London Marathon 1999

I'm delighted to report that I not only succeeded in finishing this year's marathon, but even achieved a personal best time of 4 hours 42 minutes 48 seconds.

That's the time by my own watch, taken from the moment when I crossed the starting line. I made that 14 minutes 45 seconds after the starter's gun, so my official time will be about 4:57:33. I have never previously finished the London with an official time below five hours. For my first marathon, in 1993, I had to walk for a few miles of the 26.2-mile course. Next time, 1997, I avoided walking (just), but still found it incredibly hard. This time I felt fine, ran the whole way and finished quite strongly. I think this is because of doing more long-slow-distance training runs of fifteen miles and over during the first three months of the year.

The weather on the day was nearly ideal: cool, no wind, no rain. It was perhaps a little too cool at the start - I was shivering as we waited for the off in Greenwich Park. But better that than sweltering on a hot day.

As always, the race was a wonderful experience. The London Marathon has elements of the Olympic Games, with world-class athletes competing to win the title and break world records. It also has elements of a street carnival, with runners in fancy dress and bands and sound systems lining the course, not to mention crowds of applauding spectators. Between those two headline-catching extremes there are thirty thousand ordinary runners, like me, who will never break world records but who nevertheless take the race pretty seriously. It's something we've been training for and worrying about for several months. We want to achieve a good finishing time, where 'good' is seen in the context of our own potential -- really, we're running against ourselves. It's also an opportunity to help the charity of our choice, which adds a further element of seriousness: we owe it to our sponsors to do our utmost. Now the marathon is over, it's something we'll remember for the rest of our lives.

At the 25-mile point, still looking fresh