Tag: Marathon

Looking at my splits now, it seems that I managed to hold onto what my watch calculated as a 5:31 average after the London Marathon’s half-way point for another 9km, up to around 30km into the marathon. But I remember very little about those 6 miles between the 13 and 20-mile markers. Looking at the route map now, I was running through Wapping, Limehouse and Milwall, but I couldn’t tell you the first thing about it, other than I became conscious of feeling disembodied, in a faintly unwell rather than ecstatic way. I think I started counting my steps – at first up to 100, but then in less complicated chunks of 10 – to try to ground myself back in my body. And then, at Canary Wharf, around the…

My lack of preparation – physical and psychological – for the London Marathon extended to the logistics of actually getting to Blackheath. The day before race day, I was supposed to be talking at a conference in London to celebrate Mary Wollstonecraft’s 260th birthday. But I got stuck on a broken-down train between Cambridge and Stansted Airport, and missed my event. To avoid a similar mishap on marathon day, P offered to drive me down to Redbridge tube station, where I could pick up the tube to London Bridge (via Stratford), and then the train to Blackheath. But I cut it pretty fine, forgetting that the marathon start was still a 15-minute walk from Blackheath station, and I spent the tube journey anxiously checking my watch and wondering whether, if…