Very proud of myself

I finished the London Marathon yesterday.  My finishing time was 5 hours, 24 minutes, of which I’m very proud.  (As a comparison, the last and only other marathon that I’ve done, the 2002 Portland Marathon with P., took me seven and a half hours to finish.  Granted, I hadn’t really trained for that one at all, but still - knocking two hours off my time is something to be happy about!) In the first half of the race, my pace hovered in the 10-11 minutes per mile range, and I finished the half-marathon in almost exactly the same time as A and I did the Bristol Half Marathon back in September - 2 hours 25 minutes 9 seconds.  My pace for the second half dropped by about three minutes per mile, except for in the last mile or so, when I managed (despite a fairly pronounced limp) to get myself back up to just over 11 minutes per mile.  I finished 29,535th out of 34,420 finishers.

All in all, I am really pleased, and except for a twinge in my right knee and incredibly sore inner-thigh muscles (why should those be sore?), I’m not feeling too terrible today.  I slept VERY soundly last night, though!