01 May OUR FABULOUS FIVE TAKE ON THE LONDON MARATHON
Five fabulous club members took part in the London Marathon on 27th April braving hot temperatures to raise money for charity or simply to complete the challenge. Congratulations to all five. Here are their stories…
Gwyneth Edwards 6:03:33
Yay I’m now a world record holder!
One of the 56,640 finishers of the biggest marathon ever held! Not my fastest time given the heat and twisting my leg on a discarded water bottle at around 8 miles. I also had to stop at 12 miles to take off my compression leg sleeves as was so hot but I dug in to get to the finish line!
I’m so very grateful to all kind sponsors amount raised to date is £2576! Thank you to Ludlow Runners for getting me back into running with the Walk to Run programme and for all the fun times with the club! I think I’m now cured of marathon running.
Alex Logan 2:45:54
It was such a lovely sunny day in London for this year’s marathon. I ran it last year, messed up the fuelling and found what the dreaded wall is like (not somewhere I ever want to go again!).
I took a couple of cans of beer having not had any since New Year, sadly I had to jog to get a train and both exploded so I ran the marathon stinking of beer! I took 40g carb gels every 25 minutes this time and all was well, some fatigue from mile 21 and the worrying onset of quad cramps fortunately only in the last mile. It’s just an amazing race as it’s so big it needs to be seen to be believed.
A 2 minute 8 seconds pb 2:45.54 and Guinness world record holder (along with the c 55,000 other finishers!).
I ran it for a local conservation charity Caring for God’s Acre hence lack of blue/gold vest, to raise funds and awareness for wildlife conservation and environmental awareness. Well done everyone who ran a marathon at the weekend.
Karen Thompson 5:27:33
Wow! What a day Sunday was……… What an experience!
26.2 miles. And I loved every minute of them. Well, most of them.
The runners, the crowd, the sights. All amazing. And a huge shout out to all the volunteers.
Hey, London Marathon. I’ll be back..
Thank you so much to everyone that sponsored me. It is very much appreciated by both me and Marir Curie UK.
Editor’s note: Karen ran the most amazing split times which is incredible in the heat!
Sarah Blackwell 3:58:09.
“I ran the London Marathon yesterday with the club place finishing in 3:58:09.
It was hot and hard but I’m very pleased to have been lucky enough to have been a part of it and to have experienced it all.
I find making training nights difficult but wanted to thank the club for giving me this opportunity.
Nick Young 5:50:23
Having scratched a London Marathon off my bucket list last year and raising over £6,000 for Hands Together Ludlow I had no intention of entering another marathon. However, at 70 years of age I am beginning to lose old friends to cancer. In their memory I felt I could use the fundraising capability of a London Marathon entry just one more time to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support. Macmillan provides nursing care at home for those patients with terminal cancer to the very end along with support and comfort to their family members. People have been amazingly generous with money and time. Indeed Sue and Jane organised a coffee morning at Caynham that raised £470 in just a couple of hours!
Without doubt the deterrent of another entry is the tyranny of training time required especially as most is in winter months when it is often dark with inclement weather. I offer my deepest respect and admiration to elite runners whose efforts are rightly targeted at completing the marathon in their very best time but I was just a ‘fun-runner’ with my sense of achievement being derived from raising money for my chosen charity.
Reaching Tower Bridge around the halfway point in about 2.5 hours – I thought a good finish perhaps? However I’d predicted my time as 5.5 to 6 hours on my entry form and this meant my start time was at 11:10 am in one of the last waves. By 1:00 pm the temperature had climbed to 22 º C; I simply had to slow down. Indeed it was sad to see so many fellow runners either withdrawing or even collapsing due to the conditions. That said marshalling and first aid support were exemplar.
I finally trotted down the Mall for a finish in 5 hours 50 minutes after covering the 26.2 miles. (If there ever is a next time then I’ll use my OAP bus pass instead….;-)
My fund is currently at £7,380 with a couple of promises yet to come in and I sincerely thank all who have contributed.