London Marathon

2 weeks after London and starting to feel a bit better after a lot of kicking myself for messing up a such a good chance of a good marathon.

I had an almost perfect build up to the London Marathon with no injuries and only one illness set back in the early stages of marathon preparation (January).  Deciding to stick to just running so bike work was the occasional 45 min spin on the turbo as a recovery session and ticking over with my swimming.  Mileage progressed up nicely with my weekly long easy run becoming 8-10s per km quicker than my previous marathon build at the same effort.  10k paced sessions quicker and marathon paced sessions indicating a 2.40-2.42 marathon was on the cards.

So  how did I end up running a very disappointing 2.50?

One very simple reason - I started off way too fast.  After much lecturing by my coach (Dave) and also from Dan about not starting off fast as I had done in the Wilmslow Half Marathon I ran 18 mins dead for the first 5k.  This was about 1 min 30 quicker than I wanted to start off and its amazing how just a little too fast here and it affects you tenfold in the last 4-5 miles.

I tried to slow down a bit and got to 10k in just under 37 mins - still too fast though.  Half way was good - 1 hour 21.  At 20 miles I was on for 2 hours 43 so although I was hoping for 2 hours 42 I was quite pleased.  Just a mile later and it was a very different story.  I was slowing down drastically and could do nothing about it.  I lost 7 mins in the final 5 miles - gutted.  

I finished feeling so disappointed in myself as I know I'm better than that and it was my own stupid fault.  Over four months of very focussed training and for that.  I can't even think about another marathon now.  My focus now for the spring/summer will be to get my 10k time down and really practice racing with negative splits.  All my races, no matter what distance, I seem to start off too fast so I think I need to learn to start slower and hopefully when I decide to do another marathon (probably next spring) I will put this into practice!