Yesterday was the last London Marathon sponsored by Flora.  From 2010 onwards it's going to be sponsored by Virgin.

One of the first changes that they've made is to overhaul the ballot entry process, and instead of sending your entry in via mail in the months running up to the ballot in October, they are asking people to do it online over the next few days.  This is all good, and in the name of progress.  You'd expect them to have the site working though…

They knew it'd be busy, and to claim it's due to unprecedented demand is a bit daft - of course it's unprecedented, it's the first time it's been done this way!

Three days to go until the London Marathon, and all my preparation is done.  I'm now carbo-loading, which has to be the easiest part of the training.  Tomorrow, I'll go out and run about 4 miles to keep things ticking over.  It's funny that at the start of the year 4 miles was a run - now it's hardly worth getting my running gear on for!  I suppose that's a sign that the training has gone pretty well.

The one thing I have no control over is the weather.

Having trained in great conditions for running (nice and cool, maybe a drop of rain, little wind), the weather this week has made a turn for the worse/better.  It's pretty warm and humid at the moment, and not ideal conditions for long-distance running.  So I'm wondering what it's going to be like on Sunday.  I've consulted two different sites for their forecasts, and they are markedly different.

The Weather Channel v the BBC Weather (if you click on those links you'll see the forecast from whenever you click - so no point clicking on them sometime in May, unless you're interested in the weather forecast for London from then).

Anyway - this is what they say the weekend, and most importantly Sunday will be like:

I don't think words are necessary…

Having played a full 70-minutes of hockey the day before, the lack of an early night as I was watching the boxing, and the fact that it was a warm day with glorious sunshine I had my excuses ready for when the adidas half marathon at Silverstone didn't go as planned.

I'm still hoping to be able to run close to 3h 30m for the London Marathon on April 26.  The Silverstone half would provide me with a good indicator of where I am in my training, and if I'm anywhere near running the three and a half hours in the main event.  According to the 'experts', a good indicator of your full marathon time is to double your half marathon time and add on 10 minutes.  How accurate this is I don't know, but it meant that I was aiming for a sub-1h 40m time yesterday.

I was determined not to set off too quickly, but found myself running at 7:14/mile pace for the first mile and this was much too quick when I was planning on running at 7:32/mile.  So I made a concious effort to slow down a touch, and managed to find the right pace - which was a tad quicker than my planned pace, but I felt comfortable.

It was a lovely day yesterday.  I got to Silverstone early to avoid the inevitable congestion and queues, and so had well over an hour to while away.  So after taking on some fluids, making the obligatory trip to the gents, I decided to lie in the sun and relax.  An hour later after drifting off a few times, I was nice and relaxed and rested - and ready for the off.  The weather did mean that I'd have to take on a fair amount of fluid during the race.  With Vittel water stops and Lucozade Sport stations, this wasn't a problem.  Some people didn't seem to heed the advice of taking on fluids before you get thirsty, and there were a few casualties lying by the side of the road being treated by St John's crews.

At the 12 mile mark I know how they felt.  My energy levels were down to almost empty - the orange petrol light was certainly on.  But when I got beyond the 13 mile marker and could see the finishing line, I managed to dig out a sprint finish to help put a polish on my time.

1h 38m 50s.  So nicely inside my target time, and it puts me on course for a 3h 30m run at London - of course that's subject to me getting all the long runs in place before then - and hopefully staying fit and not picking up any injuries during the time between then and now.

Here are my splits (the total distance I ran was 13.3 miles according to my GPS whatsit, rather than the 13.1 miles which I guess is the shortest distance you can run to complete on the course):

Mile - pace

1 - 7:14
2 - 7:24
3 - 7:23
4 - 7:24
5 - 7:26
6 - 7:30
7 - 7:28
8 - 7:24
9 - 7:22
10 - 7:30
11 - 7:14
12 - 7:30
13 - 7:45 (I was hurting)
last .3 of a mile - 6:11

Real Madrid were comprehensively battered by Liverpool team clearly fired up.  Apparently, Fernando Torres pinned up the cover of 'Marca' on the dressing room wall.  The headline read "This is Anfield - So what?"  

After going down in a blaze of hubris, I think they now know what 'This is Anfield' is all about.

6-years old.  Incredible talent.

50,000 steps?  I've estimated that 50,000 is the number of steps it'll take me to run 26.2 miles.  On Sunday 26 April @ about 9am - I'll be lining up alongside another 30,000 or so fellow runners (including Paula Radcliffe) to run the London Marathon.  It won't be my first time.  I ran it in 2004, as it was something I'd always wanted to do.  I only started running in the August of 2003, and 8 months later I was running the famous distance. 

Unfortunately, I picked up an injury in training and this affected me on the day - making the run more difficult and making it impossible for me to complete it in my target time.  As I crossed the line I 'knew' I'd do it again.  Fast-forward to now, and I now have a little over 3 months to prepare myself for the race.  I've always done sport and been fairly fit - but I've never been a good long-distance runner.  Over the past few years, I've done less and less exercise, especially during the first 9 months of 2008, when I basically did nothing.  Poker isn't really conducive to a good fitness regime.  As someone who works the usual office hours and then spends evening playing poker or doing whatever, it's difficult to drag myself out of bed at 6 o'clock in the morning to go running in the pouring rain.

I've been trying to get a place in the London Marathon again ever since 2004.  In fact, I didn't get a place in the 2004 marathon via a ballot place - I had to get a Golden Bond place where I promise to raise a minimum amount for a charity who then give me a guaranteed place.  I ran for the British Heart Foundation in 2004.  Fortunately, the way the organisers run the ballot for London is that if you don't get a place 5 years in a row, you're guaranteed a place on the 6th attempt.  So the 2009 marathon would be my sixth attempt - and therefore I knew I'd get a place.

My plan was to start running in the summer, build up slowly and then be in good shape to start my training on the run-up (pun intended) to the marathon.  The training programme for the actual marathon is usually over a 16-week period, but you need to have a decent platform already - in other words, I really wanted to be doing at least 25 miles a week come the start of the year.  I haven't been doing 25 miles a week.  So I've missed my first target.  The thing with long-distance running is that you can't go from nothing (or very little) to putting in 15-20 miles runs.  It's all about putting in the miles, and it's something I need to focus on doing. 

If that doesn't interest you, this might.  I'm running for the NSPCC. 

You can sponsor me with an online donation here: 
http://www.justgiving.com/daniel-phillips

It'd be much appreciated.