31st of October – Flight and arrival

I had a flight a few hours before noon so it was an early departure from home but food in the lounge helped things a bit. The flight was fairly uneventful and the plenty of legroom on the front row was definitely a treat. 

Only having a carry-on I had to wait for the rest of the group to get their luggage (all 30 of them) before we could go through immigration and get picked up. And when arriving outside we had to wait for the bus as it was not allowed to park at the airport but had to stay somewhere nearby and show up when called. I realized that when the bus finally arrived I could have taken the train to the city and checked into the hotel before we ever left the airport.

But when finally in the bus we were on the way with AC in a slightly humid 15-ish degrees towards the hotel near the centre of the city. Circling around on the road to enter the Lincoln tunnel the bus driver suddenly pulled over and stopped to the side just before the entrance and stepped out. A bit of waiting and seeing him walking around we found out that there were issues with the braking system so he couldn’t take the bus any longer. While I’m glad that he stopped when finding out he couldn’t safely brake it resulted in more annoying wait and it was close to an hour before another bus came by, transferred all our luggage and took us further on our now quite time-consuming tour. The shoulder near the tunnel was huge so there were no problems lining the two busses up next to each other without interfering with the traffic. Fortunately there was a bus-/truck-workshop just around the corner from where we had stopped so the bus replacement arrived quickly after being requested.

All this was getting quite frustrating as I had been hoping to go by the marathon Expo today after arriving to get it over with. They would close the entrance at 1900 (and close at 2000) and sitting at home and planning it looked as if I would have plenty of time. But with these multiple waits and delays I saw my plans slowly disintegrating. We arrived at around 1800 at the hotel, 4 hours after landing (had I taken the train it would have taken less than an hour and a half). I decided to chance it so I quickly unloaded my bag, grabbed a subway card and took the subway to the expo where I arrived 20 minutes before closing for entry. Success! And there were no queues anywhere so it was a relaxing walk around to have a look – considering more than 50.000 people run the marathon I could imagine the next couple of days it will be more chaotic.

The Expo had a long wall with names of everyone who had signed up. It was a long wall. And I could fortunately find my own name there.

Happy with having retrieved my bag with the stuff included in the price (bib, shirt and a few other various goodies) I returned to the hotel with my stash and went our for a quick dinner in form of a pretty damn good burger.

13th – 14th – Post-run and returning home

After getting out of the shower back in my hotel room (which, by the way, I had spent together with my running shoes which were in much need of a thorough rinse) and trying to get my legs working again, I left the hotel a bit past noon to try and find some lunch. Successfully filled with delicious burger I had a short walk before returning to my room and had a very much needed rest for the legs.

In the evening we met up for dinner – at a local Italian restaurant (not the same as the one I visited last night). The food was pretty great, but the interior of the restaurant was something else. Imagine someone walking along a beach and finding several galleons and deciding to use the ships to decorate. It was just a single floor but balconies down along the sides and at the end made room for more tables, with small cubbies underneath these. On the way there I was told to remember to go to the bathroom while there. I first thought it was due to the low quality of food, but when entering the bathroom I saw the walls were covered in detailed… adult… imagery. Not something I had expected to see on my visit there. 

The restaurant was quite peculiar... 

... and the bathroom even more so.

Leaving the restaurant after the successful meal we returned to the hotel, and as the weather was still very nice (as in: dry) I grabbed my camera and returned to Tower Bridge in an attempt to get some better shots than the other night in the rain. Things ended up being much more relaxed this time – funny how that is when you don’t have to constantly stop everything you’re doing to dry off the lens while still trying to keep everything as dry as possible. After a good few hours in the area I finally made it back to the hotel at 0200.

Tower of London.

London Bridge.

Tower Bridge with flashy lights.

The Shard and moon.

I managed to sleep in Monday morning and had a full breakfast at the hotel before checking out just before 1100. I didn’t do much but an aimless wander around – passed by 221B Baker Street but it just being a museum/shop looking like a tourist trap I kept walking past. I ended up returning to Paddington Station and taking the train back to the airport where I spent a few hours in the lounge before boarding and flying home according to schedule.

Overall this was a really nice trip and run. I should probably have rested a bit more after the run than I did – walking about for so long was not something that made me good friends with my legs, especially not after pushing myself as I did during the run. The route exceeded my expectations, I really enjoyed it and the locations we passed by, but I’m probably a bit biased due to my result and the fact that it was the only day during the trip it kept dry almost the entire day, giving us close to perfect running weather. It was definitely a great experience.

Full album can be seen here.

13th – Run, forest, run!

At 0730 the group met up in the hotel’s reception to gather and go to the starting area for the run. It was easy enough – get the underground just around the corner, change after one stop and go another 3-4 stops and exit just (almost) around the corner from the starting area. Everything went smooth until we had to get onto the second train. The platform was suspiciously full with people, and when the train arrived it was already packed. Somehow, though, we still managed to squeeze everyone in before the train continued. At the next few stops the people there waiting to get on realized that the real challenge today wasn’t the run but actually getting there by train. A few managed to get on, but it looked like at least half waited for the next departure. Arriving at the destination everyone poured out of the train, leaving maybe a handful of people behind in the carriages looking bewildered and relieved. 

