Eleven weeks ago Nicky and I took up two Virgin Money London Marathon charity places, representing and fund raising for Multiple Sclerosis National Therapy Centres. Nicky’s mother suffers from MS and so she is aware of the help and support that this charity offer. We both were counting on a ‘less is more’ approach to training and our aim to get to the start line injury free, fresh and to enjoy race day – well actually to have fun for the whole weekend!
We flew into London City Airport and headed straight to Expo where we immediately felt the buzz associated with the enormity of this event. Saturday we trotted a local Parkrun to help calm our nerves and then on to chilly sightseeing around Greenwich.
Race day arrived, fantastic weather conditions for marathon running and soon we were amongst 50,000 other runners getting swept along the 26.2 mile route in a wave of excitement and boosted by tremendous crowd support. It is a road race like no other and you can’t help but embrace the atmosphere and realise how special it is to be a part of such an iconic event. I ran 3h 23min and Nicky 4h 12min, which was a good enough reason for us to celebrate with champagne at the airport. Who would have guessed there were two different airlines flying to Edinburgh departing at 8.05pm from London City? Our bodies numbed from pounding Tarmac and our brains fuzzy from champagne resulted in us attempting to board the wrong plane. We put in the biggest sprint of the day to correct our mistake and ran from gate 4 to gate 8 at a speed that would have challenged Kipchoge. Made it by the skin of our teeth!
Kathy Henly