Kate Bucknell

"I couldn't believe how long the train took from Charing Cross to Greenwich; how will we EVER get back to London from here? In our thousands, we snaked out of the train station, through the charming streets, past bins piled high with last-minute-carb banana peels, and up the hill into the park. Glastonbury, I thought, but with only one band. Yup, it poured with rain as we queued for the loos. Then 20 minutes trying to get to the start, my number positioning me right at the back in front of the extreme costumes.

There were balloons, blimps, BBC crews, hundreds of cheering spectators. Most of all, I loved seeing how the crowd changed from neighbourhood to neighbourhood.

The first 10 miles

"A friend told me the first 10 miles would melt away. Indeed, they did, and it wasn't until nearly Bermondsey that I realized my legs just weren't going to feel great in this marathon. Because of a tear in my right gastronemius and a little shin splint, I took the last two weeks off training, and all the tightening I dreaded might come late in the race came early. What with struggling to get past the many people whose legs were clearly even tighter than mine, I never got that nice easy rhythm I call 'running'.

But the London Marathon is more of a carnival on the hoof than a race, so I stopped checking my pace on my watch and started reading charity slogans on the backs around me. St John's Ambulance—Nee Naw Nee Naw. Cystic fibrosis—See off CF. Sense (for the blind and deaf)—Feel Great. And all the personal memorials and transferred photographs—for Mum and Dad, For My Daughter. It was a rare back which just said Nike or Adidas.

"At Bermondsey, my gang of supporters - Bob, Jack, Craig and Britt (all the way from Nike in Amsterdam) - were locked inside the Tube station because there were so many spectators; they tell me it looked like mayhem from behind the bars. Bobby, leaving his Sunday job as organist at a Nigerian church near there (in a pinstriped suit, no less) said the only way to get out at South Quays was to join the race. I didn't see any of them til the finish!

Over London Bridge

"Running over London Bridge, rather than having to climb the stairs, was a thrill, and so was passing the fast runners already tearing back from Canary Wharf. But around there, my personal marathon began to feel like an endless, anonymous nothingness—where were we headed and WHY? So I decided to queue again for the loo. Cost me a little over five minutes, but a nice chance to take some ibuprofen.

"Afterwards, I felt like I had been dragged backwards in time: hadn't I just passed all these people? The man (woman?) dressed as a bottle of beer? The four men carrying a lifeboat? The three girls in black leggings and yellow tutus? And, looking up and spotting skyscrapers in the distance, were we still nowhere near Canary Wharf? I took on every carbo gel and bottle of water in sight, ate a packet of salt (blech), a packet of sugar (not quite so blech), decided against the sweets being held out on a plate by a nice little old lady, counted off-duty investment bankers with kids spectating in head to foot Burberry, and somehow notched up a few more miles; I didn't have the conviction to take my mp3 player out of my belt, and I didn't want to lose the use of my ears in dealing with the crowd.

The passion of Christ

"Then, up ahead, I saw a huge Technicolor butterfly being dragged along by the wings by two beautiful black (Kenyan?) runners in snow white. Their T-shirts said "I'm running with Richard," and, sure enough, the man who owns this marathon had elected to "sail" - "It's great," I heard him say, "when the wind is behind you." But just then, he was definitely battling a headwind. As I passed and took a look, I saw the passion of Christ. He smiled through his pain at his countless well-wishers and was clearly not going to put down his cross. Even his handmaidens, urging him on, must have felt like a burden; he was clearly holding them back, and therefore gave them his sweetest smiles. Right, I thought, if he can do that, I can finish this race.

"Too soon? After the next set of showers - a bliss bath for your brain - I pulled a little something in my LEFT shin; this was clearly jealousy having its green day, since the RIGHT had had all the attention from my shrewd physio and from me. There the fanged pain flickered for the last six-and-a-bit miles, a little more intense each time, travelling up from the ankle to the knee. Just run on one leg was my basic strategy - there were others out there doing it for the whole race.

Tower of London

"I stumped along to the Tower of London, and at last my spirits began to lift - all this part of the course I had done before, and I set my heart on home. City of London School for Boys, Victoria Embankment, Millennium Wheel, etc. Bird Cage Walk had never seemed quite so long, and I began to feel someone was dragging Buckingham Palace backwards towards Hyde Park Corner as I approached. But I made it - 4:38:23, a little slower than I was secretly hoping, but better than my announced barn door target of 'under 5' and, as it turns out, 290 in my age group."

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