A defiant performance, London Marathon – 25 April 2010

Juliet Mellor reports.

As you probably all know by now, I’ve had a couple of bad years health-wise, which has meant on and off running for me. I just recover from a bad Achilles tendonitis, then I get my London place in the marathon yippee! Now I have to get back to running.

Then boom, I start having problems and severe pain in my hands, arm and toe joint all at different times. To cut a long story short I am diagnosed with palindromic rheumatism (auto immune disease).

The rheumatologist says ‘NO marathon, the damage you do now to your joints will make your future worse’, so I say what about power walking it? (I’m not losing that place). So that’s how my journey started.

First of all I want to say thanks for all your support and waiting for me to cross the line, I didn’t know how long I was going to take, and I didn’t want to keep you all there which is why I decided not to tell anyone!

I had the most amazing time doing this marathon as I had no expectations and no time to beat! I secretly wanted to do 5.45 and if that became impossible under six would be fine, or if things were going badly wrong just FINISH!!

When we arrived at the start I felt sick with nerves, but we managed to sneak into pen 4, so I thought to myself I will run the first three to warm up, and start walking when the blue/red/green starts merge, so that’s what I did and I felt great.

Juliet, good to go at Blackheath

It was good to be running again, I had done a few small jogs in my training so I knew that I would be fine. The merging was great everyone booing and laughing, I felt so positive I could have carried on, but I knew it was not a good idea I would have hit that wall with a big bang! So I got into my pace of speed /power walking to change the momentum.

I saw Wendy early on which was great, thanks for your encouragement. Then the miles just went, I loved every minute of it, I took in all the sights, the bands and the crowds. I got to 14mile crossover and looked out for Adee, and guess what I saw him! I shouted and waved and that spurned me on a bit more, then before I knew it I was going over Tower Bridge, I saw Julie G a couple of times that was great, it’s very comforting to see a familiar face.

At this stage I was feeling good and I was overtaking loads of runners which encouraged me on, before I knew it I was at 24 miles but my feet were starting to hurt and legs feeling tight, but was not going to slow down now and risk coming in over six, so I just kept positive and kept going, I was getting emotional thinking don’t cry yet or you’ll have a black face when my mascara runs, and then I saw the balloons and that was my signal to jog to the finish and then I saw everyone wow!! When I passed you all I did have a little moment, but pulled myself together for the photo. Although I did walk and felt like a fraud for not running at the beginning of my training, this was a personal challenge and I really enjoyed it.

Juliet’s official time was 5:42:20.