Unlucky NI - I know how much effort you've put in to your training with everything geared towards going for the win at Chester. You'd have won it today too, looking at the winning time. You'll be back stronger for sure.
I ran the perfect race today. The intention was to run with VL and see if we could go sub 2.50. It was all going to plan until VL had to drop out after about 1.5 miles. Sorry you had to drop out VL but you did well to get to the start line - much better to drop out then than to have pushed yourself too much and done some serious damage.
I got my pace to its required 6.25 and felt great, having to hold myself back from going quicker. I never had one bad moment and at 22 miles I was still on 6.25/6.26 pace. Unfortunately the last 3 miles with the hills meant I put in 3 x 6.40s and so I came in just over 2.50 (incidentally, my average pace came in at 6.29. I thought that a sub 6.30 average would get me a sub 2.50, obviously not.). Still, that hasn't taken the gloss off my performance one bit. I surprised myself with my strong run despite being nearly 1/2 stone heavier than my last 3 marathon efforts.
The icing on the cake was seeing JMC in the finishing straight. We both knew that I had obliterated his time from last year - happy days! 
Edited: 07/10/2012 at 14:48
