Virgin Money London Marathon: all my life was about January - April 2014.

I didn't sleep for the past three nights, maybe more. Kids at Christmas are not nonchalant, but just not arsed in comparison to me braced for this moment. I'd started to believe my own hype. What a knobber. 

My kit was laid out early Saturday afternoon. Having been re-arranged from Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. On Wednesday, I actually got to play twice as I collected my number from the Expo and caught up with Keith, a fellow runner I'd met at the Meet the Experts event. We had a little hug, pretended not to feel like we were the most important people in the history of athletics and overspent on foam rollers and skin-tight Lycra. Money readily parted with, home I went to lay out my race vest and shorts now with the addition of my badge of honour: 35983. Hopefully this was not be a suggestion of my finishing position. 

Loaded with pasta, crisps, bread, rice and sweet potatoes, my muscular thighs developed a lardy coating I hadn't known for four months. My trim waist relaxed into a sloppy half-tyre. I tried on my outfit yet again and wondered if even my socks no longer fitted. Saturday I wanted to pace and pace and pace, but when you have 40,000 steps ahead of you the next day, you really do need to give your feet every break you can. I put myself to bed after Casualty and lay there knowing sleep would be harder to reach than that finish line. The three hours sleep I mustered was a bonus and a surprise. 

The morning was serene, easy, calm. When you've thought about doing something so, so many times, you can pretty much coast through the actual event on autopilot. I did make a few mistakes. My fear of not being able to eat for four hours, a fear that hit home very, very early on while setting the times for my Facebook invite (and those marketing applications get turned down because I don't know how to promote on social media?!), convinced me that two breakfasts was a marvellous idea. It's not. As much as dippy egg and soldiers felt like the indulgent snack a hardcore runner deserves, and as much as porridge, banana and chia seeds is the potent fuel a hardcore runner should be able to rely on, neither of these things are good combined with downing gel after gel after gel, jiggling them all around over 26.2 miles and resolutely refusing to stop to go to the toilet until you've crossed the finish line. Stomachs can bruise, it turned out. 

Walking down to the tube was an amusing glimpse of my past life: sloshed revellers swilling their white plastic cups in cheers to an approaching bus, pilled up clubbers with giveaway pupils laughing at my PE kit, splatters of kebab puked by bins. Was I really ever part of this? The superfit, highly trained, athletically-minded me cast a wry smile, confident these days were behind me (ah ha ha). 

Sunday morning tube journeys to races always catch me out. The hustle and bustle of a Sunday morning is never something I expect. My brain hasn't bothered to compute how the many worker bees needed to maintain a city the size of London get into place for me to browse their shops and snack on their treats when I finally loaf into town in the afternoon. But this Sunday was peak time commuter chaos. Except, everyone was buzzing. The worker bees were outnumbers by tortoises and hares with red plastic sacks of Vaseline, flip flops and gels slung over their shoulders. Eyeing each others' kit, the trainer envy in the carriage was palpable. 

I exchanged a few excited words with another runner opposite me. We'd been gazing around the train and continually catching each other's eye, but I got off the train before her. My escalator madness still an issue, even on a day like this. I thought I'd planned out my route carefully, but London Bridge presented me with a terrifying peak that I was just not sure I could master and so I had to ask a kindly couple of runners to chat and distract me from my own insane fear. They did the job well and we parted with just the right amount of British awkwardness, only to meet each other again on two separate, but far shorter escalators about three minutes later. The phobia gets cocky on little ones like this, so I strolled up like a local and dashed away their faux-concerned looks with a dismissive hand. 

The overground was jammed full of runners crammed into compression gear and topped off with bin bags. A few quelled their nerves by checking and rechecking which was the best stop for their coloured pen. I got chatting to a girl about her choice of sleeves on a seemingly warm day and she shared her unexpected pregnancy and its impact on her temperatures. Some of us poured out at Greenwich, some stayed on for the elite start in Blackheath. I followed Elvis and his mate through the streets of Greenwich and up the hill towards the baggage lorries. In good spirits, I chatted to anyone and everyone I could. This was My Day.

Having decided not to run with my phone (the meeting point was arranged, maps emailed out several times over, supporters' numbers shared with other supporters, my Garmin set to track and pace me and I had been assured I would not need music to get me round - I did, thanks people who don't have a bloody clue about me but act like you know everything about the ruddy marathon!), I had an hour to kill without my usual security blanket. I followed my usual ritual of spending every spare second in a toilet queue, just in case, and chatted to the runners around me. We were all in the same boat and brimmed with excitement, the opportunity to witter on to like-minded strangers was not to be missed. I watched the elite ladies' race start with a lady runner from Cambridge, both of us bowed down in awe at the speed these women were destined to complete in. I still wish I'd got enough detail about this woman to find out how she got on after. There was a lot of that, but she stood out particularly. 

Together we agreed we may as well head to our pens and wished each other well. A selfie and a hug seemed both appropriate and really, really not appropriate. At least my stashed phone took the selfie decision out of my hands. I went into my pen and my usual nerves tricked me into thinking I needed a wee. I'd run that off, I always do.  

I felt very confident at the start. Adrenaline had banished any aches and pains and I did what I'd been advised to do and trusted my training. Having made a poor girl at the start cry by explaining why I'd got a photo of Mum pinned to my back and chosen to run for Cancer Research UK, I set off with the same poor, crying girl answering a call on her mobile and explaining she 'couldn't speak as she was running the marathon'! I started out far quicker than I'd expected to: we ran from the off, not the logjammed standstill I'd been warned about, but an enjoyably comfortable pace, and I spent the first 7 or so miles looking out for people I know - and spotted a few! Assaf's smiling face was head and shoulders above the other drinkers at the pub he'd positioned himself at, so it was easy to smile and wave. Claire, Elios and Yuki were not so easy to spot, even with their marvellous homemade banner (from old socks, but not old pants, I was assured). 

