Race Report: London Marathon

Race Report: London Marathon

Here is Andrew’s race report on the London Marathon, his first ever marathon.

Reflections

I’ve been reflecting on last weekend and just wanted to put some thoughts on a page like you suggested.

Firstly, what an event!!

I’d heard so many good things about it but I was blown away by the atmosphere, organisation, course and everything in between! I knew I’d done pretty much everything I could to prepare and trained as well as I could, but there’s always that doubt – have I done enough? Will I be able to do it?

The preparation for the day was ok on the whole although not ideal in hindsight. I travelled down the day before and had to go the expo to get my number etc. My mate was late getting down so l ended up getting his too and going to meet him.

All of that resulted in doing 12,000 steps the day before which I really wanted to avoid. I’d taken my own food so all of the nutrition was fine.

Breakfast the morning of the race was nice and relaxed and off to the start line I went.

Race Start

At the start I had a bit of a nightmare!

It was a cold day so I wanted to keep my jacket on as long as possible. But by the time l’d queued for the toilets for 45 minutes and been misdirected to the wrong lorry, my lorry had gone!! I had to put my bag on a different van at which point my wave was going through the pen to the start line. I had to rush my warm up which wasn’t ideal and then had messed up the data fields on my watch in preparation the night before so had to try to fix that! If I did it again l’d just have taken an old jumper and throw it at the start line as a donation like others did.

Race Summary

The race went incredibly well. I went with the thought of doing 4:30 in my mind but to be honest, the time felt semi-irrelevant when I started the race. I still wanted a good time that I could be proud of, but I just wanted to enjoy the race and take it all in.

The training plan was absolutely incredible. I felt so fit and strong throughout. Everyone I saw on the route or on photos have commented on how comfortable I looked. Up to 22 miles I didn’t even feel that tired! To be honest, there was a point that I did think I’d run it too slowly which goes against what I said about the time being irrelevant! By the end of the race I think I was content that l’d ran it at the right pace as the splits were really consistent.

Got my nutrition generally right, but ended up with a couple of extra gels which I intended on taking but got a little lost on my plan of when to take them. An extra kick at the end would have been nice!!

Ended up in the first aid tent as I sat down shortly after the finish line and cooled down too quickly and started shivering really badly. It was all fine – vitals were all steady, just went from really hot to really cold too quick.

Lessons

In terms of what l’d do differently:

1. Try to go a day earlier and sort my race pack on the Friday to make Saturday a more relaxed day
2. Get to the start line a little earlier with an old jumper on
3. Be more regimented on nutrition.
4. Be more focussed on my target time and kick on if I felt like I could.

On to the next one!

Andrew’s Testimonial

Andrew also sent in a testimonial about his experiences of being coached for this event.

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