26.2 Miles

Firstly, thank you SO SO SO much to everyone who has sponsored me in support of SpecialEffect.
Thanks to us all they now have an extra £400 they wouldn't have had otherwise.
And there is still time to sponsor me of course

I did it.

It took me 6hrs 26 minutes to get round.

I joined up at the start with the 5hr30min 'bus' (the groups were called buses, and leaving a group was referred to as 'falling off the bus') The first 8 or so miles were comfortable, with me falling into a good rhythm. 

The view down a mixed direction straight

I saw my dad at around mile 10 which was a total surprise, and very pleasant!, and then again at the return at mile 16. Where I then told him to meet me at the finish line. This was a total shock as I didn't know he was coming.

At mile 16-17ish (my memory is hazy and my runkeeper completely failed to save interval data) my knees seized up, causing me to nearly tip over. Luckily I managed to keep going, but told the 5hr30 bus that I wasn't going to make it with them, and I let them speed off without me.

This is where things got really hard, for the next mile or two I would recover enough that I felt like I could run, but a 2-3 minute burst brought the cramps back to my knees. I was however determined to finish, so I picked up a fast walking pace, and got going!

Around the time I felt like I could actually start running for real, I caught up with a running mate from the bus, she looked worse for wear, and given I had lost any chance of getting an amazing time anyway I decided that if I was going to finish, so was she!

We walked through the next 6-7 miles together, her struggling at times, and me also internally more than externally. I felt I needed to be a source of strength for her. Around mile 22 her fiance turned up, so I could leave them to their own devices more, but I had promised her, "You will finish ahead of me, or with me." when I caught up with her originally

Some 5:30 bus people who fell off

At around mile 23 my friend Grew turned up walking towards me and walked the last 3 to 26 miles with me. (He was also graciously the guy who let me sleep in his living room and got me to the start line in the morning! Thanks man!)

We came down the main straight back towards Old Trafford and the finish corner, and she just started running, that inevitable last burst of energy you get when finishing a race. We ran round that corner together and across the line.

We finished. I ran in and finished a marathon.