Well, that was fun.

On starting my training for this way back in January I was hoping to go for a time of around 3 hours 15 mins. Training was going well until the beginning of March, when I started to experience pain at the top of my left leg. Coming at the start of the month for loading up with high mileage, there was no time to rest and recover so I decided to quit speed sessions on advice of a physio (speedy for me anyway. It's all relative) and concentrate on just getting the miles in. I had to endure some long and very painful runs, and hardly ran at all during my 3 week taper leading up to the big day. In the week leading up to the day I started to get pain in other parts of my leg, probably due to other muscles compensating, and started to feel quite down about how bad I felt and even whether or not I would complete the course. I even thought about deferring until next year, but thought I can't afford a divorce if I mentioned 4 months of training for a marathon again next year. So, on the big day I decided to forget about my time and just go and enjoy it. This turned out to be the best thing that happened as I just trotted round and thoroughly enjoyed it. I've never high-fived so many people or smiled so much. Lots of shouts of "Go fairy!" spurred me on and lifted me on those low moments of self-doubt. Thanks very much to everyone who sponsored me. I'm humbled by people's generosity again. I completed in my official time of 3.43.38 as I stopped my watch when I had a wee stop. The official VMLM time is 3.44.31.