My Garmin didn't pick up a signal so I had to ditch the 3.45 plan I'd optimistically programmed into it, but I made friends with a guy called Chris in the pen and he was aiming for a similar time to me so we ran together for the first 11 miles. We ran a few miles behind an annoying man called Dave who was wearing a blue afro wig, 15 blue balloons and some very small blue pants. He got all the cheers and attention, leaving me feeling a little neglected (and a bit sick of the sight of his arse), but at least I had Chris to grumble to and tell me my pace and roughly when I should take a gel. Then I lost him, foolishly accepted a slice of orange, which gave me a stitch and so took the opportunity to go to the loo as I'd been needing a wee since 9.41am! It was nice and kind of surprising to gormless me to be ushered to the front of the queue by the waiting spectator!

I did carry on running, but without Chris for moral support. I don't think it dented my time too much (Chris finished 3 minutes ahead of me, it turns out - about the amount of time I lost in the loo, but I gained comfort and that was priceless), the bottlenecks did that far more damage. People were everywhere! Somehow, I hadn't expected the roads to be so busy, despite knowing I was one of 36,000 runners. I tried to stick to the professional athletes' marker (a triple blue line marking out 26.2 miles - deviation adds distance and I really didn't want to go any further than I had to). Keeping an eye on that, the runner in front (I bounced off a few before I mastered this) and where we were going meant at least 10 miles had slipped by without me noticing and I didn't really feel settled down for several miles more. We bottlenecked around mile 16 and I was generally relieved to have a small break from running. I was almost feeling bored and very much missing my music. There were runners bloody everywhere. Good god, what did a woman have to do to get some space?!?

I'd also noticed that my shorts were rubbing. I'd trained in these shorts, I knew not to wear anything new on the day, but I hadn't expected my carb-loading to make me swell up so much. I'd watched the extended green-gloved palms of St John's volunteers whizz past mile after mile. At first wondering what they were offering, then realising I should have accepted some, until I'd had to suffer the indignity of scooping Vaseline from the proffered blob on a St John's hand and slapped it between my legs. I'd missed the hands at mile 16, only taken a fraction of what I needed at mile 17 and was beyond caring if the world's handsomest man watched me bend my knees and wipe the gelatinous goo under my short shorts at mile 19. I ran on, chaffed raw, but relieved. After 20 miles I got number blindness and there was a small psychological battle when I was imagining I'd run 22, then saw 22 looming, and so on. The Blackfriars underpass was horrible: trapped inside a white rectangular tunnel with pale, puking men littering the sides and horrible house music pumping through every cell of my body. I also needed the loo again. The last four miles were a race for a comfort break, but the underpass accentuated every negative sensation in my being. If I came close to crying it was there. I ran faster just to get out.

I'd started out hoping I'd get 3.45, but by this point I was relieved at the idea of not having to do it again next year by not qualifying as good for age. My socks felt too hot and bunched around my tender toes and my feet were sweaty and sore, so I ran on telling myself the sooner I finished, the sooner I could take them off. It was all about getting to the finish, the loo and my flip flops as soon as was humanly possible.

The clock was very close to 4 hours coming up to the last 600 metres, it really was going to be a close call (Garmin-less, I was relying on the official clocks and they were edging closer to 4 hours all the time) and, although I didn't feel like I could push myself much faster, it prevented me from stopping. Who the hell would want to drag that experience out for any longer than it needed to be? My insides hurt, my outsides hurt. My toes were clawing at my trainers to get out, the gels were doing something similar to my guts, my puffy thighs were chaffing at my shorts. Tiredness wasn't my problem. Every other thing was. 

The longer I ran, the sooner it was over, be that over or under 4 hours. (But I really, really, really wanted to achieve a sub-4 hours. So much!) I really wasn't sure I'd make it and as I could see the finish line the clock passed 4 hours - I was about 100 metres away. I ran over the finish line at 4.00.55. I was a tiny bit gutted, but mainly too tired to care. I felt horribly sick and crossing that finish line flicked a switch. Seconds ago I'd been running at a decent pace; suddenly taking a single step was near beyond me. My legs had almost solidified. That calf problem I'd been resting had kept a polite silence during the race, but not now. Now they were going to primal scream and bang tin drums along my nerves to announce their disdainful presence.

I received my goodie bag and forced myself to eat the freebie apple so I'd have enough energy to lift my concrete limbs up the small step into a portaloo. While I chomped, I got chatting to some young guys about lacking the energy for niceties and we swore about how fucking hard it was and I swore more about not breaking 4 hours. They assured me that that was not my real time: I hadn't crossed the start line at 10am on the dot. I had forgotten this precious little tit-bit. When I got my bag out of the truck, still totally unaware of my time or how I would ever find it out and not all that bothered if I never did, texts informed me that I'd managed 3.53.07! My friends had been tracking my progress and knew all about my performance - and knew far more than I did. It was weird, but a great relief that people knew my time before I did and I didn't have to wait to find out - or, more importantly, think about how to find out. And that people had cared enough to track my progress. And that I'd cracked 4 hours!!! Thank god. To have done all that and wind up feeling disappointed would have been ridiculous.

The whole day was immense.

If you're interested in my splits you can look here:

http://results-2014.virginmoneylondonmarathon.com/2014/?pid=tracking

My number was 35983.

xzx