Made it to London... Just.

I've not ran since spraining my knee badly in December, it just wasn't healing right. A new physio gave me a new diagnosis a couple of weeks ago. Inflammation of the patella. I was given some rehab exercises for my quads, hamstrings, and various other weakened and imbalanced leg muscles, advised to ice my knee three times a day, and told to reduce any impact activity to near enough zero. My long training walks stopped, and I commenced the more focussed rehab training. I didn't tell the physio I was due to be on the start line of VLM...

I knew a while ago that I would not be able to run a single step on the London Marathon route. My knee clicks and collapses, with impact, and I'm working hard on slow and careful rehab. No running. However I had paid (twice, due to deferral last year) for the race, and paid for accommodation and travel, so the trip to London would happen. But would I make the start line? I made a very rough plan - I would walk as far as my knee would let me, then step off the route with no self-recrimination. I secretly hoped I would make halfway, but when the physio gave his diagnosis, I realised how important to me a full recovery was - I adjusted my views. 8 or 9 miles, perhaps....

Okay, so it's now the day before the race, and after picking up my bib number at the expo this morning, I read the final race instructions and felt my skin start to crawl. Why hadn't I researched this before today? Mainly because I was pretending it all wasn't happening, I guess. But anyway, this afternoon (while sitting in the hotel bar with an icepack on my knee and a growing sense of impending doom) I read for the first time that the sweeper team close the course off at around 7 hour pace (!!), 16 minute miles, and I looked up previous results and examined the splits of the slowest finishers. Yep, there are no 5k timing mat splits recorded after 55 minutes. In training, I was just managing 18 minute miles. There is a very strong chance I won't get to even 3 miles without the course being fully dismantled around me.

Until just now, I believed my physical limitations would be the main issue this weekend, but now I realise it's going to be whether or not I'm happy to walk on when the sweep crew move me onto the pavement and dismantle the race route before I get there... And I'm not. I know it's silly, but I'm not.  But this is London. This is a special race. So I will enjoy and soak up the atmosphere in the start pen area and in the first mile of the race, and if that's it for me, then so it goes.

I went to see a West End Show last night, and today I enjoyed the marathon expo and a wee bit of Harry Potter tourism at Kings Cross Station, and tomorrow will bring an amazing experience, whether I complete 1 mile of the route, or more. Then I get to hop on an underground train and appear at a much later part of the route to cheer on other runners. The ones who are earning their medals. I'm making the most of the weekend. For me, it was never about crossing a finish line - in many ways, this is about crossing a start line. x