Back in early 2018 when I finished the Charleston Marathon I was fully under the impression that it would be a one and done thing. From there, I’d skip over to triathlons since they are less terrible on the body up until a certain point. Then I got into Chicago 2018 through their lottery, and as I was wrapping up my trip, I learned that I managed to get into the London Marathon too. For a race that takes some people six or more years to get into, I was incredibly fortunate to skip ahead of the line, and it was similar for Chicago, which to me is a sign that the world wants me to continue to torture myself. So here we are, two days after the London Marathon, my legs are still stiff, my energy coming back, and already looking to plan my next goal.
The first marathon I was happy with the 4:15-ish finish. I was going in blind and just wanted to survive. For Chicago, I wanted to best that, but wasn’t sure how I’d fare because I kept having a few hiccups in my training aka Charleston is fucking hot (100+ and humidity) so I could not train effectively. Ultimately I had a sloppy start, stopped a few times, couldn’t take my hydration pack, and was just not prepared for it or the massive amounts of people. It was still a great race, and I’m glad I was able to finish in general. No PR, but it was good training for the insanity of the London Marathon, which I will get to shortly.
The goal for the London Marathon was to fall under four hours. That’s it. Anything more than a second count, and apparently that’s what my legs afforded me. I finished in 3:59:50. Mission accomplished by 10 seconds. This means the new goal is significantly worse for me, which sits at 3:45. Anything in between will be great, and I am fortunate to be part of the Rock N’ Roll Marathon Rock n’ Squad, so I have additional marathons to add in this year + the Augusta Ironman 70.3. I still have to calculate the training to see if I can push to those speeds and not neglect my first half Ironman, which I still think the swim may kill me.
Finish details
| Place (Gender) | 10824 |
| Place (Category) | 5106 |
| Place (Overall) | 14773 |
| Finish Time | 03:59:50 |
Splits
| Split | Time Of Day | Time | Diff | min/km | km/h | Place |
| 5K | 11:04:53 | 00:27:29 | 27:29 | 05:30 | 10.92 | – |
| 10K | 11:32:24 | 00:55:00 | 27:32 | 05:31 | 10.90 | – |
| 15K | 12:00:07 | 01:22:43 | 27:44 | 05:33 | 10.82 | – |
| 20K | 12:27:57 | 01:50:33 | 27:50 | 05:34 | 10.78 | – |
| Half | 12:34:09 | 01:56:45 | 06:12 | 05:40 | 10.62 | – |
| 25K | 12:56:15 | 02:18:51 | 22:06 | 05:40 | 10.60 | – |
| 30K | 13:25:11 | 02:47:47 | 28:57 | 05:48 | 10.37 | – |
| 35K | 13:54:57 | 03:17:33 | 29:46 | 05:58 | 10.08 | – |
| 40K | 14:24:11 | 03:46:46 | 29:14 | 05:51 | 10.26 | – |
| Finish | 14:37:14 | 03:59:50 | 13:04 | 05:57 | 10.09 | 10824 |
My plan was to stick to a 9:00 minute pace, or even better, find the 4 hour pacer and trail him. I got grouped with the 4:15s, so I had to push harder at the beginning to find the 4 hour pacers, but mostly could not battle through the crowds to stick with him (there were two, the one I knew that would take me to finish was up a ways more). Welp, the pace was a flub. At mile two both of my shoe laces managed to become undone, even though they were double tied. This messed me up a bit, so I pushed a bit too hard to catch up to my spot.
For the first nine or so miles I was going 20-30 seconds too fast per mile. That’s not terrible over a couple of miles, but I was definitely trucking too hard for almost half of the initial race. I finally evened out until mile 16, where I got caught up in some mobs of people and slowed down. At mile 19, I hit more mobs of people and my calves were starting to burn. This was around the point where I was trying to decide if I should stop to use a porta lou or just hope for the best. I said fuck it, pushed on, and my pace took a toll. It wasn’t until mile 24 that I saw my pace was off for the last three, so I push hard back down to 9 minutes miles.
My legs were burning, but not yet stiffened up, my hip injury magically vanished, but my energy felt great. Unfortunately, the small rolling hills kicked my ass and it all built up. It was around mile 23 or 24 when I saw a man on the ground having compressions done to him, there was a wall of medical people shielding him from being trampled, and everything around started to become a bit chaotic. I felt dehydrated, was getting a bit lightheaded, and honestly was just desperately trying to find a song that was loud and hard enough to let me ignore the mental pushback I was getting. Two more fucking miles. No walking, no slowing down, you can rest at the damn finish line. I just kept repeating it, and then I saw Buckingham Palace appear in the distance… 800 meters left, 400 meters left, holy shit my calves were burning.
At this point, my body just took over and was full on automated. It carried me across the finish line, and when I tried to stop, it felt like every leg muscle was tightening up. I hobbled through a narrow bit of fences, they put the finisher medal around me, I hobbled over to have a photo taken, and then everything was a bit of a blur. All I remember was looking down at the Garmin and seeing a time of 3:59:59. I started laughing uncontrollably and people were staring at me like a madman. I DMed Grace to check my official time, assuming I may have just missed my goal by a few seconds, but this time I came in as expected. I say this because during the Chicago Marathon I relied heavily on an app on my Garmin that was designed to help me keep pace, but I hit a tunnel, twice, early on, and it fucked everythinggggg up. I thought I was coming in at a solid pace but was 10 minutes off.
