Ralph and Sarah rose to the challenge though. Fresh from his London Marathon success, Ralph offered to pace Sarah around to try and beat her PB of 1:49.

I managed to get out and cheer as they ran up the horrible incline Kingsmill Road and they both looked in great shape. After shouting a bit and generally making a nuisance of myself I drove back to the finish.

It was a great feeling to see them enter the final stages of the course around Standalone Farm after about 1:44 knowing that they would smash her PB.

Sure enough, they crossed the line in a fantastic 1:46 – smashing the old PB by 3 minutes. Congratulations to Sarah and well done to Ralph for an excellent pacing job.

Here’s the happy moment!

It is only £2 and right on our doorsteps, if you ask around at the club or on our facebook page, I’m sure you can share a lift if transport is a problem. Or for those of you into longer races, why not run there and back and use it as a Tempo run in the middle?

Don’t feel like racing, why not pace someone else round and try and help them to a PB?

Dates are in our race diary.

Further details are here.

Every Tuesday and Thursday at 7.00 to 7.30pm. Cost £1 per session.

This group is aimed at everyone who has wanted to start running whether for weightloss, recreation, health or other reasons but felt that the club was too much for them.

If you would like to attend, please fill out the REGISTRATION FORM at the top of this page.

I personally am committed to making sure no one feels intimidated or too inexperienced to start running. A great many of our current members started as beginners with the club a tear or so ago and are now some of our most accomplished runners.

What YOU WILL GET is a highly supportive and encouraging group of people, who all know what it felt like when they first started running. You will NOT be made to feel like you are holding people up, or are too slow for the group. If you are the kind of person that gets frustrated by other people being slower than you in a group then this might not be the right environment for you.

You will be encouraged to improve, you will occasionally be asked to run those extra 20seconds or so, but it will always be within a friendly and supportive atmosphere.

The programme will consist of regular running and walking breaks, with the running sections getting slightly longer most weeks.

My aim is to get everyone to a stage where they can run for 20-30 minutes.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT SPEED, this is about achievement. That means something different to everyone, and we will help you find and reach whatever it means to you.

For more information contact me directly on 07900 497699, or by email

If you answer YES to any of the questions in the registration form, please contact your GP before embarking on any new exercise plan.

If you need more encouragement, please read the comments below from current and former members.

We had very conflicting targets for the day, and I’m pleased to say we met them both. I think Lisa’s target was simply to complete the thing, she did have a secondary target of under 6 hours which I wanted to help her achieve.

You can read Lisa’s blog for her side of the story, here’s mine.

My target was very different. My one regret after running the FLM in 2007 was that I naively pushed for a time that I wasn’t yet capable of. Whilst I still finished in a decent 4:24 I was shattered and hadn’t enjoyed much of the second half and didn’t really remember much of it.

I always said I wanted to run it and soak up the so called atmosphere that I had heard so much about.

The first 10 miles were brilliant, we ran at the side so every few yards supporters were shouting out “Come on Lisa and Pete”. I tried to high five every single kid (and adult) who offered it, and can honestly say I was having an awesome time.

Now any one of my friends form Uni will know that I love a crowd and love the attention in that sort of environment and I’m not ashamed to admit I played up to it yesterday. After about 13 miles the crowds got a bit quieter for a while as they had been cheering for 3 hours already. I was enjoying myself so much that I started cupping my hands to my ears and then waving my arms up to raise the volume.

The crowds were awesome, every time there would suddenly be a huge cheer and wall of noise, and often crowds of suitably tipsy people shouting “Pete, Pete, Pete”. I even took to chucking in some old school clubbing dance moves in round docklands pass all the buses with PA systems on getting shout-outs and roars from all the pubs.

John, running in red body paint and speedos, had said “it’s like being a minor celebrity for the day with none of the hassle of paparazzi etc.” – that’s exactly what it felt like.

This all sounds a bit silly but it was such a good laugh and I’d like to think it was taking Lisa’s mind off the pain in her legs, as she concentrated on the pain of realising she was married to me.

About mile 21 I think we passed one PA truck who played Zorbas Dance from Zorba the Greek. This is possibly the WORST song ever to inspire runners. It starts so slowly and as it came on it was like everyone ran through treacle.

I felt the need to start doing the dance running sideways (potential disaster on 5 hours running) but again, massive cheers from the crowd.

I did tire towards the end, and the rucksack with all the foodie bits and gloves, and other things to cope with what could happen over six hours running was feeling a bit heavy. My feet were very achey because I think I was plodding a bit as I found running at the slower pace (12-13min miles) hard to do without shuffling sometimes hence all the leaping about and running to make sure I got a high five!

Although she said she just wanted to complete it, I know Lisa would have been deflated if she just missed 6 hours so I always had one eye on the time. 6:15 would have been fine, 6:02 would not.

She was an absolute star, this was way out of her comfort zone and she never complained and kept a good steady pace throughout. Yes we slowed but only because walk breaks got a bit more frequent. When we were running it was at the same 12:20 ish pace we started at. In fact mile 25 when the rain came was 12:30, our 6th fastest mile.

