It's all over. This is what happened:

Once again, the weather was foul. Not quite as wet as last time, but far more windy. Also far more toilets, so I had no trouble getting to the start on time - this time in the 'orange', or 'first', wave.

I still found I was doing a lot of overtaking, particularly in the first mile, but I may have over paced myself for that. This time there were fewer vikings - I guess that's what you'd expect closer to the front.

I'd pretty much abandoned my hopes of completing the ten miles in seventy-five minutes. Eighty was my best hope. At the eight mile mark I was bang on sixty-four minutes, so right on schedule. Immediately after, however, the course turned onto the home straight along the sea front and we were all hit by a vicious head wind, which really slowed things down.

In the end, I managed eighty-one minutes twenty-four seconds, which was only around three and a half minutes faster than last year. On the other hand, because of the difficult conditions, I came in 2075th out of 18,500 entrants. That's over eleven hundred places better than last year, so that's the way I'm selling it.

It's still not too late to donate.

Next stop, Brighton Half Marathon...