Ok…so here is the closure:

I wake up on marathon morning to piercing blue skies and not much sign of a breeze and think ‘Come on cloud, you know you want to make an appearance today!’ As I leave my flat at 7.15 am it’s already quite warm in the sun and I walk along trying to keep my breakfast down whilst trying to convince myself that my leg doesn’t hurt at all - in reality it didn’t feel too good but today was the day and I just had to get throught it. When I arrived at my start I slathered myself in suncream, sprayed my calfs with this ‘no-pain’ stuff and took some painkillers. At 9.15 I walk to my starting pen and think how hot it is already. I’m standing next to a couple of girls from ‘up-north’ who are really worried about the heat. Understandable really as up there they only get about 1 day of warm sunshine a year!

The gun goes off and it takes me about 2mins 40 to get to the start. I was expecting my first mile to be around 10/11 mins because of the crowds but I take just 8.40 which I’m really pleased with - my target pace for sub 3.45 was 8.34 per mile and I’m still hoping for a miracle. As I’m running I’m aware of no pain (my god it works!!) in my calfs but some tightness in my quads - I never ever get tight quads so I was a bit confused / annoyed by this. I run my 10k in 51 mins - well on track for sub 3.45. I’m starting to feel that maybe, just maybe, I could do a decent time. I do my half in 1.51 and I’m still on track. After that things started to get interesting - the heat started to have an effect (as it had with most people - I saw 2 elite athletes passing me when they had done 21 miles and one was walking and the other was pulling out!) and my quads were causing a lot of pain. I got to 14 miles in 2 hours and realised that I could ‘snail-it’ in 10 minute miles and still do a 4 hour marathon. So I keep running, albeit slowly at times, and I don’t let myself stop because I know if I stop just once then there was no way I would come in under 4. As I get to 22 miles, I’ve got 42 mins to crawl the last 4.2 miles and I was so determined. I get to 200m from the finish and I manage a sprint finish (I say ‘sprint’ but it was probably just a fast jog!) and come in at 3.57! I get through the finish and burst into tears. What a girl….

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