Accessibility links I had seen her at the start, of course (one could hardly miss her).
She received the biggest cheer of the morning at Greenwich Park as she joined the back of the queue of 36,000 fun runners and fundraisers, new-timers and old-timers. And while it was my first marathon, I felt sure I wouldn’t be like other debutants who regailed stories of being beaten by pantomime horses and rhinos. How wrong I was. Long before the uplifting sight of the halfway point at Tower Bridge, Nessa, and the brave fool inside her, Rob Schooling, had streaked past me. Unable to work out where my race was all going wrong I put my foot down at Wapping, passed her (him) and eventually put a bit of distance between us. But it was no use. As the runners snaked into the hard yards of Docklands, the faces of excited children would light up as they pointed to the giant pink vision on my tail. “Go on Rob,” they screamed. Even friends and family, who chased me around London to cheer me on, confessed later that they knew I would be along shortly once “that massive nurse” honed into view. None of this is to begrudge Rob (and Nessa) who deserves nothing but admiration for his five-hour effort. It’s simply to illustrate the mental as well as physical torture the marathon imposes on you.
Compared to Rob, my load was light. Weighing two stone, this was the third time the costume had been hauled around for the Well Child charity. Rob, a volunteer, got in touch after seeing it last year.