London Marathon race report - Tom Foster

Coached athlete Tom Foster raced the London Marathon in April, he was after a super fast time and a PB, here's what happened!

London Marathon is a strange beast, firstly getting in is a challenge in itself. If you have in the past 2 years run a sub 75 min half marathon or 2:45 marathon then Championship entry is available, or if you have a sub 3:05 marathon you can qualify on good for age, this is a ballot but does offer a much higher chance of getting a slot, after this its public ballot which is basically a snowball in hell. However there is a 4th way, if you are a member of a British Athletics registered running club your club may have entries that you apply for in your club ballot.

My last/only previous standalone marathon was Amsterdam marathon in 2012 where I managed a 2:54, which in context considering I didn’t have a clue about training, no coach and no running club, was not bad. Nevertheless, this wasn’t a credential that was going to allow me to get in. So I set myself the challenge of running a sub 75 half marathon at Cardiff in October 2016. Despite running a strong race at Cardiff the wheels came off close to the end and I shipped about a minute off target. Fortunately, being a member of Micky Morris Race Team, that is packed full of incredible runners, has the upshot of most people having qualified by one of the other routes so I was able to leverage this and obtain the club spot.

My goal initially was to run a sub 2:45 so that in future I would be able to qualify for championship in subsequent years, it is also the next major milestone time after 3 hours so it made sense to aim for.

The second odd thing about London is the time of year. Logically given the temperate climate of the UK it would make more sense to put the race towards the end of the summer, not only to better the chances of good weather on race day, but to allow UK based competitors to train in the summer months! However, this is never going to change so training started in earnest in the depths of winter. Mainly featuring long rain sodden weekend runs around Surrey. I learnt to run with headphones so I could listen to podcasts while I ran just to ease some of the tedium.

A positive to training towards a big goal at this time of year is that there are plenty of smaller races to focus on as intermediate goals. I kicked off my campaign with Hampton Court half marathon, I wasn’t expecting much but training had been consistent in the lead up and I was generally feeling good from my track work with Guildford and Godalming AC, allowing me to build my speed-endurance. This resulted in a pretty healthy PB for the half of 1:13:42 and a second place to boot. Shame it hadn’t come in the previous season, but it showed signs of potentially what I could run in London. Full of confidence off the back of this I was starting to dream of low 2:40’s maybe even a two thirty something, who knows!

Following on from this I put in a good performance at the Welsh XC championships to help MMRT bring home the Club Silver medal, given the conditions on the day I was happy to get around without rolling and ankle in the bog or catching hypothermia from the driving rain and cold!

It was after this where things took a bit of a downturn, my long run on the weekend following the XC I stepped off a curb while running to avoid an ignorant couple walking their dog 3 abreast across the pavement. I managed to tweak my calf at the back of my knee, it seemed very inconsequential at the time but the next day going downstairs was quite painful. I tried to rest it, but with the marathon in the back of your mind resting is hard, plus I wasn’t really resting, I was still biking and swimming, but I had to knock off the track sessions and any harder runs just try to focus on stamina in my longer runs.

My niggle eventually eased just in time for Cranleigh 21 mile, this was going to be my dress rehearsal for nutrition and pacing ahead of the big day. The plan was to go out at 6 min/miles and just try and hold this for as long as possible. Luckily there were 2 other guys with the same plan so we paced well as a group. Mission accomplished 2:06.30. However I had started to cramp in the last mile, not what you want in the marathon with 6 miles to go! So I knew I would need to look into a prevention strategy for this.

My last race pre-London would be Bournemouth Half Marathon. I was feeling quite confident ahead of the race so started out quite strong and as I did in Hampton court, found myself at the front of the race. Eventually the lead pack upped the pace and I faded towards the end but still a strong performance to bring home 3rd place. 

Training was fairly steady in the last few weeks, I started back to do some speed work but conscious of my calf playing up these were mainly on grass to ease some of the impact on the body. My mileage was low through most of the weeks in the build-up, mainly around 50km with the odd one at 60km and max at 80km (right before I got ‘injured’)

The last week before the race came into view and I was happy to see it. I was a little tired of running all the time (psychologically more than anything) and was looking forward to some quality cycling again. Aware of the cramping in the 21 miler, and the fact that the weather was looking warmer than usual I paid special attention to my salt intake and hydration. I decided to try out some salt loading techniques, so I took a Diroalyte (Tesco equivalent) rehydration sachet once on Friday and twice on Saturday ahead of the race. 

