Hoping that Ed gets his hot time

One of the themes of my newspaper preview was that standards had fallen for Manx runners in the London Marathon but that there was a hope that Ed Gumbley would rectify this tomorrow.

He ran 2.37.20 in Berlin in September 2008 and is a better and more experienced runner than he was then.

But if he sets a PB in the heatwave that is predicted for tomorrow it will be an even greater achievement. No matter what happens his time would be faster in cooler conditions so if he does improve then he will undoubtedly have scope to continue his improvement next time out.

My only concern (and this applies as much to me as anyone) is that there is a Plan B. Most of us that ran in 1996, when it was extremely hot, made the mistake of not being flexible with our time plans and as we started to fall behind them worked all the harder to get back on track until we hit the wall.

The difficulty for us, unlike the Kenyans, is that we are not used to the heat.

We will all be behind Ed tomorrow - literally.