From Geoff Howard…
A bit rusty regarding all things marathon, but I had a go at achieving a ‘good for age’ London Marathon qualifying time on Sunday at Kempton Park along with only 73 others. A somewhat idiosyncratic eight lap course, I’d planned to run at 35mins/lap pace giving 4h 40s (25mins within the target time). As it turned out, 30m/lap proved comfortable early on but with the inevitable nagging doubt about it being too quick. Up to the six lap, three quarter, mark things felt fine but in lap seven my legs made it very clear they took a dim view of being asked to go way beyond their usual outings resulting in something of a ‘go slow’ and a 34m lap. Faced with an all out strike on the last lap we came to a compromise involving occasional ‘lamp post distanced’ walks. These worked wonders, actually diminishing towards the end, occasioning a 41min finale finishing 43rd in 4h 14m 52s – so job done. No clubs were given in the results but first home was v40 Neil Pollard in 2h 42m 18s and second was first lady Gaby Reynolds 2h 49m 59s.