Virgin Money London Marathon 2013

I know, I know,  I should have done this last week but I have been ‘ a bit busy’ with catch up stuff and making sure that my hound knew who I was that I am NOW getting round to putting my Virgin Money London Marathon thoughts down on paper – well on screen!

First I will talk about Boston.  Much has been said about it and in a far better way than I ever could.  We all got to know via twitter and the likes on the Monday night as a lot of the marathon ‘team’ are part o,f and have friends who work on Boston run.

Events like that certainly put things in perspective and made us all work that bit harder and be that little bit more vigilant.  The silent pause before the race was a fitting tribute to Boston and we had three runners who ran Boston on the Green start line with their Boston t-shirts on. One of them was from Newcastle – just goes to show eh!

But the week went as well as they ever do down in VMLM press office with a whole raft of people making sure it is all planned out, leaving the likes of me an easy job of ‘shouting at snappers’ for a few hours and getting the various elite athletes, fancy dress runners and our delightful celebs to smile at the aforementioned snappers.

New people this year included: Andrew Strauss, along with his delightful wife, Kelly Sotherton – who kept saying: ‘It’s a bit different from running a few times round a track!’ and Amy Childs who was very impressive during the press interviews and who really enjoyed the marathon experience.

Among the regulars who were back for another jog round the capital were James Toesen, who knocked around 15mins off his personal best this year, Mike Bushel from BBC sport who was wearing the t-shirt of the TV Times leukemia and lymphoma research charity, made popular by another one of the gang, Tony Audenshaw who again told me he was looking for ‘around 3.30’ and came in around 3.10. Amanda Mealing, who I had the delight to chat to a lot last year was back for more and  it wouldn't be Virgin Money London Marathon without Iwan Thomas supporting, once again, MacMillan Cancer Care.

Race day came and my first job was to make sure Michele Roux Jnr got to the start early for an interview on TV. Although it was his twelfth London marathon (I think) we had never had the time to chat for more than 2 minutes.  Let me say that he is as quiet as he seems on the telly but is a great conversationalist – even at 6.45 in the morning!  One of the things we spoke about, and I can’t remember how it came into conversation, was when his sous chef Monica Galetti saw snow for the first time!

Up at the green start we had our usual ‘gaggle of snappers’ of around 60 and most of them had been at the hotel for photos during the week. They were all there to make the most of the early sunshine and get as many clebs photographed before they got all hot and sweaty doing 26.2 miles on the roads.

All the runners were up for it as well, far too many to mention individually but the  BBC News reading girls all looked as if they had been ‘doing the hard miles’ so they could enjoy the atmosphere of the day.

When the race starts, our team have a 300 metre dash to get to the special buses to get us to the finish as quickly as they can.  Once there we all have a half mile walk up The Mall to get near the finish line to see the wheelchairs and then the elite runners coming across the line.

A while after they elite come though all my ‘friends’ from the Green start come into view.

As said before Jame Toesen did a very respectable time of just over 3 hours with Tony Audenshaw not far behind.  Could go on about them all but it is easier to say that all of them came in over the next few hours – in various states of tiredness, and were more than happy to cross the line as some of the pics show.

That evening all of the media team try and get out for a final meal together before we all go our separate ways. I am just a small cog in the media wheel at the event but the whole team are great to work with and very good company when out in the various bars and restaurants at St Catherine’s Dock.

Happy days until next year.