There’s a scene halfway through a classic film that sums up London, or at least the mid nineties junkie’s view of it. A fantasy land of orange haired punks, red double decker buses, micro skirted ladies and smiling policemen with black helmets, where money and jobs spurt like water from a hose soundtracked by belting 1994 progressive house. In the film it symbolises a sort of Mecca for the escapees from Edinburgh’s chilly grime. Sometimes reality turns out to be perpendicular to the dream.

Loud tense laughter echoes around at breakfast on marathon day, where they struggle to keep up with the porridge demand. Sweating waiters in snow white jackets cart more of it over to the queuing hordes. The hotel chain is Spanish which explains the chocolate churros and red/white wine available at 6am. There are over a hundred punters here from Ireland – most in the safety of groups and one or two firmly dug into the morning’s Daily Telegraph.

Monstrous start area is like Slane without the music, or the Phoenix Park shorn of trees. Good humoured concentric portaloo queue of English punters who treat it all as part of the day’s trials and don’t seem too bothered. BBC announcer keeps us entertained as we sit on grass and pretend not to be worried. The giant screens show Liz, Sammy, and Paula on repeat effortlessly breaking tape to times we can only dream of.

Superb organisation encourages us to get to start and paranoid, I do so. Does me no good as still re tie shoes five times and suspect end up with same tightness as started. Gun goes, we cheer and watch screen as crowds pour down road like upending bang of dinky cars into a funnel.

Walk to start and walk past. Jog, then walk. Jog, then walk. Prepared for this so not a problem. Ok up to 5 miles but stopping and starting, weaving a bit, no thinning out. Get to approx 7 miles and use inhaler = bad news no. 1. Look up to see a road sign:

“Ha Ha” road it notes. Ha ha road it does exist!

Crowds at blue start no. 5 with 16,000 others. Look around, no pacer, no sign. Probably no 3-45 pacer although this turns out to be wrong later. Amazing drumming and support at the start, two sinewy lads slam a drum the size of a small car under bridge with pieces of 2 x 4s. Still jogging really, not bothered by heat yet but something not right. Carry on to approx 8 miles. No improvement and find myself talking myself through 10 mile marker as if it is 15. Two minutes down which I cannot seem to make any in roads into that aren’t taken away again – ferociously frustrating. The pattern seems to be: gain a minute, lose minute and a half every mile.

Half way comes and goes and I’m down by two minutes. Still no open road. Run past Tower Bridge, the City, the winding plague streets we learned about yesterday and it starts to get uncomfortable. Unmoved by cheering crowds at the bridge. Still can’t breathe properly and use another inhaler. Two in two hours denotes malfunction. Nearly miss my wife handing me banana just before the Flora half way marker cause I am too busy being pissed off at the time it reads.

Turn right into Canary Wharf and docklands down narrow never ending streets that turn right then right again. Legs feel like concrete now so I look to the crowd for some cheer. I get it too - high fiving kids with outstretched hands at the roadside. Get to 20 and chat briefly with some guy about making it under 3-45. Not a chance and I think we know it. This ends the chat. On course traffic seems endless – forest of shuffling feet and “excuse me”s and “sorry”s - and mood worsens. Eventually admit defeat of a sort at 22 miles and walk temporarily. This denotes failure so humour moves from black to black hole. Inject lucozade, inhaler, water, bananas in quick succession to spark the pistons but the engine near to seizing. Crowd noise surges behind me and over my left shoulder red faced Gordon Ramsey is gaining on me. His grimace is noted and I get back to my running stride along the Embankment with the Thames waddling along to my left.

Charge last 200m from Buckingham Palace roundabout and run past Keith Duffy explaining his 3-52 to the BBC while waving my hands in the air like I just don’t care.

World’s Greatest Marathon? Maybe. If you like crowds, bands, fuss, slick organisation, Flora/Timex/Lucozade/Adidas. Maybe though, you don’t.

Cian Blake 2009