The BUPA London 10k

After a beautiful weekend, the forecast for Monday was not so good. Last year, by all accounts, the race took place in virtual monsoon conditions. Hmmm! Luke and I stayed with Eve and Greg in London so that we would get to Green Park in plenty of time and we would be fully rested after a lazy barbecue, courtesy of Eve and Greg.
The birds woke me at 4 am, Luke's air bed deflated mid slumber and Greg couldn't sleep either.
We arranged to meet Harry and Ros at Victoria station. While we waited, we were watching all the honed athletes making their way to Green Park when Harry and Ros appeared, looking rather sleepy. This was the pre-race photo. Actually, we all look a bit sleepy.
We made our way to Green Park and left Eve to go to her strategic photo opportunity location at Westminster and then Harry and Ros transformed themselves into tutued athletes, at which point we three donned ours'. "Hey, they look cool", we said. "I reckon all these other guys are probably suffering from acute tutu envy". "Yeah"!
We made our way to the Green 'B' pen, the eighth out of nine pens. I was meant to be in pen C but snuck in with the others. safety in numbers, eh? We eventually found ourselves standing next to a gorilla and accompanying banana, Fred Flintstone and Wilma and another guy wearing a tutu (all the rage this year m'dears) plus sundry other interesting outfits. It started to rain just before 10 am. Great! The first wave was off at 10am sharp. Lots of commentary, punchy music and stuff. We were off!
Blimey, what a job to get going, with everyone in the way. I tried to find some space and ended up running rather faster at the start than I had really intended, leaving the others behind somewhere. Greg soon passed me however and sped off into the distance.
Down to Westminster and along the embankment. I didn't really have time to look at the views. Then, along the Embankment where the wind was very strong and there was a lot of blossom and pollen blowing with the rain and I breathed some in, which had me coughing for the next 30 minutes. Then the wind subsided and the rain stopped. Hundreds of people cheering us on, all along the route. That was great. But my legs started feeling really tired at about 7k and I was beginning to wonder if I could keep running to the end. By this time, Luke, Harry and Ros had caught up, said "Hi, how's it going?" and loped off effortlessly.
My plan was for a sub 60 minute with a sprint (OK, running a bit faster) for the final 1k. This seemed to work OK when training. That didn't happen. The last 1k was hard and when I saw the 'Only 400 metres to go' sign, I was thinking, "How far is 400 metres? Can I run 400 metres?"
My time was 60:43. About 2 minutes behind Luke, Harry and Ros and about 4 mins behind Greg, all of whom were waiting for me at the finish line.
After our initial "We're not doing that again!" we all said that we might do it again next year. After all, the hardest part really was getting the sponsorship!
At the time of writing this (Tuesday), Luke has just suggested another run. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJyw4WCi_bE Take a moment to watch to get the idea!
For full set of photos, go to http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/michaelandteresaseall/Bupa10_09