Another four day week! And another very late set of weeknotes. As far as I can remember I didn’t do anything of any consequence on the bank holiday Monday. I did nip to the supermarket though, then while I was putting everything away the fridge door shelf that I’d fixed a few weeks ago decided to unfix itself under the weight of several pints of milk. It then crashed to the floor, taking out the shelf below it on its way down, and hurling half a dozen eggs to the floor. Now I need to consider the options of spending the £100 or so Siemens want to charge for replacements, for a 15-year-old fridge freezer, or putting up with reduced usable space until such time as I end up replacing the whole thing.
I took the day off on Wednesday (so three day week, I guess) to head down to the London Marathon expo to pick up my number. I rode down to the station, remembering my bike lock at the last minute and nipping back into the house to get it. Then I got to the station, put the lock on the bike, reached into my pocket and … hmm … no keys. Cycled home again to find them, as expected, in the back door.
On the plus side, it’s a good job that (a) the bike lock needs a key to lock it, otherwise I’d be walking home later, and (b) the ticket I bought wasn’t restricted to a specific train. Anyway, once I got there I picked up my number with no queue, had a brief wander round, then got the train home. All very efficient, apart from the bit where I was forced to make a special trip to London. Unbeknownst to me at the time I’d made another minor error, but more on that later.
The fox, who I hadn’t seen for a while, made another appearance, and Ninja cat insisted on trying to stop him getting to the food I put out.
On Sunday I was up at (well, before) the crack of dawn to get the club coach back down to that London. It was still slightly chilly when we arrived, but very quickly warmed up once the sun broke through the mist. I set off a fraction faster than my target pace, on the basis that the first few miles were mostly downhill, and the first ten miles or so felt reasonably comfortable. By Tower Bridge (nearly halfway) I was starting to feel the miles in my legs a bit, and in all the cacophony I also completely failed to spot the FRR support crew, only realising I’d passed them slightly too late when my brain finally registered the extra noise I’d just run past. By 15 or 16 miles it started getting really tough (Garmin’s stamina graph shows it having run out by around that point), and the rest of it was a struggle not to drop too much pace. By the time we hit the Embankment my right hip was starting to make me limp a bit, but I still managed a vague attempt at a sprint finish in the last few yards.
After picking up my bag I felt slightly light-headed, so had a quick sit-down on the grass while I made sure Strava had synced and I’d renamed the run, then hobbled over to Trafalgar Square, where Nicola was waiting with beer (and Dave was already one bottle ahead of me). This was also the point where I confirmed what I’d been suspecting was my other mistake, in that I’d failed to pick up my T-shirt at the expo (it’s supposed to be a finisher’s shirt, after all!). Fortunately when Rachel turned up to meet us she’d seen on a facebook group thread that they had shirts at the information point on Horseguards’ Parade, so I got another chance to stretch my legs by walking down to pick one up.
Anyway, that’s the marathon I was never going to do done. Not sure about the idea of doing any more! My time of 3:42:22 may not have quite hit my (optimistic) target of 3:30, but almost everyone suffered a bit in the heat, and I did at least achieve one PB – the longest time between pre- and post-race wees, at around 12 hours!
