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Report by: Eric Bowles

Thank you all for your support!

I am mostly relieved to have completed London and completed all six world major marathons in the process!

As for a race report, I just finished a fantastic trip to Portugal and made some bullet point notes about the race on my phone, while the race was fresh on my mind.

General London Marathon thoughts:
- The expo and the pre race waiting area were both the best organized I have ever seen.
- They had male and female urinals that were amazing and did a great job alleviating demand for the actual port-a-potty's (Yes I also wish I knew what the female urinals looked like).
- Yes it was the hottest London Marathon ever, but at a high of 76 I didn't expect it to be an issue. In retrospect, because the race starts at 10am - it had already warmed up, and there was a dry swirling wind that seemed to blow in my face in every direction.
- The race started me in “wave 1" behind a couple hundred British National “good for age" runners. Tokyo did this as well and it creates a frustrating first mile where I have to jump around people.

The race experience:
- After breaking through the pack of runners, I got a nice rhythm and I felt really good.
- At mile 16 we went through this windy construction tunnel (a new feature) and the 5:40 pace group collectively became the 6:15 pace group - not a single person held the pace.
- From that point on, the race was terribly difficult - perhaps the hardest I have done.

The shoes:
- As many of you know from the track, I have found the Vaporfly 4% shoes to be FAST and was very excited to race in them.
- After 30 miles of training in them, the carbon plate in my right shoe broke!
- I still ran in them, which was an OK decision, but when my form broke down the broken shoe was quite noticeable.
- Perhaps the pair I got was defective? I still would buy another pair for a future marathon with the expectation that they will only last for that one race - no more fun track workouts in them.
- Among the sub elite field I was surprised to see about 50% of those guys wearing them.

That is all I got!

- As for the future, I am contemplating what my next running goals should be. Perhaps improving my 5k to half marathon times over the summer and lead into improving my NYC marathon time.
- Beyond that, in 2019 I would like to run a marathon in South America and in 2020 a small group of TCLA'ers registered for the Antarctica Marathon. If anyone has interest in joining on these big trips I would be happy to include you!