I
“persuaded” my good friend Leonie Madigan to join me for the 2009 event. She
would probably use a different word to “persuade” though!
I knew I wanted to run for CRY again and after explaining
why and what CRY are all about, Leonie was on board. So come the morning of
April 26th, there we were at Greenwich talking complete rubbish
and fidgeting constantly.
Leonie kept giving me strange looks and mumbling
something about “who had got her into this” but before I had time to defend
myself we were off.
The 2007 marathon was very hot, record temperatures in
fact. I had maintained to Leonie there was no way that would happen again. I
was right about it not being a record temperature year, but 20.9 degrees was
hot enough especially when most of our training had been done in wind and
rain!
The first 13 miles passed in a flash. We overtook Katie
Price and Peter Andre at 11 miles and despite my best efforts, they didn’t
seem keen on running with us for some reason!
All was going remarkably well until we got to around 18
miles. Leonie’s beaming face turned to one of agony. It transpired
afterwards she had pulled a groin muscle, but as the determined woman she
is, she kept on going.
At
19 miles, I felt a rather unpleasant popping sensation somewhere in my right
trainer followed by a warm sensation. I had no idea what was going on in the
depths of that running shoe, but something wasn’t quite right.
We had seen our various supporters ranging from baby
Harry (3 weeks old) to Leonie’s mum Vera and sister, Vivienne over from
Ireland at 14 miles, so amongst the pain, we kept reminding ourselves of how
proud they looked of us and what a good cause we were putting ourselves
through this for.
We had approximately 15 supporters and saw them all at
various stages.
We really wanted to finish in under 5 hours and managed 5
hours and 9 minutes in the end. I beat my 2007 time by 4 minutes, so was
pleased.
Considering a pulled groin muscle and what turned out to
be a gruesome blister attached to my toenail which had popped at 19 miles
and hips that felt they weren’t attached to our bodies anymore, I think we
did well to run the whole thing and not stop at all.
After
the race, I went back to the CRY hotel (poor Leonie needed to get straight
home before her groin seized up completely) and on the way in the mini bus
met the most amazing people all with stories of lost relatives and friends
and it just confirmed to me that every penny we had raised was for an
incredible cause.
Thank you to the lovely lady who massaged my legs, sorry
again that she had to look at those disgusting blisters and it was so nice
to finally meet Rebecca Zouvani, whom I had spoken to and emailed on many
occasions, but had never met in person.
Would we do it again? Pulled groin muscle, the now
missing toenail and other aches and pains? It would be madness to do it
again, but that elusive 5 hour target keeps popping back into our minds.
We signed up for the 2010 ballot as soon as we could!!!!
