Resurrecting The Blog With A Report On London Marathon 2015

So... there are many reasons that I did not keep the blog up to speed last year but, as you will see in a a few posts time, I have a huge challenge in 2016 and I will make a big effort to blog at least once a week from now onwards! 2016 is going to be an exciting but tough year for me and it will be nice to share that journey with you all on this blog.

Back to 2015, I stopped posting on the day of the London Marathon and I can't remember why as I had a great race. I think a bit of a run down on the race would be a good place to start so here goes:

  London Marathon is a great event but it is the people of London that make it the best race in the world not the organisers, as I said back in April we had a hard time of it at the race briefing with officials being over zealous with the gaffer tape and over protective of the race numbers. If only they were so efficient on race day morning, for the second year running all staff disappeared when it came to getting all the athletes on the bus. It's standard practice at other races, like the Great Run series, for the staff to help us on the bus one at a time and then wheel the day chair off to put in a van. At London as soon as this job needs doing the staff disappear and there is no van for the day chairs so we have to wheel onto the bus and then transfer onto a seat and then my dad carries all the chairs to the back of the bus. My dad has two fractured vertebrae so the fact that the paid staff all vanish really angers me. Anyhow, my sister, Ugly and her boyfriend arrived just in time to catch the bus to the start with the athletes - it was great to see her there as she had never seen me in a proper race before.

Myself and the old man, Nigel Gotts, just before I start my warm up. 

Myself with Ugly and her boyfriend.

    Once at the start and unloaded we are finally reunited with our race chairs that had been took off us at the race brief. We spend time pumping tyres and checking all the bolts etc are tight and then we have to say goodbye to family and get out on the road to warm up. The warm up area is a stretch of road around 300m long. This year the race was doubling up as the World Championship Marathon so the field was much bigger than normal with 77 wheelchair athletes and quite a few amputee runners and blind runners. I'm not sure having everyone warm up on the same stretch of road was the wisest plan but fortunately there were no crashes.
  On the start line you could see there were some really nervous faces, including mine! I will probably never get to compete in a world championship race again and although I knew full well that I wouldn't be anywhere near the leaders I still wanted to do something that I could be proud of. The organisers weren't helping the nerves by playing the sound of a heartbeat as we sat on the start line! I quite like to be nervous before a race as it seems to help my performance so I quite liked it! Once the gun went there was an epic sprint, I found myself just a fraction behind the leading group but I couldn't quite get on the back and draft them so I soon tired and got overtook by a few friends including Callum Hall who tried to let me draft him but he soon dropped me. About a mile in to the race I was starting to feel better and caught a nice group which included my club mates Justin Levene and John Smith. I drafted them for a short while to allow my arms to recover before I did my stint at the front of the group. Only that didn't happen - we got to a corner and Justin slowed right down to 4mph to take it! Haha! I rammed him good'n'proper! not on purpose but because I had no idea anyone would break for such an easy corner. The group splintered into individuals and pairs at this point which is a real shame. Somewhere in the next 3 miles I passed Callum again but I completely missed him, I only found out I had beaten him when I finished. I felt bad because he had let me draft - I would always do the same for him but this time I didn't offer because I just didn't see him.
  My dad, our Ugly and her fella were at the 10km mark and seeing them gave me a real boost, I love that part of the course because there are lots of bands playing and large crowds around the Cutty Sark. I got in a bit of a battle with Mark Telford at this point and after a few miles of him drafting me I let my frustration overflow and told him to "Do some bloody Work". Each time I told him to do some work I felt that he was going to the front and slowing the pace so I would take over again. We ended up having a bit of a barney mid race. oops. I pushed with Shelly Woods for quite a while but she crashed at the point we have to mount the curb and not long after she ended up with a puncture and pulled out. I Saw my family again at around this point which was another huge boost as I was starting to hurt.

A great photo taken by Shane Delport during the London Marathon, check out his other work on Facebook using the link on the links page. 

  The rest of the race was a solo push which was incredibly tough mentally but I kept on giving it everything I could. I was trying to do sums in my head about my finishing time but the fatigue made it difficult. I really hate the last 2 miles at London, even though the crowds are huge I just can't seem to lift my game along the embankment. I missed my family at this point but they saw me, I did hear the Weir Archer crew all shout me on as I turned  on to Birdcage Walk. it was only at this point I realised I was on for a huge PB. I went from 1:59:51 to 1:54:59 so very nearly 5 min faster! I was pretty chuffed to finish inside the top 30 in a World Championship event, even more chuffed when I got a bit of prize money for finishing high up in the British rankings. It wasn't much but it's nice to get a bit of recognition.

My race stats for London Marathon 2015.

After the post race analysis with all the athletes, friends and family we were bussed back to the hotel, myself and my dad got showered and changed and headed out to get a pint and a giant pancake! I'd earned it! I really enjoyed the pint and giant pancake but started to feel rough very quickly so we headed back to the hotel.

Post race pint and pancake!

I had a nap at the hotel and woke up to find my arms had stuck to the bedsheets, I had taken a very thin layer of skin off my bicep area on both arms and thought nothing of it. It's fairly normal to lose a bit of skin on the arms in wheelchair athletics and these wounds hadn't even bled. When I woke up after my nap just a few hours after the race there was a thick green puss coming from the wounds, it turns out it was a nasty infection i had picked up from my tyres rubbing on the wounds during the race. I had to spend two weeks on antibiotics and have my dressings changed everyday for 10 days at my local Health Centre. This is probably why I felt so rough after just one pint. That said, I wouldn't mind feeling like that after every marathon as long as I whacked out a 5 min PB each time!

My smelly wound!