I am about a week and half post marathon, and I know the sooner I get this post out, the better it will be. I don’t plan to make this lengthy, just want to give an account of what the experience was participating in the 45th edition of the famous London Marathon!
Last year I realized that the London Marathon would fall the week after Easter. This was a jackpot spot for me, as a teacher, as my school division has Spring Break from Good Friday through the following week. This meant I would be able to travel overseas for this event and only have to use my minimal personal days to cover a few days after the race. The entry and cost was the next step, and I found a tour provider, Dream Travel Canada, who I joined quickly. I didn’t care about the cost–I knew this was my way in. If you are curious about the cost, you can easily google it…it is pretty steep for getting a guaranteed race entry into this event. However, with the other option being their “Ballot” (the lottery) and it getting more insane every year (just a few days ago the ballot closed for next year’s race and a staggering 1.1 million people entered) this was my way to assure I got in during the perfect Easter bubble.
Training had been going great all season. I had a different goal going into this race, though—train for a 3:30 time, but know that this will not happen. I had that mindset for a variety of reasons.
1.) The overseas travel and jet lag to take into account. And that I would be landing in Paris the Tuesday before the race, doing Disneyland Paris, sightseeing, Eurostar to London, sightseeing, etc. When I do my recap on Disneyland, I really will comment on how much we actually walked before the race day…and while I had some regret in this about a week post-race, I know that looking back I truly have no regrets on how hard Ali and I toured Europe. I don’t know when I’ll be back there again! I didn’t want to spend my days leading up to the race in poorly air conditioned hotel rooms (come on Europe, that’s the only thing I have a complaint on)!
2.) Other world majors I have done can be very crowded. Lots of weaving, not sure how the corral system would work, etc. I didn’t want to be frustrated trying to weave through people and then ultimately fall short. In the end, I found the flow of the course to go quite well and that was not a problem at all (I think my start corral helped)
3.) I am paying an insane amount to travel here, so I wanted to have fun! I set a dumb goal of really going all out the first half, admitting to my coach I would “most likely fall apart” the second half, but then try to really just take in the sights and enjoy it. That is, in fact, exactly what I did and you can see that with my data on Strava.
The tour group we went with was great with communication. We had a meet up on the Friday evening at our hotel, a Holiday Inn, so we could meet other runners. At this meetup, someone offered me their spot on the bus for race morning to get to the start area. I gladly took this so I didn’t have to deal with transit race morning and it was appreciated. Race morning came, and they started breakfast early downstairs for the runners. It was mainly a cold buffet, and I thought I had eaten enough. In retrospect, I should have taken more food with me to the race area to eat before the event because I was struggling with hunger throughout the race. This has been something I have spoken with my coach about, as this training cycle I seem to never have enough calories. Sometimes, I know I am not eating enough. But other times I am baffled to why I feel empty. We hope to get this sorted out before my 50 km in September.
A group of us from the bus who were in the Blue Wave stuck together during the morning after going through security. We had around 1.5 hours to just sit and wait. Weather was overcast, but it was predicted to keep warming up throughout the day. One really great thing was the number of porta potties. I went, I think, 3 times before we got into the corrals and I never had to wait. This is a nerve-wracking thing for runners! The announcers were clear with directions and they explained when they would start queuing the different start waves. I was wave 3 in the blue corral. I admittingly put an estimated finish time 10 minutes faster than my personal best. But, given how I knew I was tackling this race, I knew that for at least the first 10 km I would be cruising at that pace. What was cool about the Blue corral was that we got to start on the ‘official’ start line. There were two other corrals that would then feed into one another around the 5km mark, and they started in other off-shoots of the main start line. My co-worker, Jeni, who killed the race in a 3:07 and was the 10th fastest female finisher from Canada, was starting in Pink. We were at the same hotel, but we never saw each other on race day due to start area logistics.
It was an exciting start and I do think I teared up as I went across the start line. Music and excitement at these races bring on emotions and I can’t control them. This was the start of my 5th Abbott World Major…now I just needed to get to the finish! I went out fast, like I said I would, and just kept with the pace. Crap-already hungry. I had eaten one pack of my Honey Stingers while sitting around, so I have one more pack of honey stingers and 4 Xact bars, along with Xact electrolytes to get me through. Thank god for the spectators later in the course who had cut up oranges and gummies…god bless.
