Marathon Day

We didn't sleep well through the night. We were unlucky enough to get one of the 8 rooms that faces onto the very busy main road. The windows not closing properly made it even noisier but on the other hand, not being able to open them made the room far too warm. Uncomfortable bed, overheating, noisy road, flight path above, not a good combination.

In the morning it turned out the manager who, I was promised would be in, wasn’t so I will have to leave my complaining about the state of the room until Monday. As we dozed on and off all morning we decided to scrap our plan of going into the city centre and just have a quiet afternoon.

We took a wander down to the Gormet Burger Kitchen for some lunch and picked up some earplugs on the way back to the hotel.

After an nap we got ready and headed out to get a bus to Battersea Power Station. As we neared, we noticed a queue. Fair enough, there’s bound to be a little queue, the only problem is normally the MoonWalk starts in a park. People sit around and enter in dribs and drabs. Not so at Battersea, we turned the corner, the queue continued, around another corner as far as the eye could see. By the time we’d reached the end of the queue and got back to the entrance, we’d walked a mile! We got soaked standing in the queue as the heavens opened, the wind picked up and the bad weather hit. Thankfully we’d brought our waterproof jackets.

After dropping off our bag, we went in search of a group of hi-viz yellow caps in a sea of pink. It was nice of Walk The Walk to give the 3 Land Challengers different coloured caps so we could find each other. I’m useless with names and faces and was fighting my nerves so not very chatty but it was nice to finally meet people, including the lady that lives around the corner from me! Time passed quickly and soon we were making our way through the crowd to the front. As 3 Land Challengers, we were allowed to go up on stage whilst the crowd was told about the event. With around 30 of us going up there was just time to walk slowly across, get some photos or video and come off but it was still amazing. I can honestly say it’s the first time I’ve been on stage in front of 17,000 people in my bra!

After making our way back up to the top of the tent for the first start, there was a minute silence to contemplate what we’re doing and why, to remember those we know effected by breast cancer. This year three women had applied to do the marathon but had sadly died from the disease before the event. By 10:30pm they were wishing us all a good night and starting the warm up. Apparently London starts earlier than Edinburgh! We were so far back in the tent we couldn’t see the warm up moves so a group of us were just kind of making it up. With how cold it had been as we headed into the tent, we took the advice given and put on our clear plastic ponchos, bras on show but a layer to keep a tiny bit of the weather from us.

By 10:50pm we were crossing the start line and ready to go. Due to minimal road closers (1 or no lanes closed) and the vast number of people on the pavements the pace was really slow to begin with. After crossing Vauxhall Bridge we walked along the Thames, part of Battersea Power Station was lit up pink for us and the Chelsea and Albert bridges illuminated and twinkling in the distance (which were just as lovely when we crossed them). 50 minutes in we’d only managed 2.5 miles (a distance usually covered in about 37 minutes). With short queues at the first toilets we took advantage knowing the cues would only get bigger from there on in. The walk through Battersea Park was nice and the pace quickened with the extra room.