Multitude

Ian in his blue vest crossed the finishing line with a woman 

in an orange vest and a man riding on a unicorn

I usually bristle when observers refer to an "amount" of people. After all, people can be counted and therefore you should use the term "number". However, yesterday in  London the use of "amount" would have seemed perfectly acceptable.

The city was thronging because of  the forty fifth London marathon. To start with, it had the biggest ever field of runners for any marathon anywhere - with 56,640 entrants managing to cross the finishing line. But for every runner there seemed to be ten spectators. If my theory is correct, that would mean a crowd of half a million. I can well believe that is true.

Our Ian set out for Greenwich Park - the starting point - at eight in the morning but his particular "wave" did not get going until 10.30. At that time, Shirley and I were on the tube system (American: subway). At Westminster, we changed from the District line to the Jubilee line which took us south of the river to Canada Water tube station. Every carriage of the train was jam-packed. We were like sardines in a jumbo tin.

And when we reached the nine mile marker on the race route, the pavements (American: sidewalks) were four or five deep with people hanging out of windows and standing on street furniture. Runners were already going past, cheered all the way with whistles trilling and drums beating. "Go Nigel! You can do it!" "Come on Sally!". Occasionally a novelty runner passed by - a cow, Big Ben, a chicken or a chunky tattooed man in a pink tutu. The atmosphere was electric.

But somehow we missed our Ian running by the observation point we found at one of the crash barriers. Shirley checked her app and after half an hour he had reached the Mile 10 point. It would have helped if somebody had told me he would be running in a light blue Great Ormond Street Hospital vest and not in his usual black T-shirt.

Then we got back to Canada Water tube station with three thousand other spectators. Crushed up together, we edged into the station and down the escalators to the rail tunnel level where again we squeezed into a tube train carriage that was already full.

We were carried  north of the river to Green Park where we alighted like toothpaste squeezed out of a tube. It had become the warmest day of the year so far and  people were out and about in shorts and T-shirts. 

With difficulty, we proceeded through St James's Park to Birdcage Walk that leads on to The Mall and Buckingham Palace where the marathon ends so we were now past the 25 mile post.  We saw many runners struggling and two being carried in big yellow bags to a nearby St John's  Ambulance recovery station. An older runner threatened to torpedo into the tarmac as his legs started to fail him. Fortunately two other entrants had the presence of mind to grab his arms and save him.

I stared under the trees and down the course for forty minutes and then I spotted our beautiful lad.

"Ian! Ian!" I yelled in my loudest Hull City supporter's voice and he heard me and came over briefly to say hello before carrying on to the end where he received his finisher's medal and a T-shirt.

In the warmth of the day and with so many thousands of other runners in his way, he had struggled after sixteen or seventeen miles, feeling cramps in his legs and had had to walk some of the way home. In spite of that, he achieved a time of  4hrs 44mins. Not bad for a forty year old bloke who only took up running a year ago. We were and are immensely proud of him.

Afterwards, we passed through Trafalgar Square where the multitude milled like a vast shoal of sardines then down to the famous river where we besieged the Embankment tube station with thousands of others before squeezing on to another packed tube to head west to Earl's Court.

Shirley and I felt that we deserved medals too!