I won’t talk about mile by mile, but my first half generally went with the plan. Go hard, then fall apart…haha. The point I knew things would change would be as we approached the iconic Tower Bridge. I actually met up briefly with a former math student of mine the day prior-he lives near Tower Bridge. He and a friend were going to come watch race morning. I actually spotted him….Zitong! Zitong! He got my picture. Then the vibe over Tower Bridge was electric. So many photographers. So cool. Such energy. Then I got off the bridge, all hyped up, to then do a double-take….IS THAT GORDON FUCKING RAMSEY??? I turned around and went BACK around 50 meters and basically yelled in his face “GORDON RAMSEY!!!!?!?!?!?!?!” He just started laughing. I think he gave me a hug, maybe a fist bump, I now don’t remember. But I asked for a selfie. That is the photo at the top of the page. He was laughing and I was digging my phone out of my pack. He tells me to hurry up! and I get the photo, thank him and on my way….but not until i take the time to send this photo to a group chat of friends at what would be around 3:00 am. This was a race highlight and if I had been taking it too seriously, wouldn’t have been able to enjoy.
The second half of the race started to get warm. It got to a high of around 22 degrees Celsius, which on paper isn’t “hot.” But all week we were getting emails warning us about it. When you train all winter and pull off outdoor workouts in -40, this is quite the swing. There was also something about the air flow in the second half of hte race….larger buildings around, sun reflecting off the buildings, etc….I was taking the small water bottles every station they had them. I would swig some water, then squirt a bunch all over my head. Rinse and repeat. There was also ice that I grabbed and put in my buff.
This whole time, since race start, my calves were cramping. They actually were like this since Friday morning. I had woken up in the middle of the night with what I thought were Charlie horses. Whatever it was, the cramping never went away. Probably due to the fac that on Wednesday I walked 38,000 in Disneyland Paris…but that’s another story. I contemplated time and again about stopping at an aide tent to get my calves massaged, but I was worried that if I stopped it would be harder to stop again. So I just slowed down and trucked on.
As I got to the final 5km, Ali was able to find me from a spot she was standing on the bridge. I wasn’t aware of this until after the race, but I am glad she was able to spot me in the masses of 56,000 people. She said my tall red socks along with bright yellow vest helped a ton. I knew I could still get a sub 4 hour time, which honestly was the time I wanted in the back of my head when all was said and done, so I kept moving. Running to see Big Ben was awesome! The turn down the finish line in the Buckingham Palace area was also really cool, but I couldn’t really properly soak it in as I just wanted to finish. In the end, I finished with a respectable time of 3:57.26. Of my five world majors, this one is my 3rd fastest—I’ll take it!
They only had water and their sport drink to hand out as post-race refreshments. Possibly due to the sheer number of runners, but this was rough as I was really wishing for a bagel or something. I guess if you knew you’d want something right away, you woul dhave wanted to check a bag. But then you’d still have to walk to claim that and all. It was just weird to me as a North American to not get any post race food item. But, I will say that exiting the race was a lot quicker than North American races. In New York, I swear we walked another 5 km through Central Park to help ease the crowds before we were actually allowed out. Here, I just wandered through this wide gathering area to an exit, and then Ali sent me visual descriptions of which alley way to turn down to find her at a pub, where she waited for me with a beer in hand. We then took a slow walk back to our hotel (about 2 miles) and we stopped at a pub that was giving a free burger to all finishers who brought in their medal. There—I got my food!
Do I recommend doing London? Hell yeah, especially if you are on the 6 World Major track. Would I do it again? No. There are too many other races out there in the world to do. The cost for me to get here to do this race was heavy, but it was worth it. I had a great experience and I cherish the memories not only of the race day, but the trip to Europe and all the hard months training. I am really proud of the things I accomplished leading up to this race, and only I can understand how important those milestones are. London 2025….thank you for everything.
Je Me Souviens-To Infinity & Beyond! 