London Marathon 2012

My preparations for this year's London Marathon were slightly unorthodox.

After the Ben race last year, I cut back my running ...increased my drinking and eating and spent more time getting tattooed than pounding the streets in a pair of trainers.

In an effort to regain balance, I applied for the Runners World marathon training programme but didn't get through and opted for my own "focused" training. That didn't work out for a number of reasons which I won't bore you with. End result was going down to London with a handfull of road races (one 10k and four 5k events) and a pile of long hill runs.

As a result, I found myself in the "good for age" start without a real clue how the next 26.2 was going to pan out. The plan was to try and get another shot at London by going under 3:15 (the qualifying time for my age group) but with the aim of only running at a "comfortable" pace. That worked out great for the first 16 miles where I managed 7 minute miles but with the pain level increasing I slowed up and dropped a second or so each mile until the 23 mile point where the wheels started to come a bit. A shout of "come oan ZZ Top" made me smile a bit and the next mile went better until cramp in the hamstrings was edging close. In an effort to maintain forward progress, I had no option but to slow up another bit. Oli Bloomfield cruised past in great style and shouted further encouragment which was most welcome !

Given everything, I was seriously over to moon to cross the line in 3:10:20 (only 29 seconds off of last years PB at London) which means another trip south to the big smoke next spring.

Aye - a marathon / half marathon Westies record list would make interesting reading ....especially for the younger ones like maself ;-)

Unless things have changed since last year, we are due one "club" entry (that is how I got into London last year). Would be great if it was used by one of the newer members next year !


Any statistic geeks reading this will notice a couple of things from my Garmin information below ...I ran 26:56 miles i.e. longer than a "standard" marathon ...this is almost completely due to the line I took. The race line which is 26.2 miles exactly is demarked by a blue line on the course but it was almost impossible to stick to this. The second point of note is the average pace of  7:09 minutes / mile - I like this a lot since it shows I am capable of running a new PB :-)



One a related note ....can I recommend Custom Inc Tattooists out in Finnieston and in particular the work of Ema Sweeney who is one of the resident artists. Not sure how scientific it is but 24 hours in the chair spread over 7 sessions certainly helped cope with the pain of the last few miles on Sunday ....