At 20 miles we had 90minutes to get 10k done, and I got pretty emotional at 22miles when I realised we had around an hour for 4miles and she was likely to beat her goal.

This was the hardest bit for me, as although by this point Lisa had stated she really didn’t care about the time, I know from experience that you can regret it a long time after the event and it was so easily in her grasp as long as we didn’t walk too much. So I did find myself urging her on, knowing it was hurting a bit.

At this end of the race most people are walking, so much so that the crowd give a massive cheer to anyone still running, however slowly.

It is quite easy to just walk with everyone else and subconsciously, collectively, agree that you are all done for the day. I know from my own efforts that you can lose time very quickly over the last few miles and I didn’t want this to happen so I encouraged Lisa to keep running, if only for a minute or so at a time, so we could at least keep the average time at 15min miles for the last 4 miles.

She was awesome, she’d dig in and run for 3-4 minutes at a time and we’d run past loads of other people which felt really good. We walked a fair bit of the last half-mile to make sure we could run the length of the Mall hand in hand with a smile on our face – and we did.

Looking back that 25th mile was the key, 12:30 instead of 16mins walking and we would have missed the target.

A bloody brilliant day. I am so proud of my wonderful wife for doing the race, but even more so for doing all the training that meant she finished ahead of goal, and strong with it.

Finishing Time: 5:56:45

As the sun was out it turned out to be perfect time to get there, to relax, prepare myself and get ready… not so sure it would have been so good if it had been raining as predicted all week; I had a bin bag to put on to keep dry if necessary and luckily a last minute decision to take some factor 50 as well… come the end of the race I was glad I had slapped some of that on (bit of redness today even having worn sun cream). Out of the sun it was a bit chilly but I left it until 30 minutes to go to hand in my kit bag and wore an old pair of gloves to keep hands warm (they got discarded after a couple of miles).

The plan was to head off with 8m35s miles and try not to slow down too much at the end to get within 4 hours, secretly hoping that I could hold that time all the way through and hit 3hrs45m; well that went out of the window straight away, was going with the flow, trying not to get in the way of other runners and at the same time not having to weave around other runners going slower in front.

Was getting progressively faster over the first 4 miles and whilst I didn’t feel it was taking anything out of me I slowed myself down and just got in a nice steady pattern, taking on water every other station and a gel every 4 or 5 miles.

Was enjoying the crowds and the sites, The Royal Naval College buildings, the Cutty Sark and crossing Tower Bridge really stick out in my memory; those sites and also someone cheering me on and pronouncing my name as Rafe rather than Ralf… must have been a posh part of London! ) Felt a bit of a twinge in my ankle and knee just after mile 10 so slowed down just a little bit and it went away, got to the halfway mark and felt surprisingly good, at this point I tried to forget that I’d already been running for the best part of 2 hours and told myself I just had a half marathon to run which I knew I had done a number of times.

Went under some sort of shopping centre between miles 15 and 16 and there were some portaloos so stopped for a pee, being underground my garmin went a bit haywire as well, so my mile reckoned it took an extra 1min30, pretty sure I wasn’t peeing for that long!! Things started to get a bit harder after passing the 18 mile mark, found myself counting down the miles rather than just focusing on the next mile and counting them up. The garmin went a bit loopy again going around Canary Wharf as there was no way I did a 7 and half minute mile at that point. Got to the 20 mile mark and that gave me a bit of a boost knowing I only had a 10k race left, as I passed the 22 mile mark my stride was falling apart, my feet were hurting and doubts about finishing without stopping where drifting in, had a difficult couple of miles working out how much longer it was going to take me with worst case scenarios.

Just before end of mile 24 there was a lucozade sign saying 2.5 miles to go and stubbornness kicked in, taking it a half mile at a time, not long after I ran past a section for the charity I was running for and all of them shouting out my name and cheering me on was amazing and a little emotional, I kicked on and put in my fastest mile of the race. Running along the Embankment the crowds were amazing and turning into Birdcage Walk knowing I was nearly done I was having trouble keeping it all together. Passed the 800metres to go sign and I’m sure they placed it in the wrong spot as that was the longest 800mtrs I have ever run. Finally turned on to The Mall and seeing that famous finishing line made it all worthwhile.

I can’t say enough about how much the crowds made a difference; I had doubted my ability to get around after shorter 20+ mile training runs felt awful, but the crowd and camaraderie of other runners really does get you through. The water station bods and marshals did an outstanding job and the St Johns stations with them handing out Vaseline was a godsend!

Finishing time: 3:39:26

If anyone has considered this event but unsure of the distance, I say go for it, it is completely different to any event I have run before and you will be surprised how much you get from it. Public ballot for next year’s event opens Mon 30th April by the way ;o)

Simply enter the numbers of your friends and track their progress as they pass each 5km marker.

17833 – Pete
3096 – Lisa
47074 – Ralph
32642 – John

Virgin London Marathon tracking Page

Scott, who has been training regularly for nearly a year now with us smashed 8 minutes off his Standalone 10k PB with a fantastic 50:53.

Next Training – Thursday 5th, 7pm. ALL abilities welcome.

Ed finished in 1:54:31, which was a stonking 14min PB! Sarah finished just ahead of him in 1:53:41.