel was really upsetting my stomach.
Due to feeling a bit sick and faint, I took an extended unscheduled walk break for parts of miles twenty-four and twenty-five. I was really, really tired by this point, and the only thing that got me running again close to the twenty-five mile marker was the knowledge that if I ran the rest of the way, I would be able to get the sub-6:30 time I wanted!
I was disappointed in 2019 to find that Big Ben was covered in scaffolding, but even more disappointed in 2021 to find that this situation hadn’t changed in 889 days!
Big Ben was the last photo stop. After that, I ran. I ran past all the phone boxes I’d photographed in 2019, and I ran past Geth cheering me on from St James’ Park, and I ran past Buckingham Palace without taking a picture (still don’t have a picture of that! One day when I’m not on the finish straight of a marathon, maybe…). I’d expected to speed up a lot at the finish, but I just didn’t have much of a sprint in me. That’s a good sign, to be honest – it means I gave it my all during the race.
I finished in 6:26:41, smashing my A goal and beating my 2019 time by 47 minutes and 3 seconds. I know I can build on that in the future and keep getting my times down, but I am so, so thrilled with that time for this race, especially as I had such a tough training block this time round.
Edinburgh Marathon is the next big one, and I will start training for that in January. But first, I am going to have three very well-deserved months off from marathon training. I have two 10k races left in 2021 (neither of which will be PB attempts, just keeping the race legs ticking over) and that is more than enough.
I am still processing yesterday’s marathon and have so much to say about it. However, I am still fairly tired at the moment (especially after travelling back to Newcastle today), so I will leave the race review for at least one more day.
At least I have the energy to post a picture tonight…
Geth found me this pumpkin biscuit in the Costa at King’s Cross this morning. Hallowe’en is coming!
I have not been allowing myself to get truly excited about Hallowe’en until after the marathon (though I did give a nod to it during the race by wearing my new spiderweb Locket leggings), because Hallowe’en generally involves being cosy on the sofa, watching scary films, eating sweets and doing a lot of other sedentary things that aren’t running. The marathon is done now, and so it’s time to curl up and get spooky. Lots of guilt-free sofa time this week while I recover!
Very short post today – I’ll update properly tomorrow. Just to say that I DID IT, I ran the marathon and I got my desired time and I am really, really happy.
So much to tell you when it’s not late and I’m not sleepy!
I had expected to do Highbury Fields again as my pre-marathon shakeout parkrun, but Geth and I were moved from our usual hotel to a different one due to the first hotel being closed this week. There were a range of parkruns we could have done, but Southwark was the closest, and it looked nice and flat for a gentle trundle round.
It’s a leafy three-lapper with a lake, meaning it was reminiscent of both South Manchester and Gateshead for me, as well as last week’s location, Leazes, to a smaller extent. There’s a good out-and-back section for keeping track of how other runners are getting on, and a short extra loop that you only do on the first lap.
I can tell that it’s a fast course, so if I’m in London some weekend when I’m not doing a marathon the day afterwards, I’ll maybe give it another go and get some speed up!
With Ed, who was also down from Newcastle for the marathon!
Next week I’ll be back home at Town Moor, hopefully wearing a very special T-shirt…
This is a much more well-kept box than last week’s example and appears to be being used as a drop-off / pick-up point for local swaps and donations. Lots of books and school clothes! Another good modern-day use for the box.
I have finished work for the week and am all packed up for London this weekend! I am very excited and very nervous. I wonder if marathons will always feel like this. (Last time I did this, I was certain it would be my only marathon. I now feel very differently!)
I’m panicking about lots of things I don’t really need to panic about, but one of the main things is that I obviously don’t want to pick up a last-minute injury or illness! I’ve been doing my short runs on the treadmill for the last couple of weeks as it’s gentler on my legs; I’m doing lots of yoga stretches and foam rolling after every run to try and get rid of all the niggles from training; and I’m being very careful every time I go up and down the stairs and get in and out of the shower. So paranoid I’m going to injure myself! Only a few days left to worry about it, thankfully…
Implements of torture / miracle tools that will get me to the start line in one piece.
