UPDATE: 14th April 2008. The Morning After.

Dan’s London Marathon - 100years of the race.

From the beginning it was hard to imagine what a marathon is like, but once you have spoken to a few that have done it, it's clear it is no easy feat.

It was 12 weeks before the race that I was handed the ticket by St.Catherine’s Hospice. I was prepared to take it seriously and started my 10k a day run but after the first 10 days, I strained my achilles heel. It was 3 weeks until I could start training again and managed 4 weeks and a 14mile’r before it happened again, just 3 weeks before the start.

With minimal training due to the ongoing injury all I could do was rest the achilles and hope it would hold up.

With the 36000 starters crammed into Greenwich Park, I was ready to start. The weather was perfect, sunny and cool. Just two miles in my outer right knee was very painful but I thought it would loosen up. Tower Bridge 13 miles in 10 minutes under my finish target time of 4 hours, managing to ignore the worsening knee pain by lapping up the crowds and fellow runners support, I was feeling good.

20 miles, a hail storm, “the wall” and excruciating knee pain forced me to a dreaded stop with a St John’s physio who pointed out the typical runners injury advised me to stop or take it easy. I couldn’t stop, he pulled me to my feet and I could hardly move, frozen with stiffness I hobbled and tried to get back into some form of run, my legs felt like two steel tubes. 

The pain in my knee and stiffness in my legs was unbearable which forced me to stop 3 more times to try and stretch but I couldn’t lift my legs.

21 miles, my feet and hips decided to tell me they had had enough but I knew if I stopped again I couldn’t start to run again. All I could do is grit my teeth and           focus on a point in the distance and run towards it, I blocked everything else out, now it was just me and the finish line. It felt slow but it was pushing as hard as I could.

Big Ben – 25.5 miles I couldn’t believe I had nearly done it just ¾ of a mile to go, 800m eventually 600m eventually 400m, the final right turn and the yellow finish bridge, the best part of the whole day! I had made it!! The first and surely the last!

UPDATE: 13th April 2008. The RUN.