2004 London Inline Marathon

(Photos courtesy of Christophe Pointreau)

What a brilliant day out!  This year I thought I'd better be a little kinder to my wife and not race out at the crack of dawn to watch the half-marathon, so instead we arrived at 12.30 or so.  That was just in time to chat to friends, register, get changed and warm up for the full marathon at 14.00.

I was most impressed to see how many more people were at this year's marathon, it's good to see a great new event like this grow.  Quite a few more foreign skaters came too, which was very cool!  Team Senigallia from Italy, George Muiruri from Kenya, and a number of Indian skaters too.

The rapid growth of the LondonSkaters Speed Team was very noticeable too, with loads of the new skin suits on show.  I should add that the name Speed Team might give the wrong impression since there were perhaps just as many members in normal clothes rather than the dreaded lycra, and most of us are simply recreational skaters who like to get fitter and go faster than most.  Of course the club does have some more serious speedskaters as well, but we're a pretty relaxed and friendly bunch.

After 25 minutes gentle warm up in the car park, it was 10 minutes to go to the start, so a quick loo break and off to the start line.  Of course my nerves are jumping like live wires by now, although I'm not quite sure why I get so excited since I'm only into marathons for the fun and fitness aspect.  At this point the weather, which started out bright and sunny, has been turning steadily more and more threatening, and with rain showers predicted, is looking a little bleak.

Anyway, off the start we go, and very quickly a tremendous pace is set.  I quickly find a gent in a US Postal cycling jersey (DavidW) that seems to be going around the pace I'm happy at, and we end up sticking together for most of the race.  Actually, during the first half of the race David is really putting down the hammer and is clearly very determined to put in a good time.  In fact he's going so well that I soon start to struggle and nearly drop off the back a few times, so much so that I'm not able to take my fair share pulling at the front in our two-man pace line.  Luckily for me I tend to stay stronger for longer than most people and usually finish more strongly than I started.

By this stage I'm so enjoying myself that I hardly notice how quickly the first hour has passed, and I'm thoroughly flattered by the amount of cheering my wife and toddler are putting out on my behalf.  In fact my little boy is shouting so loud for me that the race commentator mentioned him a few times, and is getting lots of laughs out of the spectators.  It's very motivating and is definitely what kept me with David in the first half.  Every now and then there's a shower of rain, but luckily for us it never gets very wet or heavy, and the track has enough residual heat from the earlier sunshine that together with the wind helps dry it out pronto.  And although most of the spectators were probably on the cold side, the temperature is just perfect for most of the skaters, keeping us comfortably warm.

I'm also enjoying bombing down the hills, mostly in the draft of a skater in front, really exhilarating stuff!  It's really good fun playing with your body position, skate edge, etc. and be able to see the effect against the person you're drafting.  I should add that the full marathon of 26 loops of the Eastway cycle circuit contains apparently 500-odd metres of ascending.  No wonder people were complaining about the hills!

By the half way stage my body has started to complain about the levels of lactate, and my back muscles are really starting to hurt.  That's probably because I was skating very hard (for me) in the first half and as a result my technique really suffers, and that always gets me in the back.  Thank goodness David wouldn't or couldn't push quite so hard in the second half, which lets me recover quickly and do a whole lot more work breaking the fearsome gale blowing down the finish line straight.  We did have a couple of what felt like ferociously fast laps when we tagged onto a pace line with EtienneB and PeterC, but neither Dave nor I could stick with them for long.

The last two laps were pretty interesting - I noticed Dave sat behind EricB for a little while and didn't want to lead out, and of course neither did I.  Come the final straight, I almost forgot about sprinting, and then burst out from behind Dave and managed to pass both Dave and Eric and have a good 3 seconds in hand by the finish line.  Good thing I did a lot of sprint intervals in the last month of training huh?  The winner was Mauro Guenci from Team Senigallia in a time of 1:20, a full five minutes faster than last year, which was even more impressive given the howling gale and regular drizzly showers.  My time was 1:49:54, which I'm very pleased with, especially considering how little training I managed to do this year.

Looking forward to the Berlin marathon now, lets hope I can recover well before Saturday since there's only a week in between the two.

London Inline Marathon

For the full results come check out the event website at www.londoninlinemarathon.com

Don't forget that a marathon on skates is much much easier than running one - ordinary people such as myself don't have to do a massive amount of training to be able to complete one, and still have masses of fun.  If you do the Wednesday night LondonSkate, don't forget that is a half marathon too, so if you find it easy to complete you'll have no problem skating a full marathon and having a lot of fun doing it.

LondonSkaters Speed Team

I'd just like to take this opportunity to give a huge thanks to all the hard workers that made the marathon possible, especially Etienne, Christophe, Rick, and Gav.

If you're interested in learning to skate faster, get better balance, etc., why not join the team?  We run regular technique and training sessions, and membership is cheap.  Best of all you need only be able to skate forwards and to stop since the team's goal is to introduce recreational skaters to the fun of speed and fitness skating.  Come and visit our site on www.londonspeedskaters.com for more information.

Eastway Cycle Circuit

I thought the Eastway Cycle circuit was a pretty convenient place to hold the race too.  Plenty of facilities, including showers/toilets/club house, and a nice track.  Some people didn't like the idea of doing 26 laps, but I never had a chance to get bored and I rather liked the idea of having the challenge of the same corners each time as it gave me a chance to do better round them each time.

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