Good luck to all FLMers

[MickCollins]

A mile and a bit to go, and 19 or so minutes to break five hours. To cut a long story short, it took 14 of those available minutes to get to the end, and what I’d spent months imagining to be, if not glorious, then at least an emotional ending. And yet, it wasn’t. I ran through the line in 4 hours and 55 minutes, and within half anhour found myself on a train back home, tired and confused as to exactly how I should feel.

[SIZE=3]I couldn’t have finished without Colin’s help, and he said the same about me, and hopefully we both meant it. I think we did. I hugged the family like we’d been apart for years when I saw them, 20 minutes later, and understood what people mean when they say that the marathon changes you forever.
I under-estimated it. Under-estimated what it can do to you, how many tricks its got up its sleeve, and how hard it will try to get you. You’ve got to avoid every blow it aims at you, and it only has to get lucky once. It’s a bastard of an opponent, and if I want to give it a decent scrap, I need to learn from all the mistakes I made this time around.
So, a day of saying I’ll never run again, a few days of beer and pizza, both off the menu since new year, and now I want to get back after it. I might not be a very good one, but I’m a marathon runner now, and for all the aches and pains, that’s something I’m proud of. Now, I’ve just got to become a faster marathon runner. Unearthing a previously happily slumbering competitive spirit might yet entail rather a lot of hard work…
Oh, and if anyone doubted the wisdom of giving London
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