I first ran the London Marathon for CRY in 2007. I wanted to do it again, but not on my own this time. I ran some of the way last time with Sue Fox, another CRY runner this year. Sue lives in Nottingham and I am in London so we couldn’t train together and I feel you can’t beat someone to run with on those lonely weekend long training runs.
I “persuaded” my good friend Leonie Madigan to join me for the 2009 event. She would probably use a different word to “persuade” though!
I knew I wanted to run for CRY again and after explaining why and what CRY are all about, Leonie was on board. So come the morning of April 26th, there we were at Greenwich talking complete rubbish and fidgeting constantly.
Leonie kept giving me strange looks and mumbling something about “who had got her into this” but before I had time to defend myself we were off.
The 2007 marathon was very hot, record temperatures in fact. I had maintained to Leonie there was no way that would happen again. I was right about it not being a record temperature year, but 20.9 degrees was hot enough especially when most of our training had been done in wind and rain!
The first 13 miles passed in a flash. We overtook Katie Price and Peter Andre at 11 miles and despite my best efforts, they didn’t seem keen on running with us for some reason!
All was going remarkably well until we got to around 18 miles. Leonie’s beaming face turned to one of agony. It transpired afterwards she had pulled a groin muscle, but as the determined woman she is, she kept on going.
At 19 miles, I felt a rather unpleasant popping sensation somewhere in my right trainer followed by a warm sensation. I had no idea what was going on in the depths of that running shoe, but something wasn’t quite right.
We had seen our various supporters ranging from baby Harry (3 weeks old) to Leonie’s mum Vera and sister, Vivienne over from Ireland at 14 miles, so amongst the pain, we kept reminding ourselves of how proud they looked of us and what a good cause we were putting ourselves through this for.
We had approximately 15 supporters and saw them all at various stages.
We really wanted to finish in under 5 hours and managed 5 hours and 9 minutes in the end. I beat my 2007 time by 4 minutes, so was pleased.
Considering a pulled groin muscle and what turned out to be a gruesome blister attached to my toenail which had popped at 19 miles and hips that felt they weren’t attached to our bodies anymore, I think we did well to run the whole thing and not stop at all.
After the race, I went back to the CRY hotel (poor Leonie needed to get straight home before her groin seized up completely) and on the way in the mini bus met the most amazing people all with stories of lost relatives and friends and it just confirmed to me that every penny we had raised was for an incredible cause.
Thank you to the lovely lady who massaged my legs, sorry again that she had to look at those disgusting blisters and it was so nice to finally meet Rebecca Zouvani, whom I had spoken to and emailed on many occasions, but had never met in person.
Would we do it again? Pulled groin muscle, the now missing toenail and other aches and pains? It would be madness to do it again, but that elusive 5 hour target keeps popping back into our minds.
We signed up for the 2010 ballot as soon as we could!!!!
