I once ran the London Marathon

I agree with all the advice on here already, but I just thought I would share my experience at the start of the race.

At the start, there were posts with various times on them, and the instructions were to line up by the post reflecting the time you expected to finish in.
From my training, I reckoned I would finish in around 4 hours, so I dutifully lined up alongside the 4 hour post.
This turned out to be a big mistake, as I found myself at the very back of the field, the only people lined up behind me were 6 Vikings carrying a longboat!
So I had 25,000 people in front of me when the starting gun went off, and it was 10 minutes before I even got to the start line. I could only walk for the first mile or so, and then a jog/shuffle for the next mile. I was frustrated, so once some space opened up around me I compounded the mistake by trying to make up for lost time. Another big mistake. After 15 miles I could hardly put one foot in front of the other. I finished in a disappointing four and a half hours. Even the Vikings passed me.
My advice, then, is ignore the timed posts and start as near to the front as you can get.

Posted By: Fenwood Lad, Jan 25, 23:18:08