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The Big Day. The Race. 26.2 Miles.
Sunday, 14 April 2002

After tossing and turning for several hours the night before, I finally managed to sleep for about two hours, before my alarmwent off at the ungodly hour of 5:00 a.m. I needed to be at Chris's hotel at 6:30 so we could get on the bus to the start that was arranged by our tour agency. So I showered, attempted to eat some toast, had some tea, and set off for the rather long walk to the tube station. I got mildly lost on the way, which panicked me slightly, but that was nothing compared to the shock I received when I finally did get there.

There were no Underground trains running until 6:59 a.m.

What did I do? Panicked, of course! Tried to find a taxi. No luck. Looked for a bus. No luck. They didn't start running until 7:00. Finally, I got myself together enough to find a phone box and call Chris (naturally, I didn't have the number with me, so I had to call information first. All this is making me panic even more.) I got through to him, and he assured me that we had plenty of time to take the train to Greenwich with all of the other runners. Besides, he reasoned, it'd be more in the spirit of things to have to go alongside everyone else. Good point. While I was waiting for the Underground station to open, another runner came by and talked to me. He seemed calm enough, which helped.

Finally, I made it to the hotel and met up with Chris. We got on the tube, and made our way to Waterloo to get on the train to Greenwich. There were tons of runners (duh) and we had to wait for the second train that came by to get on. A good idea, since we actually got to sit.

When we made it to the Greenwich station, we followed the mass of people and the signs to the red start. I'm not exactly sure what the significance of the different starts was, but I think overseas runners and charity runners were at the red start. Immediately we got in line for the bathroom, with about 50 minutes until the race was to start. Naturally, Chris, being a boy, was done in about 5 minutes, but I had to wait about half an hour. After that was taken care of, I put my number on and got my stuff together while Chris went again. That boy has the bladder the size of a pea, as we'll see later. So then we dropped our kit bags off at the baggage truck and got back in line for the bathroom. This time, we only had about 10 minutes until the race started, and we barely made it in time to jog to the correct pen.

Heading towards the start line. See, it's up ahead to the left of the balloon. About 15 minutes have passed by this time.

There was a moment of silence for the Queen Mum, and then the starting noisy thing (I don't know what it was) went off to signal the start. Woo hoo!

Naturally, there wasn't any movement, just a slow walk, for a while. We checked out the costumes around us, including my favorites, Tick and Tock. They were two wristwatches (Timex, as it turned out) who were clearly not too hindered by their costumes, as we didn't see then again for the rest of the day. Sometime around now, we were caught on camera by the BBC. Michael taped it for us and Marianne and I watched it later. Woo hoo! Good thing we wore those orange shirts!

This boy never stops smiling! Thank goodness.

So approximately 17 minutes after the gun went off, we crossed the start line. There were crowds lining either side of the road, and the huge smile that resulted didn't leave my face for the next, oh, 24 miles or so.

The costumes we saw at the beginning were incredible. Rhinos, a huge cell-phone (who, judging by the shouts at the start, probably had to endure five plus hours of "ring ring" and "hey, turn that off and run!"), a red telephone named Dave (who we were with the whole time), a snail named Brian, Superman, two Batmans and Robins, a big furry creature called, I think, a Womble, some Teletubbies with buckets of money on their backs, and lots of others.

Somewhere around mile 2. You can't tell in the picture, but way up ahead is a downhill and then an uphill. Get that? Hills! By the way, I don't know what those people are looking at to the left.

It didn't take too long for the crowds to thin out. Or, shall I say, for them to leave us behind. At around mile three, the Penguin's 5:30 pacer group passed us. We were going to keep with them, but their walk breaks were at odds with ours. Plus, as I said before, they were going faster than us. Sigh. Anyway, I think it was better that we were at the back of the pack, because there really weren't that many of us, relatively speaking. Therefore, we always heard our names being yelled. It was fantastic. There were little kids lining the routes, wanting us to slap their hands as we ran by. We obliged as much as we could.

I sincerely thought that I'd remember every little thing about the race, every mile, but let's face it, the first 8 miles or so really just blended together. Actually, the first 14. Make that 24. Well, I remember snippets of things, which I wrote down right after the race. I don't necessarily remember when they happened, but I'll try...

But first, the splits:

Mile 1: 12:21.57
Mile 2: 13:54.71
Mile 3: 13:24.54
Mile 4: 12:36.50
Mile 5: 12:33.37
Mile 6: 13:14.15
Mile 7: 16:57.12 (ahh, that'd be Chris's first bathroom break)
Mile 8: 12:35.67
Mile 9: 12:40.16
Mile 10: 13:03.55
Mile 11: 15:17.70 (ahh, that'd be the second!)
Mile 12: 13:01.12
Mile 13: 13:04.87
Halfway:
Mile 14: 12:18.53
Mile 15: 13:24.79
Mile 16: 15:49.15 (bathroom break again, plus I forgot to hit my split button, as you can see from Mile 17. At this point, we decided it'd be wiser for me to walk on ahead while Chris used the bathroom, and then he'd run and catch up with me. That way, we didn't lose as much time.)
Mile 17: 11:45.79
Mile 18: 14:02.31 (couldn't possibly be another bathroom break could it? very possibly)
Mile 19: 17:01.50 (excrutiating blister popped. see below for story)
Mile 20: 14:20.48 (Had to walk because of the blister.)
Mile 21: 13:43.73
Mile 22: 12:47.31 (woah. speed demons!)
Mile 23: 14:38.24 (I think this was the cobblestones. I'll have to check the map. Or a bathroom break.)
Mile 24: 13:28.77
Mile 25: 13:35.50 (digging deep. concentrating. sobbing.)
Mile 26.2: 15:57.01 Finished!!!

Total time: 5:57:38 by my watch, 5:57:36 chip time. Fantastic!

Splits as recorded by chip:
KM10: 0:00:00 (I didn't think it beeped as we ran over it. Hmmm)
KM20: 2:47:37
HALF: 2:55:59 Ê
KM30: 4:14:49
KM40: 5:40:00 Ê
FINISH: 5:57:36

So that means the average mile time for the first half was 13:26.1, and for the second half: 13:51.2 for the second half. Not bad. But positive splits. Curses to the blister! I'll blame that.

more... (and pictures!)