Race morning arrived, a bit of an early start considering the race its self didn’t start until 10am, but there were no fast trains running from Guildford into Waterloo until later in the day. I decided to delay my breakfast to eat on the train on the way up, that way I could balance eating too close to the start or eating too early and being hungry again before the start. I met up with one of my GGAC club mates on the train on the way up, then with more of my MMRT club mates to make our way over to the start area on Blackheath. I was dreading this slightly, having come up to support Lauren in 2015 the trip over to the start area was a bit of a nightmare (very busy and slow!). This time it was a breeze! I even had a seat!

From Blackheath it was a very short walk to the edge of Greenwich Park where the bag drop and assembly area was located. At this point the other guys from MMRT left me as they were in the Championship start area. So I chilled out for a bit, got into my race kit before ditching my bag and having a bit of a jog to warm up.

Soon enough it was time to get into our start pens. From speaking to people previously they said I needed to be as close as possible to the front of the start pen to try and get on the back of the Championship group – people were taking this one step further and were just running to the start of the Champs race. It was a bit chaotic, but I just kept looking at the front of the championship group for them to start running. Once they were moving, everyone took off. More chaos as I was catching Veterans, women who were in the champs start but were likely to run slower than me. I latched on to the back of one guy who I recognised from Hampton Court Half Marathon and followed him up the verges, on the pavements, whatever we could do to get some clear space. This went on for the first 2 miles before eventually everything thinned out a bit.

The first couple of miles are slightly down-hill so I was expecting slightly quicker splits for this bit (Richie Gardner had mentioned this, so his words were ringing in my mind) but it wasn’t the ideal start because of all the surging, more like a fartlek workout!

After this I was just trying to settle into a rhythm, get my pace to 6:00-6:05 min/miles (yes I had gone old school as I looking at a round number like 6 min miles was preferable to 3:4x min km’s!) I found myself going pretty well at 6:00 min/miles so stuck with it. This wasn’t my initial plan (I wanted to negative split) but I had found myself running alongside the guy I ran the 21 miler with, I knew he would keep the pace constant so stayed with him. It was so good to have a familiar face (even though I don’t really know the guy!), that’s the thing about endurance sport, there is such great rivalry and comradery: everyone wants to beat each other but everyone wants everyone to go well and PB, it’s not a 0 sum game like a ball sport.

The first 10 miles went by very quickly, and I was feeling good. My 21 miler friend was starting to pull away at this point as expected as he was going to do as we got through Surrey Quays. I stuck to my pace and found myself approaching Tower Bridge; there are a few iconic sights in distance running and this is one of them. I am not one to go on about the atmosphere of a place or occasion but this was something different. The crowds had been good all the way around the course up to this point (owing to the good weather) but on the bridge they were at least 4 deep on both sides, creating this tunnel of noise as you crossed the river.

Shortly after the bridge, you reach the half way mark. This is where the course is on both sides of the road going opposite directions, so we could see the elite women coming back for approx. mile 22. I was expecting to see my support crew at this point but no chance could I pick them out in the huge crowds. I went through half way in 1:17:4x – so no negative split in that case, the focus changed to protecting the ‘bonus seconds’ I had for as long as possible.

There was a gel station just after the half way point, I had been making sure I was sipping water at every aid station all the way through. I had probably over done it a little on the hydration as I was feeling a little ‘full’ and uncomfortable, but better that than dehydrated. I had planned to carry 2 gels and then pick up more at the aid stations. I didn’t know what to carry my gels with, so I opted to use my triathlon number belt – this proved to be useless as I lost one gel in the first 3 miles so I ended up carrying the other in my hand, a point to note for the future

The course heads towards the isle of dogs, generally the least well supported areas of the parcours and as such a lot of people find this is one of the hardest points on the curse, I was no exception. 10 miles to go was when things started to get hard. I really had to start to concentrate on my pace and started noticing any little incline in the road. I knew that this where I needed to knuckle down and just focus on the basics of keeping my pace up and ensuring my nutrition stayed on plan. Soon enough I found myself coming into Canary Warf which was rocking! A welcome distraction from the pain in my legs!  Another thing to draw my attention away from my discomfort was spotting the lad who beat me at Hampton Court, at first I thought my eyes were playing tricks, but the more I gained on him, the surer I was it was him. He did not look in a good way, he had K-Tape on his IT bands, but it was half off and flapping in the wind. His running looked really laboured and uncomfortable, I wanted to offer encouragement but I was feeling it myself so decided to keep my head down and just get past. Momentarily after this pass, I spotted an MMRT vest ahead of me. I was trying to work out who it was Leighton? James? Other Leighton? Eventually I closed in and saw it was James, he wasn’t in a good way. A brief exchange of words and encouragement led us both to conclude that him trying to stay with me wasn’t going to be of benefit so I gradually pushed ahead.

