London marathon warp up

Well after such a high I had to be reminded just how unpredictable sport can be! I arrived in London on Thursday morning and was still hurting quite a bit after Boston. I took it easy for a few days and just turned my focus towards recovering and of course the weather in London! I had a few massage sessions and slowly but surely my muscles were relaxing and felling a bit better. The weather forecast for race day was warm and sunny – the day of the race at 6am in the morning it was still showing warm and sunny but 30% chance of rain after noon.

We got the start and it was heavily overcast and quite chilly. As we were in the last minutes of warm up the heavens opened up the temperature must have dropped by another 5 degrees. It was freezing and as we were sitting on the starting line I could feel my muscles tightening up again.

The gun went off (Sir Richard Branson was the starter!) and we took off. I took an early lead but it was soon clear that another racer from Japan was very keen to take the lead so I led him and slipped back to 3rd. About 5k into the race a small pack of around 10 racers had formed and I was very happy to stay with them. Then I heard the dreaded pop of a tire on my front wheel. I tried to keep the pace but with the rain it just was not going to happen. It felt like I was going uphill all the time. I dropped off the pack and found myself in no-man’s land. It was cold and wet and not a very nice place to be – London that is!

In the end I dragged myself over the line in six place. I later learned that out of the 38 starters there was to be 32 athletes will flat tires! That must be some sort of record!
So a win n London eludes me for another year and it’s something I will have to look forward to for another year.

Next marathon for me will be Chicago in October. Can’t wait to get home back to my bike and to get in some quality miles over the winter.