Flora London Marathon
ELEVEN Stubbies lined up with more than 34,000 other runners to compete in the Flora London Marathon.
Zippy Grice was the first runner to cross the finish line in The Mall with a time of 2hrs 48min 11sec to finish 404th male.
Richard Thomas managed to finish under three hours with 2:58.48 and Nick Kimber blasted his way round the capital course with a personal best time of 3:22.34. Not far behind Nick was training partner, Marcus Lee, who finished in 3:43.41, with Keith Carter just under two minutes behind in 3:45.22.
Nicholas Lewkowicz was a little disappointed with his finish of 4:22.56. “If someone ever asks ‘Does skiing for the week before a marathon help or not?’ I think I have the definitive answer – NO!!!,” said Nick.
“I returned from Tignes (French Alps – 2100m so perhaps a bit of altitude training?) via the TGV and Eurostar on Saturday evening and achieved a personal best by 20 minutes. My only previous marathon was London in 2000, but I had been hoping to be a bit nearer 4 hours.
“My times showed a sudden drop off after 25km – about the same time that my legs themselves felt like that they were dropping off.”
One person delighted with her finish was Liz Hall who produced a superb finish over the final four miles to clock 4:25.28 in her first ever marathon. Heather Bowers checked in with 4:44.30, followed by Helen Grice in 5:35.41, Hugh Edwards in 5:46.25 and Andrew Willis in 6:27.45.
The race saw a mixed bag of weather, starting off at Greenwich in sunshine and then runners faced rain, hail, and more sunshine.
The 100th anniversary of the marathon was marked in the most fitting way when Kenyan Martin Lel won his third Flora London Marathon title and led three men under 2:06 for the greatest in-depth men’s marathon in history.
In the city where the marathon distance of 26 miles 385 yards was first established at the 1908 Olympics, Lel joined Mexico’s Dionicio Ceron and Antonio Pinto of Portugal as a triple London winner, retaining his crown and breaking the six-year-old course record in 2:05:15.
In the closing stages of one of the quickest races in history, run at world record pace for 20 miles, Lel somehow still had the energy for a flying sprint at the finish. He needed it, for his young compatriot Sammy Wanjiru and Abderrahim Goumri, the Moroccan who’d finished second last year, stuck with him through the last few wet and gruelling miles.
But the Kenyan proved yet again that he has the strongest finish in marathon racing as he pulled away over the last quarter of a mile to break his personal best by almost a minute and a half. In only his second full marathon, Wanjiru finished second in 2:05:24, clipping 75 seconds from his best, with Goumri third in 2:05:30, a massive 2 minutes 14 seconds inside his PB.
Irina Mikitenko sprung a shock to win the women’s race in only her second race at the distance, beating the much-fancied Ethiopian pair of Gete Wami and Berhane Adere and lowering her personal best by 37 seconds.
After starting in calm, cool sunshine, Mikitenko battled through the wind and rain in the closing stages to become the first German winner in London since Katrin Dorre took the third of her trio of titles in 1994. Leading for much of the race, the 35-year-old shrugged off the challenge of Wami, the World Marathon Majors champion, and Russia’s Svetlana Zakharova over the last three miles to cross the line in 2:24:14.
More than 34,000 people finished the 2008 Flora London Marathon, after 35,044 people started the race in Blackheath this morning. This made the 2008 race the third biggest of the 28 London Marathons held since it started in 1981.
Some 4,093 runners required medical attention during the race, plus six marathon officials and staff, and 60 spectators.
Approximately 40 runners were admitted to hospital accident and emergency departments but there were no fatalities.
Around 92,000 people originally applied to run in this year’s race, and approximately 45,791 applications were accepted.