17th April 2011

4.59.1

Where do I start??????

For the small handful of people that read this I don't want to go on an on and on and sound like the most irritating person on the planet...................but as I have said before - this blog is really for me - so when I get old and can't remember anything I can read this and remember it all - and I want to remember every single second of yesterday - so if you are not me - I suggest you just scroll straight onto the next post to avoid a slow painful dull reading experience.

I started my marathon adventure with a broken computer, a broken car and no driving license (this is not a good combination for emergency strategic planning or indeed for keeping one calm in the run up to a major athletic achievement).............

After sorting my car, managing the chaos a fire damaged M1, taking an unnecessary detour through Terminal 4 of Heathrow looking for petrol, driving straight though a red light and then getting lost 3 times I (quite astonishingly) arrived in London town in pretty good shape.

I dumped the car at Tiny's house and raced off to the tube to meet Bill under the clock at Waterloo and we set off to the Expo at Excel London to register. We walked in the exit by mistake and wandered round the stalls. I stocked up on my "favourite" gels and energy bars (well I have practised with them twice so they were now officially my favourite) and I went to the Clic Sargent stall to get some tee shirts, foam hats and bangers for my support team.

We made our way back round to the beginning to pick up my chip and number.

The man registering me seemed excited to be registering another "baby doctor" (I think this was a compliment) and I was now generally very excited about just about everything. I welled up when he handed me my number and he grabbed both my hands and said something inspirational that I cant recall now (something along the lines of "you'll be brilliant dahhhhlin").
We got back on the DLR to make our way back to Tiny's house and Bill kept me entertained with his witty Marathon stories (he did Amsterdam sometime in the 1970's and on landing back in the UK he had to be assisted off the aeroplane whilst 2 old ladies struggled with their zimmers on the steps behind him).

We noticed an extremely fit man flashing his red bag and noticed his race number was 923. I wondered if it was purely coincidence that our physiques were so wildly different and that my number was nearly 38,000 higher than his. Bill informed me he was likely to be an elite runner and I pretended not to stare at him through the perspex all the way home which he pretended not to notice. In a brilliant coincidence Leon took a photo of him running the marathon the next day!!!Back at the house Tiny, Bill, Mat and I commenced our carbohydrate loading. We had all the usual great chat and I went off to bed (quite excited).

Saturday arrived and as instructed by everybody who knows anything about running a marathon I "rested". In reality this involved food shopping (Bill ran into my ankle with the trolley), cooking pre-race pasta for everybody (I spent 3 hours slaving over a hot stove), delivering tea and biscuits to Bill whilst he sat and watched sport and entertaining visitors (My Official Trainer (Leon) came to see me and bought My Unofficial Mascot (Baby Edward) along with Mary and Kate) and I spent 3 hours chasing Kate and Leon round the garden in my nurses uniform.

My chief supporter (The Sister) arrived and we all sat down to eat our pre-race pasta. I marvelled at Bills commitment to the cause and felt humbled at how much he was prepared to eat to show his support (I was later to learn that the angle of the cushions on the sofa made him sick that night which was a terrible shame given all the effort he had put in).
Several hours of in depth discussion ensued planning the support team race-day strategy. Tiny (Head of Race-Day Strategic Planning) has run a cheer point for Macmillan several zillion times before and had all the essential inside knowledge about how best to get round successfully on the day. She was quite tireless in her attempts to get everybody sorted and organised and was a total **superstar** as always

Bedtime came and even though I was very excited I managed to get off to sleep straight away. I woke up at 04.15 and that was it - My Big Day began................

