The conditions in London were worse than they seemed

I ran. It was really warm and I don't know a single person from over 50 at my club who got the time they were hoping for, everyone was affected by the heat. Some people were still able to run well but plenty had bad days, myself included. I got heat stroke. There was no cloud cover and almost no shade on the course, then you have the heat coming off the tarmac etc. Also running at 10am-1pm, it's not like American marathons which seem to start a lot earlier and avoid the worst of the heat.

Have the popcorn out ready for all the YouTubers making excuses. Yet the guy sirpoc from Letsrun epic thread. First ever marathon, no excuses etc just turns up and runs 2:24 in his early 40s.

Way I see it is if you paced like a moron you get what you deserved in that heat. The heat just makes the jog home after you embarrassed yourself even worse.

I’m definitely in the minority of people who ran well and hit their target (target was sub 2:25 and I finished in 2:23:28). I don’t feel like the weather really affected me other than making sure to pick up more fluids than usual and running wide at times to go through the showers (they were amazing).

The cherry on the cake was overtaking Nick Bester at the halfway mark and beating him by using his own marathon plan. I had to do a double check to make sure it was him because I was confused by overtaking him

I'm a bit skeptical that it was a particularly hard day. Last year, it only took 2:07 to get sixth place, this year, Kipchoge ran 2:05 for sixth. And the entire podium was faster this year compared to last year.

Among the hobbyjoggers, a lot of people I know missed their goal, but they also overcooked the first half - one guy was 3 minutes under target pace! The people who ran well all took it very conservatively in the first half, and many were smart enough to wear a cap.

You mean East Africans can handle the heat better than northern Europeans? What a revelation.

Epic! Congrats on the time too!

People forget that air quality is more than just the temperature. It is dew point, pollution, smog, ozone etc.

I have not yet found someone who ran a negative split in on of the many races that happened.

It was tough

I had hoped for sub 2:40 but when i got to the field i changed my options down to 2:42 and then got 2:46 towards the end.

I think it really depends if you were planning to red line the event or just run within yourself. Shoetubers are only allowed to run PB's because everything is geared towards the next video and the next catchy headline. I can imagine as they were coming towards the mall they were already framing their individual failures in a way that they could claim some successes. Mark my words Bowden & Felton will do a prolongued breakdown of the event over two or three videos where they will focus on a paticular piece of apparal that they want to hawk to people or a gel that supposedly made them faster. Only to gloss over the problems in a 30 second end piece.

But it was hot and i feel for anyone who felt the need to hammer it out there yesterday.

It was definitely hotter than the official forecast indicated and it was humid. London is obviously heavily built up too so the heat radiates.

I do think even some elites should have prepared a bit better for this possibility though - especially the Brits. Eilish coped well as she had been training in Dubai. Phil Sesemann had been training in Leeds - over the winter. Terrible prep!

Then the bottom line is that some people just cope better with the heat than others.

Many did go off too fast though.

It’s one reason I’d never run London. You train though the winter and cold then you could get a hot day. All that work could go to pot. I’d rather do an autumn/winter marathon.

I think this is correct, I wanted to say something along these lines in my original post but you put it better than I could have.

An elite who is aiming for say a WC qualifying standard has almost no choice but to go off with the corresponding pace pack. Telling them to 'pace better moron' isn't really relevant or helpful. Unless you think you could be the hero who solos a 2:07.

And likewise for those YouTubers or sub elites who are 'PB or bust' as you mentioned. It's a different mentality.

I mainly started this thread to try and understand what I see as a disappointing UK domestic race, but it's interesting to hear from others' experiences of the day. Congratulations to those who did execute race they were happy with!

I have run a marathon in 27°C (80°F) heat, and my stomach got upset due to dehydration, and I finished 10 minutes slower than my personal record. However, after the race, I didn’t blame the weather — I blamed the fact that I hadn’t prepared well enough for the marathon. There are always ways to improve your tolerance to hot weather if you take possible conditions into account during training (and racing fueling). I don't understand why people feel the need to blame the weather.

Look, I'm not a puzzy about the weather but to be fair it was unseasonably hot, still and warm. Very hot sun does not equal fast times so I think the explanations people gave were reasonable.

Wunderground puts high in London on race day at 70F. Dew point at 45F. So warm for a marathon but not humid at all. It has been in the 60s for dew point here for a few weeks.

Africans are significantly better in the heat (not that we already don't know this..). Assefa even said weather was good for her in an interview

I think you're delusional if you think you can run your best time when it is 80 degrees out regardless of how well you prepare. I'm all for not making excuses, but it is also important to ground yourself in reality if you want to run the best race you can on a given day . . .

During the second half of the telecast Steve Cram made numerous references to the weather. I didn't understand what he was getting at until near finish when the British runners were slower than expected as a block. Cram had been hinting hey there's a reason for the numbers we're about to see.

You need to ignore air temperature you’ve got to add 10c on top - as a volunteer at the finish line we were out there from 9am to 7pm and it was roasting, direct sunlight, heat from the road and building pushed back, lots of runners in a small space, London roads are tiny compared to most, no wind and obviously runners racing too hard for the conditions but to say the conditions were not too bad for racing is a joke

It was hot af.

Pretty much everyone I know slowed at about 16-18 miles with some very slow miles sprinkled in and theyre all very similar across the board.

You are essentially completely dehydrated after 90mins-2hours of running in red hot sun.