A few people had told me that just because I had completed a half marathon the jump to full distance was not straightforward. Pah, couldn’t be that hard. I entered through the ballot and deployed a tried and trusted method of putting a faster finish time of 3 hours and 30 minutes to avoid the popular blocks of four hours plus (the theory being that you had less people putting faster times, and blocks of fifteen minutes were filled up). I was told by letter a few months later that I had secured my place. When you get your entry pack it comes with a suggested training schedule, so I followed that as my weekly routine from five months out.
Training was going well until I started developing a sore foot with about six weeks to go. Thinking it was just some kind of bruising I attempted to carry on training, but it wasn’t getting any better. I ended up back at the sports physiotherapists who diagnosed it as a metatarsal stress fracture. I hadn’t even heard of this type of injury before David Beckham famously had a problem with it. Complete rest was diagnosed for a minimum of two months. Luckily I had one deferral with my London entry, so moved my slot to the following year. Maybe this marathon lark was harder than I thought.
I duly rested up, and picked the training schedule back up later that year. This time around my training went uninterrupted and I looked forward to the day of the race. The furthest run I’d completed prior to race day was nineteen miles, which I considered to be close enough. I knew the race would be tough as I’d be stepping in to the unknown, but I felt confident I was running well.
It felt good to be part of something as big as the London marathon and I’d drummed up some sponsorship to help with the motivation. I’d chosen the County Air Ambulance as my charity, and managed to raise a good enough sum of money from friends, family and work colleagues. I travelled down to London the day before to pick up my race bag from the event fair. This was an event in itself. There were hundreds of exhibitors and loads of activities going on to support the race. It really was an impressive set up. After registering and collecting my bag of goodies I headed to a friend’s house to relax and carb load with the customary pre-race pasta. I went to bed feeling nervous but excited.
It was an early start to get the bus to the appropriate point with the thousands of other competitors making their way across London. The weather was great. It was dry and sunny, with the usual early morning chill of April. Keeping warm and hydrated was the priority before the start, although it’s a fine balance between drinking and needing the toilet every 5 minutes particularly when you’re nervous. The amount of people taking a leak was ridiculous, there were some sights I didn’t really want to see as people avoided the portaloo queues.
It seemed to take forever, but eventually everyone was lined up and the start gun fired. Due to the amount of people it took a few minutes to get over the start line, and I was off. It’s hard not to get carried away in these events, and do the sensible thing by running at your own pace. I definitely went a little bit faster than I intended to for the first few miles. A fatal error. With the temperature creeping up and my adrenaline kicking in, the slightly faster pace started to take it’s toll at eleven miles. I felt a slight twinge of cramp in my right calf, and instantly knew this was going to be a problem. I started taking extra fluid on board at each drinks station, combining water and energy drinks but the damage had already been done. Cramp was here to stay.
The atmosphere was incredible the whole way round. From the very start there were crowds lining the streets, shouting support. Reading that it was a good idea to put your name on the t-shirt so that people could shout your name as you went past, I’d put my nickname, Boney, on mine. (I’d ended up with this nickname by default when a swimming club coach called my brother it, and it didn’t stick. Not really sure why…Stoney, Boney…but I do know it has nothing to do with being thin, although I am and it is highly appropriate). Having my name visible to all worked great in the first half of the race when things were going well. Shouts of encouragement of ‘go Boney’ (or Bonnie as one person called me) were replaced by ‘stop walking Boney!’ when my legs were cramping like mad. I took to moving away from the side of the road to the middle of the pack to avoid the shouts.
After the eleven mile point the twinges in my calves became more frequent and it didn’t take long before my legs started properly cramping. I stopped a few times to stretch and try and shake it out, but the effect would only be shortlived. Before the race I had also heard about the notorious cobbled section that can affect your running. On entering the cobbled streets I promptly fell over, embarrassingly incurring shouts of ‘man down, man down’. Picking myself up, I got going again and fell over a few metres later. This was not turning out to be a good day. By the time I got to the nineteen mile mark and met up with my mates that had come along to cheer me on, I was in all sorts of trouble. ‘I’m in bits’ I spluttered when I saw them. Rob, who had done a marathon previously, just pushed me away and told me to keep going. Tough love, but to be fair he knew there was no point giving sympathy with 7 miles left to go.
The cramp got worse along the Embankment and I was reduced to a slow jog. This culminated in me cramping up in both calves and quads, making me fall backwards like a frozen corpse on to the floor in agony. Two St Johns Ambulance volunteers ambled over and enquired if I was alright. ‘Can you give me some salt tables, or pain killers? I’m cramping like hell’ I squealed. ‘Sorry love, we can’t give you anything like that. Would you like a massage or a boiled sweet?’ came the reply. Realising that this was the best I was going to get I accepted the offer and they did their best to get me back on my feet. Clearly the boiled sweet was about as useful as a chocolate teapot, but at least it had sugar. I was not only cramping in my legs, it seemed like my whole body wanted to join in. I even got cramp in my ear for god’s sake! I didn’t even think that was possible.
I was eventually helped to my feet and got a gentle round of slow-hand-clap, empathetic applause from the people who had clearly been watching my cramp nightmare unfold. Waving feebly and smiling with a grimace I hobbled away to try and finish the final few miles. A combination of walking and slow jogging saw me get past Buckingham Palace and down the Mall to the finish line. I’ve never been as happy to finish anything in my life. I finished in 4 hours and 31 minutes, a lot slower than I had originally hoped. However, marathons are not exactly intended to be easy so I’m still proud that I completed it. I can’t recall getting overtaken by a rhino or a womble, so it could have been worse.
For years I tried to re-enter the London Marathon to atone for my crampathon, but never got accepted in to the ballot again and couldn’t face committing to raising thousands for a charity place. It’s probably a good thing. And anyway, clearly marathon running was not going to be an Olympic wildcard. Another one knocked off the list.