We did it!!

On Sunday, I ran the London Marathon! We got up at some excruciatingly early time of the morning and set off for Greenwich Park. The atmosphere on the train was one of trepidation and excitement, and more than once I wanted to scream "Let me off, there's been some mistake, I can't do a marathon!" When we arrived in the park, we discovered that the charity meeting point was inside a Red Start runners only area, which meant I couldn't get in, being a Blue Start person. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending how you look at it), the Hearing Dogs staff and photographer couldn't get in either, so all the Red Start people had to come out again for photos.

After the pictures, James and I went our separate ways to the Red and Blue Starts, respectively, and I went through the usual race day rigmarole of queueing for the loo, dropping my bag onto the baggage truck and listening to the truly appalling PA announcements, which appeared to be being made by a chap who had lost his job at a local radio station (they couldn't possibly still be employing him - Mara Yamauchi (mah-rah ya-ma-oo-chee) was rechristened Maria Yamorshi and I don't think he realised that there had been so much hype about her ash-cloud hampered journey to the start line that she had become quite famous even outside running circles and so his mispronunciation was cringeworthy in the extreme).

It only took me about 10 minutes to get over the start line, even though I was starting pretty much from the back of the pack. The first thing to strike me on the run was the amazing crowd support. People had come out in their thousands to watch. You often see on the television that the areas around the main sights are thronged with spectators, but the really impressive crowds were rather those people who had come out of their houses to line the route along the mainly residential stretches. The first really loud cheers came from a large Sikh community in Woolwich, who had a few stereos blaring with Indian music and everyone from tiny babies to grannies screaming at people to keep running. All the way round, the crowds were really generous - there were so many people who had gone to the trouble of buying jelly babies and other sweeties, or making cakes and biscuits, for the runners to take; just having a cheering crowd is great, but that extra little bit of effort is actually quite moving. I also had a great time giving "high fives" to all the kids that were lining the route; the only problem was, I realised, that I was speeding up to run past them and going well ahead of my scheduled pace as a result, which I paid for later.

At this point, it is worth mentioning my "three things I'm extremely glad I did" - the first is wearing my sunglasses. I had ummed and ahhed about whether to wear them for quite a long time - the weather had been forecast to be hot and fairly sunny, but then it was really cloudy and raining on Sunday morning, so I thought perhaps I wouldn't need them. I was persuaded otherwise and was glad I listened! The second thing is having my name on my running vest. It had taken me and James some time to iron the letters on (the Hearing Dogs logo had stuck to the iron, my name was too long to fit in the space and my "H" didn't want to stick) but we got there in the end and to have people shouting out your name as you run past them is an incredible boost. The third thing I was glad of is that I wore my Hearing Dogs ears. They were just a couple of flaps of brown fur fabric attached to an alice band, but they gave people something to notice and cheer about ("Nice ears!") and, bizarrely, made a pretty good towel for wiping my brow and my shades.

To be honest, I can't remember all that much about the rest of the race. I remember bumping into another Hearing Dogs runner, Lorna, who informed me that she had passed James at mile 2; she and I ran round the Cutty Sark together and then she sped off into the distance. I remember running around Rotherhithe with Nadia Sawalha and her mate Julia (not her sister of the same name). Nadia is without a doubt one of the funniest women I have ever met - she had everyone in stitches and was asking the supporters for vodka and tonic at every pub we passed. I remember running across Tower Bridge. Apparently I was on the television at this point, if anyone was watching via the red button. One of the roving reporters was interviewing a lady who was probably a good twice my age, maybe two and a half times, and I grinned and waved in the background. I got around the docklands (the darkest moment of the marathon for me - not many supporters and a seemingly never-ending winding route - they fit about six or seven miles into a relatively small corner of London) with my two new Hearing Dogs buddies, Esther and Hayley, who I had bumped into along the way, and then went back down the Highway in Wapping to see my friends at the Fetchpoint. The Fetchpoint, to the uninitiated, is the cheering HQ of the "Fetch Everyone" website, which is the website that James and I use to log our training and talk with like-minded people about running related things. I had pre-ordered a carbohydrate gel and some jelly babies from my support team, but when I got there I found myself completely unable to talk. I hadn't realised until that moment that my brain had left the building, but I had lost it altogether. I managed a vague "Ugh" and the lady known on the website as "B-Lass" came to the rescue by realising who I was and handing my a bag with my name on it. The lady known as "Enthusiastic!", realising I had gone completely ga-ga, asked "do you think she needs a biscuit?" - oh yes, I needed a biscuit! A few minutes later, after I had consumed my spoils from the Fetchpoint, my mind began to clear and I noticed I wasn't all that far from the finish. I think it was at this point that I realised that I was actually going to finish the race. Another mile or so down the road, I passed the cheerpoint for Hearing Dogs, where my friends Farah, Hervé and Antoine were stationed - seeing them and getting a hug was all I needed for the final push to the Mall and to cross the finish line in floods of tears (another reason why the shades were a good idea!) My time was 6:42:56 - a bit longer than I had hoped for, but my intention was always just to get round (and I beat Jordan's time from last year, so that's OK). And yes, I beat James.

After the race, we went to the reception held by Hearing Dogs for all their runners. This picture is of a very broken me and James with our medals and a Hearing Dog called Fern.



Five days later, I'm still recovering. I've done something to my foot, but I don't think it's life-threatening, and I have bruises from Wednesday's sports massage (apparently I have a very high pain threshold, but unfortunately I bruise really easily). Now, being able to reflect upon what I have achieved, not just on Sunday but also over the last six months (I've just done a quick calculation and I ran 350 miles, including the race!), I think it is one of the hardest things I've ever done. I'm not sure that I'm planning to do another marathon in the near future, but I'll never say never....

Now it's time to say a few thank yous. The first and biggest has to be to everyone who has sponsored us - your pledges and donations were the reason for my hauling myself around the course. Every time I thought I couldn't do it, in training or in the race, I would think of the amount of money we were raising for Hearing Dogs and the amount of good it would do. I'd like to thank everyone who sent us good luck wishes, asked us about our training and generally supported us along the way - we had messages from Cape Town and California and from Ohio and Swansea and pretty much everywhere in between. Thanks also to those people who cheered us on at the race, whether in person or by watching it on the telly - it really made a difference to feel that people were behind us all the way.

If you haven't quite got around to sponsoring us (or you wanted to wait to see if we'd finish!), it's not too late to make a donation. Our fundraising page at http://www.justgiving.com/bbjamarathon will be open to take your cash for a while yet. If you made a pledge to give us money on completing the race (i.e. via a paper sponsor form or by e-mailing me), then I will be in touch shortly to arrange how I can extract the cash from you!!

Once again, a massive thank you to everyone for your support - we couldn't have done it without you!