Running and I are not friends. In fact, we fight the majority of the time and I'm not really sure who wins, though it's probably not me.

The first 10km went really well - in actual fact, with my back, knee, and sciatica - I was really expecting it to be terrible. I got through 10km in just over an hour, and feeling really good. In fact, I felt pretty good right through 15km, just truckin' along. I followed my race plan of 14mins running & 1min running from the beginning, though it didn't really seem like ANYONE else was doing any sort of run/walk program. A tiny hit to the ego, but I figured there was no point in changing MY plan just because I wanted to save face in some way. So, we walked. After the 15km mark however, everything changed. I started getting a hot spot under my left big toe that I did my best to ignore, my right leg (which hurts with every stride regardless) started to get really angry with me, and my back was definitely calling me nasty names. I had tried to put my head down and just keep going for a bit but I caught a glimpse of the next km marker out of the corner of my eye and decided to look up hoping beyond hope that it would say 'km 17' or 'km 18'. Nope... my heart kind of sank as I looked at it and lo and behold, I had only gone 1 measly km. That was the hardest km of the whole race for me and Tony at this point was trying to be helpful in saying 'only 5km to go!'. I kind of wanted to trip him for saying that, but didn't as he'd probably just pick himself up, keep running and beat me.

Ever so slowly the kilometers ticked by. Even though at times it seemed like I may have been at a standstill. We finally got to km 19 and again my leg was screaming so badly at me that I had to walk for a minute. I only let myself stop for that one minute (otherwise I just would have walked the rest) and with my body complaining mightily, we started jogging again towards the finish. FINALLY km 20 comes into sight and I know I'm going to finish. It wasn't going to be in my super secret hoping to finish time of 2:07-ish, but I'm really happy that it was under the 2:20 that Tony thought it would be in.

There were 4 sets of photographers during the last km and we did our best to impress with gangsta poses, etc (yes, we're dorks) - and then it was there. The finish line!!! I crossed the line with Tony and with a smile on my face and that's all that counts.

Um... maybe run more? Or try to be faster? Though I now have video evidence that I'm at least faster than a really slow golf cart.

The warm down involved putting on the after-race poncho, having a vending machine waffle (tastier than you would think), and walking back to the Metro to grab a shower at our hotel before getting on the train back to London.


I suck at running.


MORE PORT-A-LOOS!!!! I still can't believe that there were only 11 for 40,000 athletes!

More drink stations along the course would have also been nice.

A big, big thank you to Tony for running this with me - I know I wouldn't have done nearly as well without having him with me. I'm also quite surprised that I'm not nearly as sore as I thought I would be, so that's a bonus! :)