Anyway, I escaped the masses around Buckingham Palace’s mall and made my way over to Duck and Waffle where Grace was waiting. Food was had, I died a bit inside, and then we hit the London Eye, Shard, London Tower Bridge, and even got fish and chips + a pint in a tiny pub under it. Yesterday my legs were beyond pissed, but we still got in some more touristy stuff with about 13 miles of walking, so you know, that’s great for the healing process.
The People, Holy Shit the People
There were more than 42,400 people that finished this year’s London Marathon. That is pure insanity to be running along. That’s very similar to the Chicago Marathon, but there were many more charity runners who kept to the sides, or even the Charleston bridge run, which can be torture if placed in the wrong group.
http://www.runpix3.com/arace11/60/fo.php?id=61497&ce=&dt=42&hm=lon19&ev=lon19
You can see at the above where I finished compared to the massive army of people. As a mid-pack runner, I guess my ranking was a bit better than expected, but really none of those numbers matter much as I’m only competing against my set finish times, paces, and not injuring myself.
Because this is the largest intentional race, the whole slow on the right, fast on the left thing didn’t really happen. I’m used to a minefield of walkers, but because there were more than 40,000 people running, all at various different paces, running through relatively narrow streets, it was mostly chaos. At around mile 5 I was able to get to one of the four-hour pacers, but he was basically strong arm pushing people out of his way. His group was already pretty large, so it was difficult to get in his wake without hitting the mob. For the most part, people were nice, but I had a French man start squirting his water all over people, and as I started to squeeze past him, he shoved me forward and turned me into a battering ram. Nobody fell over, but plenty got jammed out of the way. All I could hear was his swearing and some very angry people at him before I pushed on. Otherwise, there were the typical issues of a race. People slow down or stop near aid stations, so you stick to the middle. But in this, they used water bottles, so getting pelted with those are a bit tiring after a while and they are way easier to trip on.
As far as support goes, for any kind of big pothole, bump, or hump, they had a race marshal preventing us from making a fool of ourselves. I’ve seen plenty of smaller races filled with people toppling over due to road conditions, so they got this one right. London has now been the second of the majors for me, and I think I’ll wait a while before trying to do any of the other large ones. I feel that my time would have been 5-10 minutes better if there had not been such an insane amount of people to dip and weave through. There was honestly just so much stop, slow, and go motion that it messed with my pace like crazy and was not great on the muscles.
The Course
Near everything about the course was beautiful. This being our first time to the UK, and only having spent the day prior sort of poking around London proper, was basically the best way to get in all the sights. For me, any non-local race is an excuse to see new cities and it’s not in a format that most people can or will enjoy. Because of the marathon we were able to run Tower Bridge, down through Buckingham Palace, and many areas that cars just don’t like pedestrians being. This was also the first point-to-point race I’ve done, so it really does pack in a greater variety of views to take in.
Fortunately, the weather sat between 50-55 degrees, and it only sprinkled on us a few times, otherwise the sun would probably hit hard between the late start time and minimal overhead coverage from open roads and shorter buildings. The race is also said to be flat. Having now lived in Charleston for several years, where things are in actuality very, very flat, the rolling hills around London took their toll on my calves. I should have done just a bit more hill work because that is what hit me the hardest this round. They honestly had minimal inclines, but they stretched good ways and rolled through quite often.
The Support
Every long distance race I do is different on support, but this one was pretty good overall. London has a knack of being more eco-friendly, so they primarily used re-usable plastic bottles, which was a million times better than cups. I’m not sure how much better these are for the environment, but drinking out of a bottle is super easy vs waterboarding yourself with a cup. I only grabbed two of these, but there were aid stations maybe ever three miles or so. They also had these odd seaweed packaged things towards the end, but if I had stopped to try them I wouldn’t have hit my goal. They looked a bit odd though.
Besides water they had some sort of sports drink, but it was incredibly sweet so I avoided it. There was also an energy gel, but I will always stick with the magical Gu, and then there were energy jelly beans. The beans were terrible because they became a brick when trying to eat them. I will say that the crowd basically had endless amounts of odd candies on display for runners, but that seemed too iffy for me. I did grab a few random oranges though.
For the most part the race support was pretty low frills and provided a bit more than the basics, but nothing crazy. Rock n Roll races are still the king of race-day and pre-race support, so I’ve been a bit spoiled by them. The water bottles were super helpful though. But most of all, the crowd…
Even in Chicago, where you had people cheering on practically the entire time, it did not even remotely come close to this. People were cheering, yelling, and seemed truly involved. I had more high fives during this race than any other, and when shit starts to get really rough, that help push me through. I think besides taking in the sights this was my favorite part.
TL;DR – Hit all of my goals, way too many people (expected), it was a beautiful course filled with amazing architecture, if I deviated in any way I would have missed my finish time goal.
New goals: Continue to PR, but shoot for 3:45 finish time. Shoot for 1:40 finish time on 13.1. Unfortunately, we are approaching the season where Charleston heats up like crazy, which means any races the rest of the year likely won’t afford me this goal. I’ll chip away at it, but expect to find an early January (CHS full) or February race (New Orleans) to lock these in.