 Welcome to film my run. It is a Sunday morning on the 4th of October 2020 and it is time for the London Marathon, the virtual London Marathon. I'm not gonna film a lot but I am gonna do it on the seafront running up and down a 10 kilometer out and back or five kilometers out, five kilometers back. We're gonna do that four times and add a little bit more and my hope is to get it done in well certainly under four hours, 3.30 if I'm feeling up for it. There are already a few people running up and down the seafront I can see so let's give this a go. Need to load up the London Marathon app and because that's how they're tracking the run. Look, they're getting knocked over and I'm supposed to have a go so I will check in as the run progresses but not very often because I just want to get this done and it is gonna be a bit wet and rainy today as you can see. It's a bit miserable on the seafront here but it's not raining yet so fingers crossed we'll be all right. Okay let me just set myself up and I'll go. Okay I've got the app on my phone and it's giving me some commentary in my ear. I've just realized it's really windy going this way, going out so I think 3.30 might be difficult in the wind but we'll try so I'm about to start. I'll start the watch now. In fact I've got two watches going and away we go so London Marathon 2020 we have started. I admit it I'm an idiot so that is the last audio that you will hear from my 2020 Virgin Virtual London Marathon run. From then on there's no sound. Why? I don't know. It was working when I turned it on it was working for the first two clips and then after that it's just a mush of static and I'm not even gonna play it to you. So all we're gonna do now is we're gonna go through the video and you can see clips of me talking to the camera but not hearing any sound from the clip. I'll just overdub you know what's going on if that's all right with you. So at this point I'm five kilometres into the run. I've run all the way up Worthing Seafront and I'm just about at the turn point. What I've discovered is that the pace I'm going is really difficult into the wind. The wind is really strong pushing me back and I'm finding it really tough and I'm worried because it's only the first five kilometres. I've got a whole 37 more kilometres to go and I'm thinking if I've got a run into the wind every five kilometres it's gonna absolutely wreck me. So at this point I'm actually really quite worried about the whole run and whether I can get through it or not and what to do about that to make it better. So here I am coming to the end of 10km so I've gone 5km out I've come 5km back with the wind behind me and there I am turning around to go back up for my second time into the wind. I felt a lot better obviously running with the wind behind me coming back down and that did give me a thought. I felt well if I'll run one more time up into the wind but I knew it was really slowing my pace down. Obviously I was trying to get around about three hours 30 minutes and I knew that if I kept forcing into the wind it was just really gonna hurt. I don't like to be hurt so I thought why don't I just do this one more time up into the wind then when we turn around at the top I will just run straight all the way along the seafront as far as I need to go to get to 26.2 miles with the wind behind me. So that was the plan and just this was my last go into the wind now thankfully. Okay so here we are 15km in now I've done my last bit of running into the wind I'm turning around and heading back down with the wind behind me and now I know I'm going all the way to Brighton all the way along the seafront pretty much with the wind behind me so starting to feel a lot more positive about the run. Also 15km not feeling too bad at all sticking to pace just about and hadn't had any food or drink as yet my plan was to meet my wife in 5km from now just for her to give me a drink and then I would carry on from there. Also it's quite nice because you notice I've got my headphones on there and every mile I was linked up to the Virgin Money London Marathon app and every mile Steve Cram or Paula Radcliffe would give you an audio commentary so that was quite good. One thing I don't know why but one thing I hadn't been quite so prepared for with the number of people out running with their Virgin Money London Marathon bibs on and I thought I'm not gonna wear mine but loads of people were wearing them and it was really nice to see and I kind of half wished I had worn mine in the end. So here I am now at 21km into the race halfway in a time of 1 hour 44 minutes 30 odd seconds so that is bang on for a 330 finish so I was starting to feel a lot more confident about the run I done kept 10k into the wind and now I had the wind behind me all the way to the finish so I was starting to think maybe I can do this. I just see my wife at 20km for my first pit stop. Didn't take a lot really just a few sweets a few skittles sweets to put in my pocket. A drink of kind of lukewarm tea quickly down and I took with me you just saw me flash it up to the camera there