The start was in Hyde Park, and while the entire run was on roads the starting area with bag-checks and whatnot was on a lawn. And with the constant rain the previous days and thousands of people walking around it did not take long for it to turn into mud. It was a balancing act to avoid getting too wet (and cold) feet before the run but it was fairly successful, though returning from the run I quickly gave up and had a thick layer of mud stuck on the shoes when returning to the hotel.

Passing by Buckingham Palace at around 2km.

Photo taken by Marathon-Photos.com.

Standing in the 1:40-1:50-group put me surprisingly close to the front, and giving the starting group a 3 minutes head start we were off. It was quite a nice route through London; starting on the south border of Hyde Park we quickly came down past Buckingham Palace and circling St. James’s Park, reaching King’s College London before circling back past Buckingham Palace once again before entering Hyde Park and the second half of the run. With the weather still keeping dry and plenty of people out and cheering throughout the park it was an absolute joy, all things considered.

Photo taken by Marathon-Photos.com.

The fact that I was still feeling this happy close to the finish was a good sign,

Photo taken by Marathon-Photos.com.

Unfortunately I didn’t manage to keep up with the 1:40-pacers for the entire run (who, by the way, for the fist 4-7km ran at 1:30-1:35 which was a bit of a dick move) but I managed to finish at 1:41:21. I had hoped to get 1:40:xx but I wasn’t too disappointed with the time; it was still a 1:56 improvement of my 4 week old PR (which again was a 3:07 improvement of my previous PR). I ended up being 822 out of 5439 in my age group (M18-45, which was also called MS – Men Senior. I don’t know how to feel about that. The other groups were just M45+ and M60+), putting me in the top 15,11%, 1017 out of 7750 men making it top 13,12% and 1145 out of 15861 in total, putting me in top 7,22%.

Despite not hitting that 1:40:xx mark I do feel quite satisfied with that result.

11th - 12th of October – London, pre-race

I had decided on spending frequent flier points to get to London, unfortunately that meant the only viable option for me was to have a layover in Oslo on the way with a departure from Copenhagen at 0600. While it was horrifically early it also meant that I wouldn’t lose out on much and still have half a day in London on arrival. As there was no suitable trains or busses from home that could get me to the airport in time, I decided to spend the night in a hotel near the airport instead. While it increased the overall price of the trip it did make the morning significantly manageable. 

So around 0500 I arrived groggily at the airport, the same time as when the lounge opened which meant that I ended up being the first one entering. It’s has a bit of a surreal feeling entering a completely empty lounge. The food was out, though, so everything was fine, despite the time of day. I expected that at least on the first flight there would be no breakfast due to the short distance but it turned out that on both flights we were served breakfast. Triple breakfast? Not a bad start for the trip.

Arriving in London we would have had a great view of the centre if it hadn’t been for the dense cloud layer covering the entire city. Other than that everything went according to plan and less than an hour after deplaning I exited the Heathrow Express train on Paddington Station. Finding the hotel turned out to be easier than expected – almost straight ahead the entire way – but arriving at the hotel at 1130 the room wasn’t ready so I took to wandering around in the neighbourhood instead.

A lot of renovations were being done throughout the city. 

At least the Londoners has gotten the point of wrapping their Big Ben to avoid accidents.

I headed south through Trafalgar Square (which pretty much had been taken over by Extinction Rebellion) before roaming Westminster, passed by Victoria Station, Buckingham Palace before returning to the hotel around 1430 and checked in. Getting a room on 6^th floor was great, but it turned out the view from the small window was less than impressive and the room (including bathroom) was smaller than my bedroom at home. At first I thought there was no heating at all in the room but I realized later that it just didn’t work. When letting them know in the reception they gave me an electrical heater. It worked fine, but in the already limited floor space it felt a fair bit… impractical.

My large and spacious room.

With a wonderful room (blinds could not be raised).

I met with the rest of the group in the late afternoon in the reception to get my bib-number – and as it turned out not much else. It also took a while to figure out how they handled baggage at the starting area, and I only got three safety pins for the number. Fantastic.

I left the hotel to get dinner at a nearby place that served some great fish & chips at a recommended underground (literally) café before continuing on and crossing over to the other side of the Themes and starting walking towards the Tower Bridge. On the way it started pouring down and while it did calm down it never really stopped raining. I made it to the bridge, took some wet shots and returned to the hotel where I arrived around 2200 and passed out half an hour later.

Blackfriars Bridge with the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral.

The clouds were heavy on the cityscape.

Tower of London and Tower Bridge.

Seeing the long line into the breakfast restaurant I skipped it and left for a walk around until 1130 when another, and equally recommended, fish & chips restaurant opened up for the day. The fish was pretty damn impressive and really delicious. From there I walked to the Tower of London where I had a walk around – too cheap and not enough time to get tickets – before returning to the hotel mid-afternoon and rested. It kept raining the entire day, but at least it was never as intense as last night. Dinner was had an Italian restaurant near the hotel.

Tower of London with the Tower Bridge to the left.