Its kind of hard to believe that this is the third year in a row that I’ve ventured down to witness the running of the London Marathon. It felt like a bit of deja vu as both Sandra and I repeated essentially what we did in 2006 to go and see Jules run this 26 miler. Don’t they say that the more things change the more things stay the same??

This time around however, unlike in 2006 when Jules actually ran for Martin, Jules managed to get a spot in the Marathon of his own through his running club. Wee James, along with the rest of his family, also joined our little support group as his sister was running her very first marathon. As in 2006 we started off at Bermondsey before making our way to Embankment. Our only concern was that Jules has been running much faster in the last couple of years so we couldn’t afford to dilly dally too much getting between the two sites. I must admit however we did have time to eat a sneaky sausage roll. Heh heh. (This actually saved us from an apparently horrendous downpour of rain. Thankfully for the runners this was the only spot of bad weather all day.)

We met up with Amelia and Andy, newcomers to London, at Embankment where they had a prime spot for a view of the race standing atop some fences. I wasn’t quite limber enough to get up there so Sandra and I settled on finding a spot by the railings opposite to them, safely on the ground. After seeing Jules go steaming by (there were too many runners this time and too much cheering for him to see or hear us) we rushed off to the end of the race where an unfortunate decision by me took us on a nearly 3 mile detour. Oops. Poor Jules was waiting for us for ages!

I was impressed with his time for the marathon of 3:00:42 which was frustratingly close to him breaking the 3 hour barrier. That pit stop half-way through the race really cost him. Still it was an extreme improvement of cutting his marathon time by 40 minutes in two years. James’ sister also clocked an impressed 4:39:49. Now if only I could find inspiration in their running …

Some photos from today:

Waiting for the runners	The Papp	The Women Leaders

The Wheelchair Leaders	Hope they can see each other	The Male Leaders

Elvis!	Its Jules!	Amelia and Andy

Amelia and Andy again!	Elvis again!	Jules again!