bottle of Purdy's fruit carbonated fruit drink and I kind of like it a bit better than Coke or Red Bull. So here's Matt and David doing their virtual London marathon and we're just heading into showroom now and we get to the bridge and here's the bridge at 16 miles done that's 26km 10 miles of the London marathon to go and I was at 209 I think here 2 hours and 9 minutes still on course then for 3 hours 30 this though is a pretty rough section of road and when I say rough I mean it in lots of ways the road itself is not very well maintained so you've got rough path to run on but then also it's not a pleasant area to run through so it's a bit grim before you get to the outskirts of Hove and Brighton so this was the only bit really which kind of you had to grind through and get done as it were. Right here we are at Shoreham Harbour you can see the power station behind Brighton Marathon and it has to run all the way out to that power station and it's a pretty grim run. So we're at 30km here now 12km to go 2 hours 26km so still well on course. One thing I had noticed though was that the London marathon app the miles seem to be ticking over a bit quicker than my watch and that obviously that's down to GPS running on a phone app which is not ideal still I was going to follow my watch whatever happened. 2 hours 37 minutes in and I hit 20 miles just 6 miles to go this is Hove Lagoon here so if you're running the Brighton marathon or the Brighton Half Marathon you've got three miles to go to the finish on Madeira Drive so I had a little bit further to go but it's basically all the way along Brighton and Hove seafront from here. Still getting those mile updates a little bit early from the London marathon app but I wasn't worried about that the wind was nice and strong behind me and now I was into a place where there were lots of other London marathon runners out on the course as well so it was nice to be able to cheer those people along. So we are now right on Hove seafront if you've ever done Hove park run before that's the course really nice wide open promenade running towards Brighton Pier with seven kilometers to go so I hit 35 kilometers in two hours and 56 minutes and I was now thinking okay could I possibly get under 325 still feeling good I hadn't hit a wall and no more nutrition on board maybe oh yeah I dropped all my sweets so I took a load of Skittle's sweets from my wife at 20k and then managed to try and pull them out of my pocket and almost all of them fell on the floor so I had about four to eat which was a little bit annoying but never mind yeah but still feeling strong and pushing it now to try and get under 3 hours 25 minutes these two runners sped past me at one point and then I saw them coming back they were on for a 315 London marathon and now we're on Madeira Drive if you know the Brighton marathon or the Brighton half marathon this is the finish line of those races I'm at 37 kilometers in three hours so do the maths basically I needed to do five minutes per kilometer from here to the end in order to do a sub three hours 25 minutes so this was going to take me all the way out now to Brighton marina okay so here I am finally arriving at Brighton marina this is 40 kilometers into the race in three hours 14 minutes I know I'm gonna do my goal time of three hours 30 but I'm pushing it just that little bit harder now to try and make it under three hours 25 minutes the app is telling me I'm nearly finished by the way but here a few more obstacles to overcome on this path and also it's raining harder the wind is harder on my back so that's good and also though I wasn't quite sure where to go because from here there is a way onto a coast path so you run under the cliffs but I didn't quite know I couldn't quite remember how to get there so I'm basically just running blind hoping I could see the path at some point so just to show that I was running this race more than filming it obviously you've noticed the camera work has been terrible throughout and there's no audio which proves that I wasn't really concentrating on filming I was concentrating on trying to run but then I completely forgot to film me at the end of the run I don't know why I was just concentrating so much on trying to get to the end in under three hours 25 and it was close according to my watch three hours 24 minutes and 50 seconds 49 seconds or something so so it was tight to get it in in that time although the app told me the London marathon app told me I've finished in three hours 21 which I'm pretty sure I wasn't that quick so then I climbed some steps I've run along the bottom of the cliffs out of Brighton Marina I climbed some steps at the end and here I am talking to the camera at the end of the run now I said there was no audio for the entire video and that's true apart from at the beginning which you've heard and this last little bit at the end it just kind of you can vaguely hear what I'm saying so I will play you my outro at the end of my virgin money virtual London marathon video so take care from me and here's me saying goodbye on the video