I laid for 2 hours nervous and excited with the marathon theme tune playing over and over in my head "do do doooo do dooo do do doooooooo".........and eventually got up at 6am. The time flew by and in the blink of an eye we were off to the train. 90% of the people milling around were carrying their red marathon bags and looking extremely nervous. I was.......excited.......so did some lunges on the platform to burn off some energy.The journey to Waterloo was....exciting. I had by far the best support team in our carriage. I wanted to start a warm up session for all the runners on the train but Tiny looked horrified at the suggestion so I kept all the excitement to myself and tried not to jump around like a crazy Jelly Bean.We got to Waterloo and I said a quick Hi to Wendy and Jacko and then The Sister and I set off fro Greenwich whilst the rest of the gang went off to set up the Macmillan cheer point. As we climbed the escalator onto the train at Greenwich things started to get very very busy. Zillions of runners packed on the train clutching their red bags and spilled out onto Maze Hill Station to make their way to the starting line at Greenwich park. The Sister helped me into my outfit and attach my number and waved me off with a little nervous tear and I was left all alone with 40,000 runners and I felt.....excited!!!

At this point the only thing I needed was a wee. The queues for the portaloos seemed to stretch all the way to Buckingham Palace so I decided to give the ladies urinals a go. This involved some quite complicated underwear management whilst standing on tip toes trying to pee into a particularly high up green plastic box through a device thatlooked like a paper aeroplane whilst trying to not make eye contact with 2000 other women looking equally horrified. I managed to complete the process without getting any wee on my dress and felt........excited!!!

I still had an hour to kill so I decided to watch the charity runners telling their "stories" to Ross Noble on the big screen. Some poor man came on to tell us about his daughter who had died 2 just weeks earlier and I started to feel worked up (tearful) so I decided to move on and find something else to do. I tried to drink coffee but worried that I h

ave never drunk coffee before a run before so I threw it away and made my way to the start line to do some stretches. I worried I might be too near the front and hold up the fast runners behind me so I asked a fine young pace maker from Runners World if I should move back. Little did I realise I was in Pen 9 (out of 9)!!!!!!!! there must have been nearly 40,000 people in the pens in front of me!!! - one of the many problems with being short - half the time you have no idea what is going on in front of you.

So 09.45 eventually came and we were OFF!!!!!!. Being OFF!!! actually involves a very slow shuffle for 15 minutes before you reach the start line but I didn't

care at all - it was still very very exciting.

I was warned to expect the first few miles might be very quiet. Well - it wasn't. The infamous crowd support was in evidence from the very first step I took and then followed 9 miles of support quite beyond my wildest expectations. The pavements were lined with men, women

and children waving cheering and clapping like mad. They seemed to be mainly locals at this point and many of them had set up mini discos outside their houses. I was one of the very very few in fancy dress and it felt like somebody was shouting my name every single step I took. I cheered and waved and high-5'd and felt very very excited. I don't recall any aches or pains. I don't recall giving my energy levels a seconds thought and the miles literally flew by.

The only thing I do remember being concerned about was the heat. It was hot. Very very hot and so I made a mental note to drink lots of water. Before I knew it I was at mile 9 chatting to Leon and my very excited Sister. We had a few photos and I stocked up on energy gels and bars and off I went.

The support continued. I was a crowd-trollop and ran along the pavement edge all the way - now either EVERYBODY was shouting my name in particular OR I was running in the "people called Emma" section - either way it was absolutely amazing. The miles ticked by all too fast. I knew I was doing 10 minute miles and decided to stop for a wee in the portaloos. I queued with everybody around me looking quite stressed for a good few minutes and felt......excited

After nearly 2 hours of running through packed urban streets I had no idea where I was and was totally unprepared when we turned a corner and were suddenly faced with Tower Bridge up ahead. It looked magnificent and nearly took my breath away. For the first time that day I had to have a little word with myself to calm myself down - feeling extremely excited is not conducive to running 26 miles.

The first Macmillan cheer point was at mile 13 and I was very excited to get there and see my friends on-pace and looking relaxed and pain free. As I have never run more than 14 miles before I was about to enter the unknown but I still felt nothing but excitement......

