2012 Virgin London Marathon

2012 Virgin London Marathon, a set on Flickr.

Watching the Virgin London Marathon is hard work! Watching it with a camera with a view to getting shots of the runners whilst trying to spot your wife amongst over thirty seven thousand other mildy crazy human beings make it that much harder. If I were to do it all again I would either not take my camera and just enjoy the day, or shoot a marathon where I knew none of the competitors.

My day started at 5:50 am getting up to drop Jane to her transport to the start of the race. From there I simpy had to wake, dress and feed the smaller offspring, and leave a sleepy older offsprig to watch them until our sitters turned up. Then I was off. Of course I took more gear, and more layers of clothing than I needed for the day, but I gad great ambitions for capturing finishing portraits with subtle fill in flash, and isolating poignant shots with my long telephoto. None of these came to fruition. The weather was sunny
most of the day, so I sweltered and reddened gently as the day progressed.

My first target spot was the eight mile marker. This falls in Deptford, which is just south of the river Thames. Here the crowds do not gather in great numbers, as they appear to in the more affluent or picturesque areas of the race route. This is not a bad thing as it enables the novice events photographer, i.e. me, room to wander about to find a vantage point more easily, and to have the tie and space to adjust exposure, etc.

The first runners were not long in coming with the elite women and the racers using wheelchairs steamed past. This is the time I made most of my focusing, and exposure cock-ups, although I did get some usable shots. The elite men were next, led by the pace runners in their striped vests, these hardened atheletes sprinted through this section making me realise I could forgoe a low ISO as I really needed a much higher shutter speed to freeze some of the features of the runners to follow.

The next section was the masses, and it was here I had the most fun, and the most anguish. Snapping away was easy, much like shooting fish in the proverbail barrel. So many colours, characters, expressions to record, it was almost too easy. However I had another task to complete: spotting the missus! Watching the crowds is fun if you as just a spectator. To single out a single person in an ever moving river of humanity is a eyestraining, and mind boggling nightmare. If you have ever tried to do one of those Where's Wally puzzles, image doing that life size, with and ever shifting pattern of people looking for someone who is a little shorter than most of the runners flowing by. I have to admit I failed, and disappointed I was too, in addition to feeling a little guilty at not being able to legitimately scream at my wife in the street.

Not to be down hearted I headed off to Canada Waters tube station to head to my next planned vantage point in Canary Warfe. Try if you can to imagine how my demeaner was when after jogging back to the station encumbered with coat, and fleece, and too much equipment, I meet the queue for the station, and then follow it to try and find the end, and walk, and walk, and walk until finally there I am at the end of a very long line of hot and bothered marathon spectators, all worried that they are going miss their loved ones, just as I had. At this juncture I decide to ditch my ambitious itinery and to head across London to the end of the race. I knew there were friends dotted along the course, and at Green Park, so I thought a good place to land would be Westminster. And I was not to be disappointed. Here was the perfect place to experience the sights, sounds, and atmosphere only hinted at on the television coverage. The noise of cheering and clapping was relentless, not least the annoying little kid constantly spinning a very loud football rattle right next to my ear for an hour. The only problem I faced apart from impending lifeling tinnitus, was the system in place to allow spectators across the race route. Every five minutes the runners would be diverted away from my viewing point. Now it was a game of waiting, and hoping Jane would pass on myside of the road.

Waiting, and trying to calculate her time from the tracking website did nothing for my nerves, but my patience paid off as I saw my amazing marathon running wife approach. Unfurling my banner, and letting rip a trachial busting scream, she heard me, and I was at last able to cheer her in directly as she entered the last mile of the race.

The heavens opened, as Jane arrived at the Scope meeting point, tired, in pain, but having reached the pinnacle of months of physical, and pschologically hard training. I can't express even one percent of how proud I am of her, and how inspiration she is. She told me she's never running the marathon again, but the next day informed me the ballot for next years race is open soon.......

Our thoughts go out to the family and friends of Claire Squires, the girl who climbed a mountain and ran a marathon or two.