2 hours came up on the clock, it was at this point I was trying to calculate my pace for the last couple of miles to make it under the 2:40 barrier. I had noticed that I had lost some of my bonus seconds in the last mile so it was about spending those seconds in such a way that I would get under the target time. It’s also at this point that the course gets a bit disorientating, there is loads of support still but you are looking for mile 23 as this is the beginning of the home stretch, you know that from there is basically west along the river and then a hard right to parliament square, but it seems to take forever to get there. The marker for mile 23 came up and I also saw Lauren, Nadine et al, this was a real boost and brought it home that it wasn’t far to go. The next thing I knew I was in more familiar territory, running along the embankment – a route I knew from running from work to Waterloo station at the back end of last year. There was a bit of relief in the course as it descends slightly down to the level of the river, then holds flat for a while. You then arrive at the tunnel, everything goes quiet, and a bit gloomy, but as you travel through it, you start feeling the beat of music on the other side, the music gets louder as you reach the exit and are spat out into the bright sunshine and a wall of noise. At this point it’s only 3km to go I was frantically calculating how fast I needed to run to make 2:40. I would look down at my watch, to see I was too slow, focus my mind, increase the pace hold that for 20-30 seconds, try and relax, but as soon as looked back again my pace would have slowed. I knew this was going to be a bit of a battle!

It was just a matter of gripping myself and suffering for the last 10 minutes.

I hit the 1km to go banner, the ‘Flame Rouge’ in cycling terms. All I could think was ‘that’s only 2.5 laps of the track at 6 min mile pace!’ – Every track session it has become some tradition to put out a sub-6 min mile at the end for this very reason! Next marker 800m to go – ‘2 laps, or a Llany Bus stop’ (Llany Bus Stop is MMRT speak for a 800m around the housing estate!), 400m to go ‘1 lap, that’s usually 80s! or a Llany 400’ By now I was turning off Birdcage Walk and on to the Spur Road in front of the palace, I hadn’t looked at my watch but I knew it was going to be very close! I turned on to The Mall, and I could see the finish line with the clock on the gantry. Only about 150m to close and the clock was showing 30s to spare, I knew I was safe as that time is the gun time, so I had approximately 15-20s more on that again. However, I wasn’t sure quite how big the margin was so I made best efforts and dropped the hammer for a sprint finish – or at least as close to a sprint finish as I could muster! I couldn’t understand why others weren’t doing the same, there were surly people around me that were aiming for a sub 2:40 and had less of a margin than me, but just seemed to saunter up to the line probably missing the mark by seconds?!

Stopped the watch, showing 2:39:36. Job done. I wandered on to get my medal, bag, catch up with my team mates and meet my support crew. Accidentally facetimed Granny, I was in a bit of a spin at the end!

The whole experience of training for a marathon is an interesting one. I like triathlon because it is varied, you can fall in and out of love with a discipline and it doesn’t matter too much because you have the other 2 to keep you motivated. I think having the other disciplines helps make it all more bearable, no doubt if you could maintain focus and stay injury free the whole time when just running, your performance would reflect this. However I think I would find it soul destroying. Mark (whittlefit) kept my run mileage relatively low, this was because we needed to maintain some bike fitness and keep working on my swim so there weren’t  a lot of ‘junk miles’ just to make up a random mileage target.

Would I do it again? – Yes, London Marathon is an iconic race for a reason, we were very lucky with the weather again this year, but generally one of the best organised, well supported mass participation events in existence. Also a total bargain to enter!

What will I change? – To not pick up a niggle in peak training would be ideal. I wonder if I could have kept up some of the track sessions in that time I was laid up what difference it would have made, also next time I will be in the Championship start, so my start should be a little less frantic. Plus experience – just knowing the course better has got to be worth something!

Now, where is that thing with pedals and wheels gone?

Big thanks to Mark for the coaching and guidance, the MMRT guys for the inspiration and advice plus the GGAC lot for the sessions there too. Also, to ‘the support crew’ for being there to cheer me on!