The Isle of Dogs was jam-packed with people drinking and cheering and waving and dancing and singing and I ran and ran and wondered when the pain was gonna kick in. There were gangs of students hanging from flat windows still partying from the night before, groups of lager louts drinking pints outside the pubs and cheering everybody on with total sincerity, families picnic-ing on the grass verges and pub landlords DJ-ing on their balconies. All the children held out their hand hoping you would High-5 them which I did a zillion times and the adults held out bowl fulls of jelly babies for you to grab on the way and at every firestation we passed

the firemen were out showering everybody with their hoses. I was pretty confident wet polyester would increase chaffage risk so I dodged the showers despite the heat.

The crowd seemed to be very excited to see a "nurse" running past. At one point I was quite embarrassed when several dozen people roared my name - seemingly not to notice the man in front of me running on 2 prosthetic legs!!!

I was a bit worried I wasn't sweating........a worry confounded by the fact that we hit mile 16 and people started to drop like flies all around me. It was all a bit of a blur but I remember a guy falling to the ground and screaming like he had been shot (it was cramp!!) and then I saw several people being carried down the pavement in makeshift stretchers by policemen. I worried I might be next and carried a water bottle in each hand and continuously munched on my energy bars and gels. I stopped worrying about how slowly I might be going and was pleased to stop for another wee completely unconcerned by the length of the queue.

I saw Leon and The Sister again at mile 11 and missed them at mile 15 (they said the tube was too slow but I knew it was because I was running so fast).......................I saw them again at mile 19, by this time the crowd had swelled so deep I couldn't see the houses and shops behind them. We ran round huge corners and at each one the cheers got louder and louder. I have no idea how but Leon and The Sister had got right to the front to cheer me on. I stopped to say Hi and grab more food from The Sisters goodie bag. Leon asked how I felt? and I remember saying "I don't know - I've never felt like this before" As I ran off he reminded me I was "living the dream" which I was.......but I didn't need reminding................I felt like I was flying. In fact I was flying so high I skipped right past my support team at mile 24 waving like a looney.............

I was later gutted not to have stopped to give them all a big elated hug....................although it transpired it was a good job I didn't at the end of the day. The last 2.2 miles were hard. I was very tired and worried that something anatomical might let me down. As the crowd cheered us on I could no longer risk acknowledging them for fear of loosing control of my emotions and collapsing in a crumpled heap so I just ploughed on and in all honesty the last 2 miles was the only time I didn't feel much at all - just completely overwhelmed by the support I had had so far and total astonishment that my under prepared body hadn't let me down 10 miles earlier.

I crossed the finish line confident I had come in a just under 5 hours. I grabbed my medal and felt like letting go of all the emotion I had kept locked up inside all day but nothing came. I forced a little tear but that was it - I don't know if I was too tired or it was just the fact there was nobody there to pay me any attention any more.

I tried to remember the instructions given to me the day before to find my way to the bar. As I had no phone signal I had to ask 3 different policemen for directions - each one just 10 yards stagger after the last. I still went the wrong way and eventually sat on the pavement ready to give up and sleep there for the night. A few minutes later the phones began to work and I met up with Leon and The Sister under Nelsons Column and went off to the bar to commence my "recovery"

My "Recovery" involved drinking beer with my supporters including The Sister, Tiny, Leon, Bill, Mat, Anna, Wendy, Michelle, Loo Loo, Jacko, Danny, Rachel and Sara!!!!! My finishing time was confirmed as 4.59.12 - I felt slightly less gutted not to have stopped for a group hug at mile 24!
I felt quite giddy with the excitement of it all so I was pleased My Trainer was on hand to insist I at least try to do some active recovery. He bought me a makeshift ice bucket made from my marathon bag and insisted Tiny feed me sandwiches after he left.

2 shandies later and I felt high as a kite. I skipped up and down the stairs to fetch more drinks and wondered if anybody would mind if I did a jig on the table. People began to drift away and I began to stiffen up and developed some salt chaffing in unmentionable places so we went home for crisps and red wine and sleep.

I woke up early the next morning excited to experience how my body felt.......and do you know what it was OK!!! In fact apart from the fact I couldn't get down stairs, get in or out of cars or get on or off the toilet it really was completely fine.

And just 2 days later I would do it again in a heartbeat.........................

My Best Day ever.......................