The BIG run - the first 40... or the J miles

6 October

For some crazy reason I didn't get round to blogging yesterday. Running 121.42 kilometres might have had something to do with it. Lots of photos to share, lots of people to thank so I'm going to break this down into three segments. In my mind this run was always a 3x40k run - it was too much to think of on it's own!

After loading some serious pasta on Friday J and Emma went home and got some kip, Dad stayed at ours and Tom and Katie were down with Mum in Hythe. I set my alarm for 2am and proceeded to hardly sleep at all! So excited!

At 2 I had a tiny bowl of cereal, got into my kit, strapped on a head torch, applied Vaseline to the parts that matter, J arrived at 2.25 and at 2.32 after a start line photo off we went into London's SE suburbs.

People were coming back from nights out, locking up kebab shops and having very different nights to us! But the way was easy, on roads, through parks, well lit and J and I were gobbling up the miles. The only incident was that I managed to loose my debit card on the way - must have flipped it out of my side pocket when taking out my flask. Cue 10mins on the phone to Natwest to cancel and reorder my card. At 4.30am - slightly surreal. Just after that we hit fields and left the glow of London behind. It's a wonderful bit of running until you get to the M25, which is a bit sketchy for a kilometre or so. J's knees started giving him trouble and he battled on, probably for longer than he should but by around 40k (guttingly close to a marathon... more to follow) he took to the car to become another member of the support crew.

A huge thank you to J for getting me through the first 40k - it was a weird time to be running and I really appreciated having someone with me for the surreal night shift! He then spent the rest of the day as support crew despite his knee obviously hurting him - I'm not sure I wouldn't have gone off for a bath and a lie down!! Thanks bro.