LONDON GOT ROBBED

(Image taken from Rob Waiting's blog)

OK, yeah I know...there are those that are going to say I should have done a report on this last weekend. Well if I'd been in London for that weekend I'd have been at the marathon and would have done a report, as it was, I was out of town on family commitments.

As it was, well we know the stats, two Kenyans I never heard of(Felix Limo and Martin Lel) finished 1-2 in the elite men's race and a Yank called Deanna Castor won the elite women's race in the absence of Paula Radcliffe. Yay for Bob Weir, the Brit who won the elite disabled race but really, wasn't that bothered about that side of things.

What the London Marathon is best known for though are the nutters. You know those people, guys and girls who will in theory never run marathons particularly fast(though one such runner did make the 2004 GB Olympic team thanks to her London time). Anyway, some of these nutters run in costumes, some in running vests, all for one charity or another but they are usually of little interest to me.

There was a particularly good reason for me to be interested in the 2006 London Marathon though. In case no one's bothered to check out this site's links page, I had an old mate of mine racing in this year's event. His name is Rob Waiting and last time I'd checked he was one of the saner of my old mates from school...and then I hear he's doing the marathon. Scratch the idea of sanity.

Anyway, the guys he was doing this for was Global Village 2006, a UN connected group that was looking to connect kids all over the world in the hope of forging greater ties between nations. Rob's looking to work at a camp run by this organisation and if he was prepared to take on the mission impossible of the marathon, then I was prepared to sponser him to a nice amount of cash.

Anyway at this point there's not much more I can say first hand, so I'm better off handing over to Marathon Man himself and stick my oar in at various points:

On Thursday I managed to injure myself quite spectacularly and despite immediate trips to casualty, foot clinics and specialist physiotherapists I found myself on Sunday morning limping across the starting line, extremely doubtful of my ability to complete this awesome task.